Wine Guide Parade: Wine According to Our Readers

 I have always considered fundamental the feedback of our readers. DiWineTaste is, since its very beginning, a project in evolution and, in the course of these years, we introduced new services and improved the old ones. Nothing of what was existing at the start of DiWineTaste remained today - in September 2002 - or, at least, nothing has been kept to its original form, by following, like to say, a natural evolution. Our readers can in fact interact with our publication in many ways, last but not the least, by using our apps for mobile devices and available for Android, iPhone and iPad. Right from our two apps we get a particular concentration of interaction, notably in the evening, in particular from Wine Guide and its food pairing tool. The same can be said for Aquavitae - our distillate guide - and Wine Place Guide.

 Our Wine Guide certainly is one of the central elements of our editorial activity. DiWineTaste has always been involved in wine sensorial tasting, not only by covering technical subjects about the organoleptic aspects of the beverage of Bacchus, but also by tasting and reviewing tens of wines each month. We have never considered the evaluation and the score we give a wine as an absolute and indisputable reference. We are well aware that, despite it is just our point of view, this is something which may also be not agreed by our readers. Our scoring system, expressed in diamonds and stars, is the measure of wine making quality, and not just about the technique, we give a wine. In fact, we do not believe it is reductive to state our opinion and recognize the merit of what the unique combination of vineyard, territory and men can express through the wine they bottle. Besides the words which can be said to tell about a wine, we believe it is right - with courage and by assuming our own responsibility - to recognize the merit to the persons and their wines, also in “quantitative” terms.

 As we are aware of the fact our opinion is not - and cannot be - an absolute reference, we are very interested in knowing the opinion of our readers. As for the wines we review, we let our readers express their opinions in different ways. One of them is to express a vote of preference - both through our Wine Guide and by sending it by mail - and results are then used to create our Wine Parade. This column is present in DiWineTaste since the second issue - published on November 2002 - and each month it received the appreciation of our readers, sometimes voting wines we never reviewed. In these years it has always been interesting to see how our readers were voting the wines we reviewed each month - also in the course of time - in order to understand how our score and judgment was agreed by you all.

 For this reason, we decided to change our Wine Parade and to make of it a column exclusively dedicated to the wines reviewed in our Guide. As of this month, the list of wines voted by our readers becomes Wine Guide Parade and we will consider the votes about the wines reviewed in the past months only. The new list will be published, like to say, with two months late in order to let our readers express their vote in a significant and consistent amount of time. This month we are going to publish the Wine Guide Parade of July-August 2015, that is about this summer, a period we consider to be “particular” as it covers these two months. Like our readers know very well, it is something happening once every year, whereas the other issues of Wine Guide Parade will always be referred to a single month.

 You can express your vote both through our Wine Guide, also available on the app DiWineTaste Mobile for Android, iPhone and iPad, and by sending your preferences by filling in the form available at the page ”Write Us” of our website. In this specific case, it will be considered as valid the preferences expressed for wines reviewed in our Guide only. The voting is considered closed the fifteenth day of each month and it will be considered the votes expressed for the wines reviewed two months earlier. The voting of wines reviewed in July and August - considered as summer - has been closed on 15 October and the result published in this issue. Likewise, the voting of wines reviewed in September will close on 15 November and the resulting Wine Guide Parade published on December 2015 issue.

 A new monthly column also useful for measuring the opinion of our readers about the wines our tasting committee evaluates and reviews each month in our Guide. The goal is not to put the opinion of our readers against our evaluation, indeed is to give voice to consumers, to those who really represents the market of wine. One of the most interesting aspects emerging from the evaluation of this first Wine Guide Parade - published in this issue - as well as by the data gathered in the past months, is the wines receiving the highest appreciation from our readers do not necessarily correspond to those receiving the highest score. In particular, the wines receiving the best appreciation from consumers are those frequently considered as base products by their respective producers. A trend perfectly expressed by what the winery actually sells, those from which they are getting the highest profits and, it is not by chance, they also represent the ones to be most produced in terms of quantity. I therefore invite our readers to keep on voting their favorite wines for our Wine Guide Parade, something - after all - you have always done in the past years. Happy voting!