Tasting note

From Wineformats

Contents

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Introduction

Wine tasting notes (or reviews) are expressed on many sites and in many different formats. Minimally a tasting note should identify the wine and provide some sort of description of the wine. Reviewers also often include some sort of subjective opinion about the wine in their tasting notes. This opinion can be expressed as part of the tasting note description, as a score or rating, and/or as a cellaring recommendation.

Recently the concept of tagging (popularized by Web 2.0) has begun to be supported by some wine community sites that allow user generated tasting notes. Tags provide the ability to identify keywords or terms that are relevant to the tasting note. Tags are also commonly used for tasting notes published in blog posts.

The structure and format of tasting notes can vary dramatically (even within the same site). However, as described above, all tasting notes generally contain the same pieces of information (wine name, description, score/rating, reviewer name, date reviewed, and so on). The purpose of this page is to describe and explore how these pieces can be annotated in markup without imposing any formatting or stylistic constraints.

Since the hReview microformat provides an excellent basis for describing a wine tasting note, it will serve as the foundation for this page. However, until concensus is built among the wineformats contributors on how wine-specific information should be treated (including working with the microformats community), only generic hReview implementations will be considered here.

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Contributors

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Base Microformats

The foundational microformat for representing a tasting note is hReview. hReview is a compound microformat that also supports the hCard, rel-tag, rel-bookmark, and rel-license microformats.

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Tools

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Examples

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Simple

Here is an example of a simple tasting note: 

<div>
 <span>5 stars out of 5 stars</span>
 <h4>2004 Navarro Pinot Noir Anderson Valley</h4>
 <span>Reviewer: <span>James</span> - November 17, 2006</span>
 <blockquote>
  This vintage is intense: lots of berry, cherry flavors with
  a patina of toasty oak.
 </blockquote>
</div>

Applying hReview to this tasting note: 

<div class="hreview">
 <span><span class="rating">5</span> out of 5 stars</span>
 <h4 class="item fn">2004 Navarro Pinot Noir Anderson Valley</h4>
 <span class="reviewer vcard">Reviewer: <span class="fn">James</span> - 
 <abbr class="dtreviewed" title="20061117T1800-0700">November 17, 2006</abbr></span>
 <blockquote class="description">
  This vintage is intense: lots of berry, cherry flavors with
  a patina of toasty oak.
 </blockquote>
</div>
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Simple with Descriptors/Tags

Tasting descriptors (or tags) can be expressed as part of the tasting note description or separately using rel-tag. 

<div class="hreview">
 <span><span class="rating">5</span> out of 5 stars</span>
 <h4 class="item fn">2004 Navarro Pinot Noir Anderson Valley</h4>
 <span class="reviewer vcard">Reviewer: <span class="fn">James</span> - 
 <abbr class="dtreviewed" title="20061117T1800-0700">November 17, 2006</abbr></span>
 <blockquote class="description">
  This vintage is intense: lots of <a rel="tag" href="http:.../tag/berry">berry</a>, 
  <a rel="tag" href="http:.../tag/cherry">cherry</a> flavors with
  a patina of <a rel="tag" href="http:.../tag/toasted+oak">toasty oak</a>.
 </blockquote>
</div>
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Simple with Wine Defined

To be determined by wineformats working group.

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Examples in the wild

The following sites are currently publishing or parsing wine tasting notes using hReview.

  • Cork'd: community site for reviewing and sharing information on wine. User-generated tasting notes are formatted using hReview.
  • WineLog: community site for reviewing and sharing information wine. User-generated tasting notes are formatted using hReview.
  • Scrugy: wine information aggregation site that aggregates tasting notes formatted using hReview. Also see Scrugy's hReview parser and Tasting Note Builder tools.
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References

The following lists include sites that publish wine tasting notes.

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Wine Communities

  • Cork'd: user-generated tasting notes (published using hReview) and community recommendations
  • WineLog: user-generated tasting notes and community recommendations
  • OpenBottles: user-generated tasting notes, cellar management, community recommendations
  • CellarTracker!: cellar management, user-generated tasting notes, user forums
  • West Coast Wine Network: user forums where users can post tasting notes
  • eRobertParker.com: wine information and user forums
  • Wine Lovers Community: user forums
  • Wine Spectator Online: limited access to tasting notes without a subscription and RSS feed of daily wine picks
  • winegeeks.com: community site with user-generated wine reviews and user forums
  • Bordeaux Central: wine information, wine links, and user forums
  • BottleTalk : wine tasting notes, tags, sharing, recommendations
  • BottleMonkey.com: user generated tasting notes, computer generated recommendations, events, user forums, online tastings, wiki-style information database.
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Wine Blogs

A non-exhaustive list of wine blogs that publish tasting notes as blog posts.

  • Catavino: blog and podcast dedicated to Spanish and Portuguese with regular tasting notes
  • Second Leaf: blog with regular tasting notes which are formatted using hReview
  • Spittoon.biz: blog with regular tasting notes
  • Vinography: blog with occasional tasting notes
  • Winecast: blog and podcast with regular tasting notes
  • Add more wine blogs that publish tasting notes here
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Winery Websites

A non-exhaustive list of winery sites that publish tasting notes of their wines.

  • Add wineries that publish tasting notes of their wines
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