Who
are the WinePunters ?
The
WinePunters crew
currently consists of a number of people who happily admit their total
lack of
qualifications with regard to vine cultivation or wine making but who
all really really really
love their wine. None of them have any connection to the wine
industry
but believe this lack of knowledge allows them to bring a fresh eye to
all things wine. In case you are even remotely interested
here is a
brief summary of their life stories:
PJ
Despite being qualified PJ
lacked
sufficient personality
to
make it as an accountant in the real world so he became an overpaid,
underworked IT consultant and proceeded to
prey on
gullible but cashed up Government Departments. When the
strain of
actually
working for a living became too much he decided to dedicate
his life
to drinking wine and letting everyone know what he thinks about a range
of issues (yes, this has
made him as popular as you would expect - Ed).
He lives with his girlfriend "She is so much better looking
than me" and their two furkids 'Chef' and 'Skinner'.
Gav
Is
a senior marketing executive in a multi-national transportation company
and a former Aussie Rules premiership player and coach. He is
the
closest thing we have to a chick magnet and serious business person.
He
lives with
his wife
"if you mention me on your site I will kill you" and his son "I thought
you were a beer drinker".
For the last couple of
years he has
been trying to kill himself by doing increasing insane adventure races
(like the Mark Webber challenge) that seem to involve running long
distances, crashing a lot of pushbikes and attempting to drown yourself
in racing kayaks.
"Please
don't
name me"
Due
to an unfortunate incident
at our local library (all
he would say is ' I can never go back' - Ed) "please
don't name
me" has ended up as our unpaid audio producer
and photographer.
A court order prevents us from using his real name but
helping us counts toward his community service
hours. However he is also hopeful that something good may
come from it
eventually.
He is married to Mrs "please don't name me" and has
two sons "please don't name me jnr" and "please don't
name me the third."
Michelle
- the sparkling wine expert
Michelle
is
clearly the best looking person at the Winepunters.com HQ.
She has consumed more sparkling wine than most of us mere
mortals which is why she is the expert and we are mere quaffers. We now
have
a female voice on our podcasts so please no more angry emails from the
feminists.
Rachael
See feminists we are on a
chick
recruiting frenzy. Rachael has real wine experience. Her Mum and Dad
own a small vineyard in the Tamar Valley that provides grapes to one of
the biggest names in wine. She can also drink anyone and everyone we
know under the table and do it all again tomorrow. But no matter how
untidy she gets she never loses her femininity or class. None of that
ladette type carrying on here. She has promised to
provide photos as often as possible.
Why are we doing this?
We
have noticed that
most of the commentary about wine
either comes from industry insiders
(like vine growers, wine makers or wine critics) or people who make a
living off the industry (like tourism business, the Government or
restaurant owners).
So we asked ourselves, what about the people who actually buy the wine
and
help to pay for it all? Why don't they get a say?
...... Well
fear not fellow punters ....... your time
has come!!
What do you get out of it?
What
we hope you will get is honest information about wine and the wine
industry. We have no connection to the wine industry so we can be
objective. We are trying to offer a 'real world' perspective
on wine rather
than the approach used by wine judges or critics. We believe
what
punters want is answers to questions such as:
Should I buy this wine?
What will it taste like in
a real
situation (eg in a restaurant)?
Will the object of my
desire be
impressed if I turn up with with this?
Our initial
focus will
be on the Tasmanian wine industry, partly because we live in Tassie but
mostly because we think it produces great wine. Over time,
however we hope to
cover wines from mainland Australia and where possible
overseas.
The
site will present a mixture of 'conversations' with Tassie winemakers,
vignerons and other industry people as well as our wine blog 'Under the
Influence'. Hopefully you will be entertained and have a
better
understanding of the wines Tassie and the rest of Australia has to
offer.
How come you do wine 'impressions' and not
'reviews'?
This might seem a bit pedantic but since
we are not winemakers, wine judges or wine critics we don't feel
qualified to review a wine. We have always held the view
"don't criticise what you can't do" but what we can do is tell it like
we find it. We also believe that the complicated and
convoluted language that has grown up around wine not only makes it
harder to get to the essence of what a wine is like but turns some
people off.
The way we have decided to
tackle this situation is to give our honest impression of a wine based
on the situation we were in at the time we drank it in a simple and
straight forward manner.
So what's a wine road test?
Some times we will put a wine through a more involved impression.
These road tests are often more serious than our usual fare. We are
trying to be useful not entertaining. Think of it as a grown up review.
Because we are trying to be useful we want the road test to mimic how a
wine is drunk in the real world.
Usually this means treating a wine exactly the way it gets treated in
many Aussie homes rather than as the winemaker would like. As an
example, winemakers will tell you not to drink a white wine
straight from the fridge since it's often too cold and this makes it tasteless. But since many
people do just that we taste the wine as soon as it comes out of the fridge.
Most wine people will tell you to have wine with food. Fair
enough. There are, however, a lot of 'rules' about what food should go
with which wine. Again people either don't know or don't follow these rules. So we try our test wine
with whatever we happen to be eating, whether or not it is regarded as
a good match.
Wine and heat don't mix. So a wine that is too hot is as bad as a
wine that is too cold. But people leave bottles on the table in the sun
at bbq's. So if the weather is hot then we will try the
wine after it has heated up.
Lastly not everyone finishes the bottle in one sitting. We know at
least one punter who makes a bottle last a whole week. We can't go that
far but we will leave the wine open for a
day or so and then try it again.
The upshot of all this is that you should get a real sense of what
a wine is like in reality rather than the usual approach with wine
reviews which is to taste the wine in optimal conditions and then write
it up.