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"I will follow him wherever he may go. And near<br />
him I will always be, for nothing can keep me<br />
away, he is my destiny."<br />
Little Peggy Marsh - and later sung in the movie "Sister Act"<br />
Oh, shop and say they want to buy<br />
shucks, there are plenty of folks<br />
that go into their local wine<br />
“some of Joel’s wines.” I make my recommendations<br />
but, you know, this column is short<br />
and only published monthly. So, even though<br />
you want to “follow him”, you may need some<br />
additional “wine talk” nourishment.<br />
It just so happens there are plenty of other<br />
publications out there to seek guidance before<br />
heading off to buy<br />
some wine. Let’s do<br />
a quick overview of<br />
several possibilities.<br />
The “Bible” of wine<br />
stories and recommendations<br />
is the<br />
Wine Spectator. The<br />
subscription includes<br />
16 issues a year for<br />
about $50.00. It covers<br />
many stories about<br />
wine regions and<br />
restaurants around<br />
the world and has<br />
thousands of wine reviews.<br />
If a wine gets a 90 or higher rating in the<br />
Wine Spectator, it can mean immediate success<br />
for a winery. It can translate into millions of<br />
dollars in additional sales if the wine makes the<br />
annual list of Top 100 Wines in the World.<br />
The chief competitor to the Wine Spectator<br />
is the Wine Enthusiast. It is a great magazine,<br />
with 14 issues per year for about $30.00. It has<br />
many reviews, as well, and has a subsidiary<br />
that sells wine accessories, wine cellars and<br />
other items.<br />
By Joel Gilbertson<br />
Exhibits • ClassEs • Gift shop<br />
422 E. Front Avenue, Bismarck, ND 58504<br />
(701) 223-5986 • www.bismarck-art.org<br />
Hours: Tuesday – Friday: 10 am-5:00 pm<br />
Saturday: 1-3 pm • Closed: Sunday & Monday<br />
The king of wine critics is Robert Parker, a<br />
lawyer from Baltimore. His bi-monthly wine<br />
newsletter, The Wine Advocate, accepts no advertising<br />
and reviews over 7,000 wines per year.<br />
The newsletter is over 30 years old, and<br />
Parker is pretty much acknowledged as the<br />
most powerful wine critic in the world.<br />
<strong>City</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> Ad April 2009<br />
There are many others, but I will mention<br />
just a few. Go online and check out two of my<br />
favorites, the Connoisseurs Guide to California<br />
Wine and the<br />
Quarterly Review of<br />
Wines (QRV). Another<br />
great one, and<br />
a weekly newsletter<br />
you can subscribe<br />
to online, is Dan<br />
Berger’s Vintage Wine<br />
Experience.<br />
Like everything<br />
else, all kinds of wine<br />
blogs have cropped<br />
up with the increasing<br />
popularity of wine.<br />
I’ll mention three:<br />
DrVino.com (he really is a Ph.D.), vinography.<br />
com (perhaps the web’s most popular wine<br />
blog) and snooth.com, which has a great forum<br />
for wine lovers to compare notes on wines.<br />
So, follow Wine Notes every month, but<br />
don’t hesitate to look around and follow other<br />
wine reviews and stories. Oh, and most important<br />
of all – Taste Away!<br />
Bismarck<br />
Art & Galleries<br />
Association<br />
Joel Gilbertson, a winemaker and musician,<br />
is an attorney with the Bismarck office of<br />
Vogel Law Firm.<br />
20 thecitymag.com
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