A Glass of Wine, a CD-ROM, and an Internet Connection -- That's All You Need to Educate Your Palate Without Leaving Your Mac.
Pamela Pfiffner
I'M NO WINE SNOB, but I must admit I've developed a taste for finer vintages since graduating from the screw-top jugs of my college years. Yet when my boss invited my husband and me to a comparative wine tasting of California Cabernet Sauvignons and French Bordeaux, I panicked. Living in San Francisco allows me frequent access to California's wine country, so choosing a Cabernet wasn't going to be a problem. But I'm baffled by Bordeaux.
Off I ran to my local wine store and begged for advice. The merchant steered me toward the right section of the store and I bought some wine, wishing I knew a better way to handle such situations. Then I discovered the wealth of wine information available on CD-ROMs, online services, and the Internet.
Silicon Sommelier
Wine tasting is a perfect subject for interactive CD-ROMs. If you forget a technique (Is it swirl, sniff, sip, spit?), just fire up the disc and check. And instead of quaffing several bottles to find the right match for pasta puttanesca, you can ask your silicon sommelier for an expert opinion. That way, the disc is loaded instead of you.
All wine-appreciation CD-ROMs seem to include the same basic ingredients: a video lesson in wine tasting, information about particular grape varietals and growing regions, advice on matching wine with food, and an encyclopedia with tasting notes on wines from around the world. Each of the three discs I sampled also has a designated expert to guide you.
I started out with Food & Wine's Wine Tasting (Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice); $30), from Times Mirror Multimedia (201-307-8866). This disc aims to educate your palate, not list thousands of wines. Filling out a tasting questionnaire evaluates your personal wine style -- it accurately assessed my preference for big, full-bodied reds. The wine-tasting component consists of only 48 wines, but with each wine is a detailed list of descriptive phrases pertaining to its appearance, bouquet, and palate -- including such evocative comparisons as acacia blossoms and wet dog. After stepping through your own tasting, you can elect to see the notes of this disc's wine expert, Steve Olson. I tired of this disc's inconsistent graphics and text-heavy screens -- multimedia, chaps! -- but I had fun using it. But like a late harvest Riesling, it's not something I'd open often.
I'd more often turn to the information-packed Wines of the World 2.0 (Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice); $50), from Multicom Publishing (800-850-7272 or 206-622-5530); for an extra ten bucks, you can get it bundled with a hardcover copy of Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course. An exhaustive hodgepodge of text, graphics, videos, and maps (taken from widely and wildly varying sources), the disc consists of three tutorial sections encompassing the three Vs -- viticulture, vinification, and vinosity. Its strengths include explorations of such far-flung growing regions as China as well as information on how to judge wine color and read bottle labels. But the interface is clunky, and navigation is hampered by the vanishing of the button bar after each selection.
At the heart of Wines of the World is the Wine Browser, which lets you search through 28,000 wines culled from The Wine Connoisseur's Companion and the Restaurant Wines newsletter by Ronn Wiegand, literally the disc's talking head (although his absence from the wine-tasting video clip undercuts his authority). You can also add wines from your personal cellar. Search criteria include country; vintner; varietal; vintage; price; overall value; and rating, which is the wine's average score based on published evaluations. Searching through such a large database on CD-ROM is slow, however, and tasting notes often refuse to display.
Stomping the competition is the Microsoft Wine Guide (Rating: Very Good/Outstanding (4.5 of 5 mice); $35), from the Ernest & Julio Gallo of the software market -- Microsoft (800-426-9400 or 206-882-8080). This well-thought-out disc has an elegant, easy-to-navigate interface and a long finish. If the other discs are a bit thin on video clips, the Microsoft Wine Guide more than makes up for it. Videos of wine expert Oz Clarke, an Australian given to breathless hyperbole and enthusiastic spitting, pop up everywhere. Clarke tastes 18 varietals, telling you what to look for and what to avoid. A grab-bag section called All About Wine unearths tidbits about wine folklore, history, and personalities and provides useful how-to information on storing wines and starting a wine cellar. The Wine Guide's maps are superior, letting you zoom in to a level of detail not possible with the other discs.
This guide's encyclopedia has 6,000 wines tasted by Clarke. You can search on matches to specific foods, to solve such perennial problems as what to drink with haggis. Each wine is linked to a glossary that contains detailed information about its region, the grapes used, pronunciation of relevant terms, and more. After hours of playing with the Microsoft Wine Guide, I still found more to explore. This one has legs.
A Virtual Tasting Room
The problem with CD-ROMs is that they don't age well. If you want information that's more up-to-the-minute, head for the cybervineyard. On the Internet and commercial online services, you'll find scores of places where wine is discussed and, in many cases, sold.
I'd start with Cyber Wine (http: //www.winebiz.com/wines/index.htm) and its One-Stop Mother of All Wine Links. This wine-related Web site lists all other wine-related Web sites -- and rates them too.
Commercial Web sites from individual wineries are sprouting like grafted rootstock in spring. They provide an easy way to find out about smaller wineries around the world. If your interest is focused on Napa Valley wines, check out the attractive Napa Valley Virtual Visit (http://www.napavalle.com/). It has news about Napa Valley wineries, restaurants, and sights; during the 1995 harvest, for example, the Rutherford Hill winery posted daily reports on the grape crush. And then there are sites, such as The Grapevine (http://winery.com/) and Virtual Vineyards (http://www.virtualvin .com/), that serve as wine shops that let you buy represented wines over the Net.
The Internet also serves as the people's tasting room, a place where you can find notes from kindred souls such as the reviewers of Wine Net News (http://http.cs.Berkeley.edu/~sethg/Wine/). Wine Net News gives you an exhaustive list of reviews contributed from around the world and arranged according to country, varietal, and winery. The Wine Page (http://augustus.cssc.washington.edu/personal bigstar-mosaic/wine.html) not only has plenty of ratings for wines from Washington state and the world but also has links to The Croatian Wine Page and other sites. Lest you think oenophiles lack humor, check out this site's Rate Robert Parker! feature, in which the rest of us can get back at America's foremost wine critic. The Bargain Wine Page (http://www.iglou.com/why/wine.html) specializes in inexpensive wines -- all tasted by Robin Garr, a Louisville wine columnist. Garr conveniently includes notes on such topics as matching wines with vegetarian and ethnic dishes.
Garr is also associate sysop of CompuServe's Bacchus Wine Forum (GO WINE), one of many wine forums on commercial online services. The Bacchanalians conduct a monthly real-time event, in which agreed-upon wines are sampled and notes compared online. Had I logged onto Bacchus the night of my boss's dinner party, I would have found just what I needed: a thread pertaining to California Cabernets versus French Bordeaux. Next time, I'll be smart and use the Mac to meet my grape expectations.
