On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 16:48:29 GMT, "JB" wrote:
Bill,
I saw the upcoming Cellar! upgrade posted when I downloaded information on
wineries last night. I've been pasting information from Wine Spectator
reviews into the "Notes User Fields" to give me some idea on the quality and
how long to cellar the wine. Also, enjoyed reading your TNs in a recent
post. Keep it up. I too rely on information from others on deciding which
wines to sample. Trouble is, many of the wines mentioned are not available
where I live. I have noticed that my range of wines that I enjoy is rather
narrow. I seem to lean more to cabernets, Bordeaux's and Rhone style wines.
I had an 2001 Elyse Petite Sirah and it just didn't do anything for me. As
for my scoring system its rather crude. My wife defines her likes and
dislikes by whether the wine has "wang" or not.
John
I've used Cellar! for years and have posted frequently on the software
as my preferred choice (this after being a software reviewer for Ziff-
Davis Online Software Library for seven years). I particularly like
the tight online integration of the latest iterations. Enter a wine
which comes from a winery not in your database and the program asks if
you want to go online to find it--usually a brief list of possible
choice show up and you find your winery data. Need TNs on a wine,
Cellar! will fetch it online and usually offer you a vertical so you
can even compare vintages of a particular wine. Pretty neat stuff.
I will confess, however, that I don't spend a lot of time with the
profiles management. I've configured for a handful of premium bottles
in my cellar, but in most instances I go with the default--it seems
that between my anticipated longevity and my consumption rate for my
cellar, the profiles would be so much wishful thinking.
Now, as for your dillemma that many wines mentioned aren't available
where you live, let me suggest some online shopping. If you live in
the US (and enjoy one of the states that doesn't consider you serial
murderer for enjoying wine), there are a lot of great and reliable
sources for wine that isn't availalbe locally. Some to explore are
Zachy's (
http://www.zachys.com/commerce/home.asp), Sokolin,
(
http://www.sokolin.com/default.asp), PJ's, (
http://www.pjwine.com/),
(all in NY), Avalon in the Pacific NW, (
http://www.avalonwine.com/),
and Sam's in Chicago (
http://www.samswine.com/homepage.asp). There are
a lot of others. All have Web sites and all have extensive catalogs. I
found most of my wine bookmarks using winesearcher.com.
Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org