Here is a very preliminary, incomplete draft of an AFW FAQ. I thought
that I'd solicit comments now on what I've got (mostly culled from posts
to AFW) as well to ask for volunteers to write missing sections. Also,
suggestions of additiona sections are welcome, but be forewarned that
it'll probably mean that you'll be asked to write them, too.

------ Begin C&P --------
Alt.food.wine FAQ - Version 0.1

Welcome to the FAQ for alt.food.wine! In this document, we have tried
to compile a list of questions that have frequently been asked on this
newsgroup. Alt.food.wine welcomes all questions relating to wine,
though questions concerning winemaking might get more responses in the
related newsgroup rec.crafts.winemaking.

Table of Contents
1. I have just found a bottle of wine in my parents' cupboard and...
1a. I want to know how much it's worth
1b. I want to know whether it's OK to drink
2. I just had an incredible bottle of wine. Where I find some of it to buy?
3. What wineries should I visit in...
3a. Napa?
3b. Sonoma?
3c. Paso Robles?
3d. Amador County?
3e. Santa Barbara County?
3f. Burgundy?
3g. The Rhone Valley?
3h. Bordeaux?
4. What is the best way to preserve an opened bottle of wine? How long
will it last?
5. Are those expensive Riedel glasses worth the money?
6. What causes red wine headaches? How can I prevent them?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. I have just found a bottle of wine in my parents' cupboard and...
1a. I want to know how much it's worth

First of all, an all-important question with any wine that's been
stored for any length of time is what the storage conditions were like.
It is generally agreed that wine prefers to be stored in cool, moist
locations, free of light and significant temperature variation. If you
can't guarantee such storage conditions, you're unlikely to get full
price for your wine. If it was found in a kitchen cupboard or garage,
it probably wouldn't sell for much at all.
It's also important to realize that most wine, maybe 99% of it, is
intended for near-term consumption. If your wine is one of those, it
probably won't be worth much unless it's got some sentimental or
historical value.
With those two caveats out of the way, there are several ways you can
get an idea of how much your wine might be worth. You can look for its
retail value on the website http://www.wine-searcher.com. If it's being
sold today, you can find what they're asking for it. However, don't
expect to get retail value for your wine. The easiest way to sell it is
at auction, where you'd get perhaps 80% of the retail price (in a best
case analysis). To find out what that wine has fetched at auction, you
can use a database search tool provided by the Chicago Wine Company
(http://www.tcwc.com/ham.htm).
If you do want to sell your wine, there are several online auction
sites that you can use:
http://www.winecommune.com (probably the best for single bottles)
http://www.winebid.com

In some countries, you may be able to sell your wine on Ebay.
Additionally, in certain states of the United States, you may be able to
sell your wine on consignment through a retailer. Since each state has
different alcohol laws, you'd have to check with a local retailer to be
sure.

1b. I want to know whether it's OK to drink
The two caveats to the previous section apply equally to this
question. However, no wine will harm you, no matter how poorly it's
been stored nor how old it is. Also, old wine rarely if ever turns to
vinegar. The only real question is whether it'll be enjoyable to drink,
and one of the best ways to answer that is to open the bottle to see.
However, you can do some research on "drinking windows" proposed by
critics and other wine drinkers. Because most of the published
information is only available by subscription, you won't be able to find
Robert Parker's or the Wine Spectator's advice on the Web. However, a
decent resource is the website http://www.cellartracker.com, which is an
online cellar database for wine lovers. There is a search function on
their homepage that'll give you Cellartracker's customers' comments on
the wine in question, usually with a "recommended drinking window"
included. Of course, asking for advice on the newsgroup might get some
good advice, too.
Be aware, however, that any such drinking window is highly subjective
and based on an assumption of ideal storage conditions. Take such
recommendations with a good deal of skepticism, and open the bottle
earlier than recommended if there are questions about storage. If you
have any doubts about its storage, it's a good idea to open it up with a
backup bottle at hand in case the older wine turns out to not be to your
liking.

2. I just had an incredible bottle of wine. Where can I find some of it
to buy?
First of all, make sure that you know exactly what the wine is. That
means knowing the producer, the region it was made in, the vineyard name
(if there was any) and the year. Because there are lots of
similar-sounding names, you want to be sure that you're getting the same
thing you had. If you're not sure of those details and had the wine at
a restaurant, you can call them for a complete description of the wine.
If you had it at some other event, try to track down someone who would
know to ask them. Once you've got all the details, go to
http://www.wine-searcher.com and look up who sells it on the Internet.
Although you won't get all the listings without buying the Professional
version, you'll usually get enough information to help anyway. If you
can't find it for sale using wine-searcher and it's a recent vintage
(i.e., the year on the bottle is no earlier than 2-4 years ago) you
might try the winery's website or call them to see if: a) they'll sell
directly to you or b) they can tell you who distributes their wine in
your area. (You can then get ahold of the distributor to find out who
sells it near to you.

3. What wineries should I visit in...
What follows is a compendium of recommendations made in alt.food.wine
over the past 5 years or so. Since they were made without knowledge of
your tastes, they may or may not be useful to you. If you can define
your tastes, you might get better advice asking the newsgroup after
describing your tastes to us.

3a. Napa?
Napa is known primarily for its Cabernet Sauvignon, but Chardonnay,
Zinfandel and Pinot Noir (in the region known as Carneros) also grow
there. Most wineries will charge a tasting fee, and many of them will
charge extra to taste their more expensive wines. To avoid heavy
crowding, you should avoid weekends, holidays, the Summer and Hwy 29 by
taking the Silverado Trail instead.

Here are the recommended wineries with any special features in
parentheses (asterisks indicate appointment needed):

Robert Mondavi Winery (tour)
Beringer Winery (tour and history)
Milat
Sawyer
Vincent Arroyo
Prager Port Works
Stony Hill*
Storybook Mountain*

Great start Mark.

For the "What wineries should I visit in..." section I suggest linking
to other resources in addtion to having AFW-specific suggestions. One
that springs to mind is http://www.wine-pages.com/travel.shtml. There
must be others

--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher

1c. Will it taste good?
One of the things about wine is that it evolves even after you open it. Often an old wine will taste harsh when first opened, but don't give up on it. Let it sit in the glass for a while and "breathe" for a while. Over the course of a meal it may "open up" and begin to reveal its more subtle flavors. Sometimes, recorked and tried the next day, older wines can be seen to improve. Sometimes not. But don't judge it based on your first sip.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

I don't see anything objectionable or in need of improvement. Of
course, Google seems to have truncated -I only can see through part of
section 3.

You might add winezap.com as an alternative to winesearcher (I strongly
prefer winesearcher, but might be nice to offer an alternative to
listing one commercial venture)

Would you like me to try and pull together a food-wine matching list?
I'd try to depend less on my opinions than as much consensus as can be
found at that (contentious) subject.

I also think a link to the new users newsgroup, or a basic netiquette
site, should be part of a FAQ.

thanks for all your work

Good stuff so far.

For #3, would be glad to contribute with pieces on the Hunter Valley
and Central Otago. Am also planning a trip to the Yarra Valley in
December (either before or after the Boxing Day test in Melbourne), so
will probably be able to add in something after I get back early in the
New Year.

Salil

DaleW wrote:
> I don't see anything objectionable or in need of improvement. Of
> course, Google seems to have truncated -I only can see through part of
> section 3.

Nope, that's just all I've got at the moment. Google is innocent of any
wrongdoing here.

>
> You might add winezap.com as an alternative to winesearcher (I strongly
> prefer winesearcher, but might be nice to offer an alternative to
> listing one commercial venture)

OK

>
> Would you like me to try and pull together a food-wine matching list?
> I'd try to depend less on my opinions than as much consensus as can be
> found at that (contentious) subject.

Sounds great to me! Have at it, old boy.

>
> I also think a link to the new users newsgroup, or a basic netiquette
> site, should be part of a FAQ.

New users newsgroup? Huh?
>
> thanks for all your work
>

NP

Mark Lipton

Steve Slatcher wrote:
> Great start Mark.
>
> For the "What wineries should I visit in..." section I suggest linking
> to other resources in addtion to having AFW-specific suggestions. One
> that springs to mind is http://www.wine-pages.com/travel.shtml. There
> must be others
>

Good idea. I'll also include links to regional producers' associations
websites for maps, hours, listings, etc.

Mark Lipton

Jose wrote:
> 1c. Will it taste good?
> One of the things about wine is that it evolves even after you open it.
> Often an old wine will taste harsh when first opened, but don't give up
> on it. Let it sit in the glass for a while and "breathe" for a while.
> Over the course of a meal it may "open up" and begin to reveal its more
> subtle flavors. Sometimes, recorked and tried the next day, older wines
> can be seen to improve. Sometimes not. But don't judge it based on
> your first sip.

Good idea.

Mark Lipton

Mark Lipton wrote:
> New users newsgroup? Huh?
> >
news.newusers.questions

I have put your FAQs on a test web page to see how it might work. See
at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php .

The colors and placement of text can be changed very easily, since a
style sheet is used. I made the text fairly large and the colors very
bright to make it easy for me to see while debugging. If you have a
modern browser such as a recent Firefox, Netscape, or Opera, the page
is served as true xhtml 1.1, the latest version of html. For outmoded
browsers such as IE6 (and apparently for IE7 also!) which can not
handle true xhtml 1.1 served as xhtml + xml, then the page is served as
html 4.01 strict. This is the reason for a php page, since some of the
code is in a php script on the server that can not be viewed by the
user.

You might want to see if the page works for you. If not, the name of
the computer, the operating system used(such as Windows XP), and the
browser used and version number for it would be useful. I have not
attempted to support really old browsers, such as the Netscape 4
series, that are now all but gone.

"cwdjrxyz" > wrote in news:1158600049.171902.175110
@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

> I have put your FAQs on a test web page to see how it might work. See
> at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php .
>
> The colors and placement of text can be changed very easily, since a
> style sheet is used. I made the text fairly large and the colors very
> bright to make it easy for me to see while debugging. If you have a
> modern browser such as a recent Firefox, Netscape, or Opera, the page
> is served as true xhtml 1.1, the latest version of html. For outmoded
> browsers such as IE6 (and apparently for IE7 also!) which can not
> handle true xhtml 1.1 served as xhtml + xml, then the page is served as
> html 4.01 strict. This is the reason for a php page, since some of the
> code is in a php script on the server that can not be viewed by the
> user.
>
> You might want to see if the page works for you. If not, the name of
> the computer, the operating system used(such as Windows XP), and the
> browser used and version number for it would be useful. I have not
> attempted to support really old browsers, such as the Netscape 4
> series, that are now all but gone.
>
>

I strongly prefer a light background and dark font, I find the opposite
hard to read.
If it's just for testing purposes, that's okay.

Firefox 1.5.0.7 & Mozilla 1.7.13


Here is a handy, vanilla FAQ, for reference' sake:
http://home.sc.rr.com/cosmogony/ammfaq.html

d.

> The colors and placement of text can be changed very easily

Dark on light is easier to read than light on dark. Red on blue is hard to read.

The page resizes nicely. Great job on that! (I know, it's mostly a matter of -not- doing stuff to mess that up, but many designers do just that!)

> since some of the
> code is in a php script on the server that can not be viewed by the
> user.

It just turns out that way, or there's a reason to keep the user from reading the code?

> I have not
> attempted to support really old browsers, such as the Netscape 4
> series, that are now all but gone.

They're not gone, and I see little reason for any advanced stuff for what is essentially a text file. (For an example of crud gone wild, look at accuweather.com, which now takes three minutes to load on my machine when it used to come up in about five or ten seconds. Nothing changed in the content, they just decided to do it "the new way".)

I'm using Netscape 7.2 on Windows 98.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

> Dark on light is easier to read than light on dark. Red on blue is hard to read.

The page has been changed to a light background and the colors have
been darkened somewhat to read well on it.
> The page resizes nicely. Great job on that! (I know, it's mostly a matter of -not- doing stuff to mess that up, but many designers do just that!)

> > since some of the
> > code is in a php script on the server that can not be viewed by the
> > user.
>
> It just turns out that way, or there's a reason to keep the user from reading the code?

This is just how php works, being a server side script. It has a
conversation with the viewing browser to see if it will support xhtml
1.1. If not, it rewrites the code to html 4.01 strict. Look at the page
code on a recent Firefox, Opera, or Netscape browser and you will see
xhtml 1.1 code. Look at the page code on IE6, and you will see html
4.01 strict code. This is what the php does.

> > I have not
> > attempted to support really old browsers, such as the Netscape 4
> > series, that are now all but gone.

Even in Dec 2004, the w3schools sites report only 0.2 % of Netscape 4
series were being used. They do not even report them since that. Anyone
who uses this old relic on the web these days on many of the most
important sites is going to have many problems and can not get into
some finance and other high security sites at all. The NN4 has poor
support of CSS which is nearly universal these days for new pages. It
is not being updated. It also is a security risk. However, even the
hackers seem to have lost interest in it. A NN4 hacker these days
likely would get as much respect from IE6 hackers as a bubble gum
machine thief would get from bank robbers.

> I'm using Netscape 7.2 on Windows 98.

cwdjrxyz wrote:
> I have put your FAQs on a test web page to see how it might work. See
> at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php .

Many thanks!

I think that the font size and color scheme look fine, but I would
suggest that the main entries in the Table of Contents should be left
justified, not centered, and the subtopics could be indented by a tab
stop or so. I like the overall organization as well as the use of
links. Perhaps when the main TOC entries are used in the body, we
should lose the numbers that precede them? That's a judgement call IMO.

Thanks again,
Mark Lipton

> The NN4 has poor
> support of CSS which is nearly universal these days for new pages.

I've seen far more bad CSS than good CSS. Despite the ills of "tables for layout", it's simple and browsers know how to do it.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

> I think that the font size and color scheme look fine

Much improved over the light on dark. Why not leave the background white though? Better contrast and easier to read. Light grey doesn't add anything IMHO.

> I would
> suggest that the main entries in the Table of Contents should be left
> justified, not centered , and the subtopics could be indented by a tab
> stop or so.

Agreed.

> Perhaps when the main TOC entries are used in the body, we
> should lose the numbers that precede them? That's a judgement call IMO.

I find the numbers useful. They may be a pain to maintain, should a topic be inserted later on.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

4. What is the best way to preserve an opened bottle of wine? How long will it last?

The primary enemy of wine is oxygen (even though proper aging of wine requires it). Once wine is opened, it starts changing due to its interaction with the air. In some cases this is good (a wine "opening up" in flavor over the course of the meal, or even overnight in the case of some older reds), but it will always end badly if enough time elapses.

If you haven't finished a bottle and want to save it for later consumption, the best thing to do is to retard its reaction with oxygen. Putting it in the refrigerator slows down the reactions, so this is a good idea even for reds. (they should be warmed up again before serving). Just corked back up, whites could go for a day or three (depending on the kind and quality of the wine, the amount left in the bottle, and your own palate), reds might last a week that way.

There are several systems on the market to reduce the wine's exposure to oxygen.

One is a hand pump and rubber stopper arrangement which reduces the pressure in the bottle. They are marketed under various names, including Vac-U-Vin. Follow the directions and do not pump the wine down too much, or the volitiles will also evaporate, leaving a wine "dead". Proper use can extend the wine's life by a factor of two, allowing a red wine to be stored for two weeks in the refrigerator under some circumstances before it becomes less than interesting.

Another is a gas displacement system. Typically the gas is Nitrogen or Argon; it is introduced into the bottle, displacing the air that was there before, and then the bottle is resealed. [someone with experience here should finish this part of the answer.]

A third method is to rebottle the wine in a smaller bottle (such as a split whose bottle you saved), allowing very little air between the top and the cork. (that area is called the "ullage"). When inserting the cork, put the end of a paper clip, or a nail, or a wire, partially into the neck of the bottle as you insert the cork as a spacer, allowing air to escape (so that pressure doesn't build up). Then remove the object, allowing the cork to spring back. Tilt the bottle to wet the cork, but then store upright for some time (to give the cork a chance to fully spring back. Be sure to label the bottle! Some say that wine rebottled this way could be put back in the cellar and left there another year.

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Mark Lipton wrote:
> cwdjrxyz wrote:
> > I have put your FAQs on a test web page to see how it might work. See
> > at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php .
>
> Many thanks!
>
> I think that the font size and color scheme look fine, but I would
> suggest that the main entries in the Table of Contents should be left
> justified, not centered, and the subtopics could be indented by a tab
> stop or so. I like the overall organization as well as the use of
> links.

The page at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php has been modified as you
suggested to see how it looks. These changes in style are quite easy to
make because they are done in the CSS style sheet at the top of the
page. Large sites often use an external style sheet that controls many
pages. Then changes made in this external CSS style sheet modifies the
style of even hundreds of pages on a site without having to change each
one.

> Perhaps when the main TOC entries are used in the body, we
> should lose the numbers that precede them? That's a judgement call IMO.

I have no strong feeling on this, one way or the other. However, I
suggest that we leave the numbers in until the page is more complete.
The reason is that the numbers help me find what needs to be modified
rapidly. It will then be easy to remove the numbers in the body at any
time if one wants to. However it would be much more work to remove them
and then have to put them back in.

Jose wrote:
>
> A third method is to rebottle the wine in a smaller bottle (such as a split whose bottle you saved), allowing very little air between the top and the cork. (that area is called the "ullage"). When inserting the cork, put the end of a paper clip, or a nail, or a wire, partially into the neck of the bottle as you insert the cork as a spacer, allowing air to escape (so that pressure doesn't build up). Then remove the object, allowing the cork to spring back. Tilt the bottle to wet the cork, but then store upright for some time (to give the cork a chance to fully spring back. Be sure to label the bottle! Some say that wine rebottled this way could be put back in the cellar and left there another year.
>
Jose, nice writeup. 2 thoughts: 1) technically a split is a 187 ml.
Most people might be using a half (375 ml), but maybe a term like
"smaller bottle" is way to ease confusion. 2) Even better than
reinserting cork is to save any small (187 or 375) screwcap bottles.

> The page at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php has been modified as you
> suggested to see how it looks.

Yes, excellent!

> What follows is a compendium of recommendations made in alt.food.wine over the past 5 years or so. Since they were made without knowledge of your tastes, they may or may not be useful to you. If you can define your tastes, you might get better advice asking the newsgroup after describing your tastes to us.

Since this is an answer to a question, it should be in the "answer" font, and not the "question" font.

What does the "go" button look like on a browser that has images disabled? I disabled them in Netscape and see "go button". Maybe it should say "go there" instead?

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

> Jose, nice writeup. [re saving undrunk wine]

Thanks. Of course I forgot the best method - send it to me.


> 2 thoughts: 1) technically a split is a 187 ml.
> Most people might be using a half (375 ml), but maybe a term like
> "smaller bottle" is way to ease confusion.

Good point. I didn't know that "half" was a wine term. Maybe that should be snuck in. Why not educate people while they're not looking.

> 2) Even better than
> reinserting cork is to save any small (187 or 375) screwcap bottles.

Who has those? (actually, yes, that is probably a better bet. Alas, I don't have any. Maybe I should drink some wine coolers!

Jose
--
There are more ways to skin a cat than there are cats.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:
> > The page at http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/FAQ.php has been modified as you
> > suggested to see how it looks.
>
> Yes, excellent!
>
> > What follows is a compendium of recommendations made in alt.food.wine over the past 5 years or so. Since they were made without knowledge of your tastes, they may or may not be useful to you. If you can define your tastes, you might get better advice asking the newsgroup after describing your tastes to us.
>
> Since this is an answer to a question, it should be in the "answer" font, and not the "question" font.

Actually the above is not a question or an answer but a description of
what the sub-numbered items are about and how they came to be. Thus I
decided that using an italic text just as used in a description at the
very top of the page might be best. Of course I can make it any of the
used colors and text styles, or one of several million other colors if
that would look better.

> What does the "go" button look like on a browser that has images disabled? I disabled them in Netscape and see "go button". Maybe it should say "go there" instead?
>

What you are seeing when you disable images is the alt text that must
appear in all image tags to validate at the W3C. Alt text is supposed
to describe the image. Thus "go button" is a short description of the
image as required. The alt text is very important for some devices for
the blind. Thus "go button" is about as short as I can describe what
the image is. If the image were very important to see and not just a
click on tool, a very long alt might be indicated such as alt="large
black horse in a pasture eating grass". If I left off "button" , the
remaining "go" would not be very descriptive of the image. Notice that
when images are turned off the alt text is underlined and clickable
when it represents an image that was designed to be clickable, such as
the button used here. Thus the page still functions correctly without
the image.

I heard from our friend Murray Fefferman the other day---I'm sure he can lay
a few answers to FAQ on you or let you use some of the stuff on the old FAQ.
"Salil" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> Good stuff so far.
>
> For #3, would be glad to contribute with pieces on the Hunter Valley
> and Central Otago. Am also planning a trip to the Yarra Valley in
> December (either before or after the Boxing Day test in Melbourne), so
> will probably be able to add in something after I get back early in the
> New Year.
>
> Salil
>

Mark, et al

I would be more than willing and able to provide as much as needed (and
feasible) in respect to not only Marlborough, but the whole New Zealand wine
scene.

I will be guided by what you and others are writing as to the extent one
should go - I don't want to upstage my forthcoming book.

--

st.helier

Re your new book---can you colour in it MiLord?
"st.helier" > wrote in message
...
> Mark, et al
>
> I would be more than willing and able to provide as much as needed (and
> feasible) in respect to not only Marlborough, but the whole New Zealand
wine
> scene.
>
> I will be guided by what you and others are writing as to the extent one
> should go - I don't want to upstage my forthcoming book.
>
> --
>
> st.helier
>
>

st.helier wrote:
> Mark, et al
>
> I would be more than willing and able to provide as much as needed (and
> feasible) in respect to not only Marlborough, but the whole New Zealand wine
> scene.
>
> I will be guided by what you and others are writing as to the extent one
> should go - I don't want to upstage my forthcoming book.

Milud,
I would be honored if you could do a brief guide to visiting NZ:
wineries, dining and lodging. Salil has graciously offered to do
Central Otago, so you two may want to collaborate (or not) on that.
Either way... See my forthcoming post with the latest version of the
FAQ for how I've dealt with the Napa Valley.

Cheers!
Mark