Wine Resource Links

MasterGrape manages a list of reliable, free wine information on the Internet.  You can access the links through the menu on the right of your screen. Feel free to email me any submissions for the database. Enjoy.

AVA American Viticultural Area

I added a government document from the US that lists every single classified wine producing region, or American Viticultural Area (AVA).  The document comes from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.  That’s like the US equivalent to France’s AOC status except that it is updated more frequently. On the one hand, that’s nice because it reflects new discoveries. On the other hand, that’s lame since some of the changes seem trivial and financially motivated.  But this is not a blog where I rant about politics.  This list is comprehensive.  http://www.ttb.gov/appellation/us_by_ava.pdf Enjoy.  And draw your own conclusions.

Wine Wiki Resources

I added a couple wiki resources to the links pages.

Wikia’s DIY section has an article about making wine at home.  Making wine at home wiki – DIY Wikia  It’s short and covers the bare mininum of what you’ll need around the house.  It will give you the vocabulary you need to do further research, if nothing else.

Also, Wine Blogger has a wiki devoted to wine information catering to bloggers.  It might have something you’re looking for eventually.

Fermentation Microbiology

added
Fermentation and Microbiology – Wine Microbiology and Biotechnology via Google Books

The preface is complete, but a lot of the rest is redacted.  It’s still got a lot of good stuff, both overview and specifics, about the biological processes involved in fermentation specific wine and winemaking.  Learn about yeasts and lactic acid and optimal temperatures for various strains of microorganisms.  Lots of detail.

Wine Guideline on agricultural methods

I found these brief descriptions of the words “organic” and “biodynamic” on Wine Guideline (via Amy Atwood’s mydailywine) .  I’ll eventually have links to the major legal and corporate texts concerning the rules about putting words like “organic” on your label.  But for now, I think these are gems.  It’s a really concise summary of how convoluted the “organic” description is and how zany the biodynamic descriptor is. They’ve been added to the vine and vineyard section in the right hand navigation of this page.

Wine Sales & Business Section Update

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I added a page in the right hand navigation where I give credit to all the people who help this project and other related projects.  I’m pleased with the response.  Keep sending in links.  Some interesting stuff.  Even news articles with just one or two good citeable facts are good for the listing sometimes.  It only takes a few seconds to help out.

The business statistics section is fleshing out really well with some studies from a university program in Washington state.  Also, I found some hilarious publications from the US Department of Agriculture that start off really positive back in 1997 when anything seemed possible and people invested in stock just because it ended in “.com” and we all had infinite money to spend.

Then there’s this article from 2001 where the market is slowing down but the writer turns that around and says that quality fruit is getting super cheap for wineries! haha.  Ya, surplus will do that.  But California is still doing a great job handling its fruit production compared to some places, so maybe the research helped them out.

Submission Guidelines

You want to submit a resource to me? That’s fantastic.  I appreciate the effort.

Take a look at the already included links to get an idea of my standards.  I like reliable, free information.

Just email me the links, and it’s helpful if you hint at what category they should be included in.

First Wine Link Additions

I just did the inauguration for the links section which are available in the right hand column.

I added a few personal faves like the Wikipedia Wine Project’s articles that have received “Good Article” status.  Also The Wine Doctor who is awesome.  And a couple videos from yours truly.  And some miscellaneous research from blog articles I’m currently writing.

Please submit links you think are good resources and check back often as the database should be growing rather quickly!

Why Wine Links?

Email from a friend and reader, with underlining from me:

“I was reading more of your DIY wine essay, and it struck me that one of the lynch pins of your argument is that so much information is available now to everyone on how to make wine that wasn’t available before.  I assume you mean, in general, resources on the internet, and possibly a greater number of published books.  You mention this a lot in passing, but I don’t really know what these sources of information are, and some examples might be nice.  Didn’t your family hire some pretty knowledgeble veteran to help you set up your winery?  What kind of sources have you used to learn what you have?  Some examples might make your argument stronger for those of us who don’t know anything about them at the moment.”

I was so happy to get this email.  In my hurry to tell everybody about the Do-It-Yourself Wine movement, I overlooked something really major.  I need to prove exactly how much reliable wine information exists online.

So now, let’s make a list of resources (online) that I can point to whenever I want to remind readers of the vast wealth of information available online.