DO YOU EVER NOTICE THE SPEC’S ORIGINALITY?

I have pointed this out before, but it’s more than a strange coincidence that WinoStuff will publish something online and a little while later, the Spec will feature an article on the very same item that you saw here first.  I wrote a column about this a long time ago.  I believe my column was triggered by the Spec’s Year of the Rhone and other items surfacing at least three to six months after the award-winning WinoStuff columns.  Well, this week, it happened again.  This time, it was much more subtle.

In the September 30, 2004 issue of Wine Spectator, James Laube (the Spec’s Napa Valley-based senior editor) wrote an article entitled “Environmental Studies”.  Don’t let the title confuse you, this article is really about the influence of “place” on wine drinking satisfaction.  For those of you who actually read my columns, in my recent review of The Accidental Connoisseur by Laurence Osborne, I went to great lengths to extol Osborne’s dialogue about place influencing drinking satisfaction and in fact, gave examples of a few notable instances where the memory of the wine I had was greatly influenced by the place.  The idea wasn’t even unique to Osborne, but I reviewed his book, we published it, and daggone, if it doesn’t show up in the pages of The Spec a few weeks later.

Folks, when it comes to originality and creativity, go no further than the pages of 'Stuff.  If you want to read our stuff again, check out the Spec!

Wino Wally
Baltimore, MD
September 18, 2004

P.S.  Where else will you find a site or magazine that features WinoBabes of the Month?  I don’t know how much Wino John has to pay the paparazzi for our exclusive pictures, but it’s another sign of the dedication that this highly talented, but limited in resources staff makes to the daily edification of our millions of readers.  Wino fans, go forth and prosper so that you may one day be able to send us a check so that we can retire!