Started using Vivino

Since I read about the iOS/Android app Vivino I have started using it a few weeks ago. Since then I scanned about 54 wines and I must say that I am impressed by the hitrate of this app as it usually finds the correct wine on the first try.

I would also like to congratulate the team behind it as they are keeping a close eye on things that fail their scanning engine: two times (A very old Australian Syrah and a unknown French wine ) the wine was unknown by the database but the day after it was actually recognized properly and I got informed with a mail that they had updates their database based on my scan. Nice service :)

Just found a great (French) comic that explains the vinification of red wine. While not containing anything new it is actually great to see how the IFV is trying to educate more and more people.

School has started again ...

If you would have asked me a few years ago if I would ever attend some kind of eveningclasses on a regular basis I would have laughed very hard. But last week marked a new era (for me at least) when I started with the first module of the wine courses organised by CVO at PIVA in Antwerp.

Probably there will be quite some redundancy in the first module due to the fact that I already completed the Tastevin Winecourse a few years ago, but as the total number of hours for this 2 year course is far higher I do expect to learn a lot more here. If nothing else I will at least learn another means to analyse and score wines which should allow me to combine the best of these methods into my own personal method of tasting wines.

Teacher of at least the first module is Michel Terlinck who has an immense knowledge about wines so no doubt there will be a lot to pick from his brain. 

Bumped into something new again ... "winetubes"

Today when browsing the Dutch wijnbloggers.nl blog I bumped into a post about wintubes which are an original way to package wines (and other beverages) for relational gifts or for tasting.

More information about how this works can be found on Winetubes.nl. Especially for tasting a few nice Sauternes or Bordeaux Grand Cru this could be good way to have access to them without having to buy whole bottles (although I haven't compared the price of a bottle to a price of a tube).