massive aussie tasting, but no detailed notes

[newsguy]

that's because i was covering the event for tampa bay times, a weekly entertainment/culture publication put out by my employer that distributes about 75,000 copies in the tampa/st. pete area. scary as it might seem, they're actually paying me to drink wine and write about it (unlike the past year, when my paper had let me write-wine related articles but left tasting to our great wine/food critic). anyhow, here's a link to my second column, and keep it mind this is written for a general audience.

http://www.tampabay.com/grubandclub/story.cfm?storyid=110957

p.s. if anyone knows how to make this a direct link so folks can click on it and be taken to the column, feel free. i could not get that to work.

[This message has been edited by newsguy (edited 01-28-2005).]

[Drew]

Nice article, Keith, couldn't have said it better me self. The Stump Jump is one of the all time, year in year out, great value wines from Oz, imho. Also the Lake Breeze Bernoota is well worth a look out for $20 and should age very nicely. I'm surprised that C. Cimicky wines weren't showcased.

Drew

[hotwine]

Ditto on the nice article, Newsie. Wish we had that kind of writing in our local rag.... so-called "wine writer" seems to simply parrot distributors' press releases.

[Innkeeper]

Though I love your area Gil, I have always found the San Antonio papers to be the dregs of journalism. Talking about plain ole content not political bent.

[hotwine]

The biggest problem faced in local journallism is the lack of competition. Twenty years ago, we had three dailies - one in the AM, two in the PM. Then one of the evening papers combined with the AM paper, and eventually bought out the remaining evening paper. So now that one rag has a monopoly on print advertising, and on what the editors wish to offer the public in content. Result: sky-high ad rates and a total dumbing-down of content.

I get more useful, readable news in 10 minutes each morning on-line with the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times than the rag provides in a month of print editions.