Dragon Phoenix Wine Blog: Welcome
Welcome to the Dragon Phoenix Wine Blog, a wholly independent blog written by Fongyee Walker and Edward Ragg of Dragon Phoenix Fine Wine Consulting, an independent wine consultancy based in Beijing, China.

Here you will find literally hundreds of tasting notes on all the wines we have tasted and rated since 2003, many of which are now available in the Chinese market. Also, check out our Featured Tastings and Interviews with winemakers, winery owners and others involved in the industry.

For an explanation of how we rate the wines and how our tasting notes are organized, please see our Introduction. For a list of our overall aims for the site, please see Aims.

Happy reading and tasting!

Edward Ragg (a.k.a. Wine Dragon)
& Fongyee Walker (a.k.a. Wine Phoenix)

Note: Edward is also a contributor to popular Spanish and Portuguese-focused site Catavino. In addition, we are both happy to be members of Open Wine Consortium, a great network for wine trade professionals and wine lovers as well as Wine Blogger, a fraternity for vinous bloggers which lists the likes of plant scientist and self-proclaimed wine anorak Jamie Goode, Berry Bros. & Rudd and other merchants, various international wineries and a healthy mix of amateurs and professionals alike: for example, Grape Wall of China, a multi-contributor blog on the Chinese wine scene(s). Wine Lovers is another interesting on-line network with a sizeable membership.

Also check out Tom Cannavan's Wine Pages, the most established on-line wine magazine, Chris Kissack's Wine Doctor which has excellent producer profiles and copious tasting notes, Bill Nanson's The Burgundy Report (every Burgundy lover's dream) and, of course, Jancis Robinson MW's immensely readable and also fully independent site.



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posted by Wine Phoenix at 13:06

Dragon Phoenix Wine Blog: Aims
The Dragon Phoenix Wine Blog was inspired by two factors:

First, we already had a large body of notes on wines from all over the world that we wanted to share with on-line wine lovers. It will take some time to upload all of these, but this is our overall hope for the blog. As we add past notes, we will also post on the wines we are tasting in Beijing and further a field.

Second, we noticed that in China specifically, informed commentary on wine is understandably only just beginning to develop. So we wanted to offer a resource which in the first instance shows how wines are sometimes described internationally. Over time, we will reproduce our notes in Chinese. Our involvement in translation and wine education here has meant that we are attempting to discover a vinous vocabulary in Mandarin (a language already replete with words for myriads smells, tastes and textures).

Our aims are:

a) to offer informed views and full information on wines available in China based on regular and extensive tasting (where possible, with retail prices and suggested drinking times also mentioned).

b) to assemble a compendium of tasting notes on international wines for wine lovers all over the world taken from detailed notes begun in 2003.

c) to report on developments in the China wine industry. Although the mainstay of our work as consultants is not in wine journalism, we will report on what we can. Reliable information is often lacking and it is part of our work here to source and disseminate accurate data.

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posted by Wine Dragon at 11:16