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

An Introduction to our Tasting Notes
Tasting Notes: Organization
The full name and vintage of each wine is listed followed by detailed notes divided up into the following categories: ‘Appearance’, ‘Nose’ and ‘Palate’, followed by a ‘Conclusion’ and ‘Rating’ out of 20 (see Rating System below for an explanation of how to interpret our scores).

Where possible we have also noted an approximate retail price, particularly for wines available in the Beijing or wider China markets. These prices are accurate only at the time of writing and we recommend that global wine prices are compared on Wine Searcher. All entries are also labelled by grape variety, category (red, white, sparkling etc.) and other relevant information.

Rating System
There are many rating and scoring systems used by wine critics and enthusiasts around the world. None is perfect, but wine would not be what it is – an evolving organic product, full of surprises – if it could be described exactly or in any sense finally.

However, although individual wines are always changing – and although perceptions of taste are necessarily personal and subjective – wine critics have a duty to be open, transparent and consistent about how they rate wines.

We follow a 20-point system because this seems to give us enough flexibility to assess a range of wines without having numerically baffling scores (the 100-point system seems unwieldy, although we recognize it works for other tasters). The 20-point scale is also what we’ve grown used to adopting in professional wine challenges where large numbers of wines from vastly different categories are assessed.

Here are what our scores mean (an explanatory note on how this system is relative to the type or category of wine scored follows):

18.5-20 A ‘Gold Medal’ winner: outstanding wine. Within the top of its class and a great example of its category. Of very high quality indeed.
17-18.4 A ‘Silver Medal’ winner. Very good quality wine. At an impressive quality-level, but not in the top of its class and not the highest quality example of its category.
15.5-16.9 A ‘Bronze Medal’ winner. Good quality wine. A good expression of its category, but not necessarily inspiring. Reliable drinking.
14-15.4 ‘Commercial’. Drinkable, but not good quality, not exciting and usually not a particularly good example of its category. Average quality, but without wine-making faults.
12.5-13.9 ‘Faulty’. Displays one or more wine-making faults. May still be drinkable, but is not recommended.
Below 12.5 Usually ‘undrinkable’: i.e. very unpleasant to taste, combining multiple wine-making problems and possibly other faults caused by poor storage.

Note:
These scores should be compared only with other wines in the same category. For example, a basic Burgundy – a Bourgogne Blanc or Rouge – that has attained 17/20 can only usefully be compared with other wines in the same category rather than other 17/20 wines in general. Practically, it makes no sense to compare totally different wines in terms of their score. Ours is a relative system that also often incorporates several notes for the same wine ‘over time’: i.e. as it is tasted on different occasions. Like all other systems, ours is not absolute and only reflects our own tastes and overall tasting experience. At the end of the day perception of wine is both personal and context-driven.

But we hope our notes will be useful for other wine lovers and collectors.

Happy reading (and tasting)!

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

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posted by Wine Phoenix at 16:00