Wine Notes

Site author, Ken Inglis, explains that he has worked in the wine trade since 1985, but has only started to appreciate the qualities of fine wines more recently. He admits ‘My palate is far from expert but I have endeavoured to write useful, informative notes'. This is a little disingenuous, as spending 15 minutes browsing through the site will convince you that Inglis certainly does know his stuff, and his notes seem consistent and very reliable compared with the many wines we have also tasted.



Unless reading tasting notes is your thing there is little here to entertain you. Having said that, if you are interested in a sizeable collection of full and considered notes on finer wines (mostly available on the UK high street), then this is your place. Inglis is an experienced taster who has worked in the wine trade for many years and his notes often include his advice on cellaring potential or serving temperatures.



Inglis uses frames to construct a very flexible navigational system. It takes a little getting used to but is highly effective. On the homepage, three buttons take you to Introduction, What's New and Links. Each of these simple pages has a single navigation button back to the homepage. Also on the homepage are buttons for tasting notes. The tasting notes pages divide the screen into two vertical frames: the left being an index of notes; the right displaying the notes themselves.


Somehow, moving between the site's main sections can be rather slow, with a pause before anything much appears to happen. Happily, once inside a sub-section (A-Z tasting notes for example) things seem to move much more briskly.



Updating is the only major drawback with the site. The addition of notes seems to be done in large batches, but very infrequently. Although the site is definitely still active, the What's New page suggests that sometimes months can pass between updates.


SPECIAL FEATURES


Tasting notes One of the main attractions of the very extensive body of tasting notes gathered here is the fact that the vast majority of the wines reviewed can be purchased on the UK high street, without recourse to specialist auctions or a second mortgage. Many of the notes stem from Inglis' involvement in the wine trade, working for Oddbins amongst others. There is no search facility, though the database of notes can be queried in three useful ways: Tastings presents notes in reverse chronological order, with the newest notes at the top of the screen; A to Z presents notes in alphabetical order of producer's name; Origins presents the notes by country/region in alphabetical order. This flexibility means finding a note amongst the hundreds on the site is not too difficult.
Introduction From introducing himself and explaining a little about his credentials and his motivation for publishing Vinifera, Inglis' introductory page includes some further reading recommendations and a technical briefing on how the web site is put together.


OTHER FEATURES


There is a small Links section of a few web sites that Inglis recommends. There is also a link to the Malt Whisky Tastings web site of Gordon Muir. Nothing to do with wine of course, but the site is maintained and housed as part of Vinifera.