Tastings.com

This is the Web presence of the Beverage Testing Institute, based in Chicago, who supply buying guides for wines, beers and spirits which are reprinted in newspapers and magazines. Their own print magazine, Tastings, is issued six times per year and costs $69 for a one year subscription to the UK. This site claims to have reviews of 30 000 wines within its pages. If you want a sneak preview of new reviews before they appear on the web, you are encouraged to sign up for the Insiders' Club which delivers them by email six weeks before they are released to the public. That service costs $45 annually. Navigation of the site is pretty average, with some inconsistency in the way the navigation panel down the left hand edge of the screen is applied. Your first choice is to select from the colourful Wine, Beer and Spirit buttons on the homepage.


SPECIAL FEATURES

Find a Winetakes you to the Winebase, where you can query Tastings.com's database. You may search using Quick Find, or Advanced Find. The former is a simple text box where you can type in any combination of keywords. The latter is a very comprehensive if rather unwieldy form where you can set dozens of criteria such as Score out of 100, Price, Variety, Country and Vintage.


Best Producers List is a list of the top-rated producers year-in and year-out. The idea is that since shoppers often find it difficult to track down the exact vintage of a top-rated wine, this section highlights the most reliable names irrespective of vintage. The long list is sorted by country and grape variety/region. So, for example, you might click on France and then Alsace to see a list of top producers. Strangely, there is no way to go directly to an actual review of these producers' wines from here.


Learn About Wine is a rather haphazard collection. It includes introductions to a few wine regions and grape varieties, technical articles on obscure winemaking techniques like ‘Heat Summation' and odds and ends like ‘What to drink with turkey'. The pieces themselves are sound, if a little boring to read with no illustrations and a rather dry tone. There is clearly little commitment behind this section, despite their undated claim that ‘We will add many more articles in the next few months'.


Wine Dictionary is a nice feature. Enter a word, or part of a word, into the box displayed and the dictionary will find all entries that match. Over 750 definitions are available.


OTHER FEATURES
There is a list of Wine Stores, but these are confined to US stores who use Tasting.com's reviews. Find a Winery lists over 1500 US wineries with address and Web details if available. Our Books is a sales page for books published by the Beverage Testing Institute.