In biology autolysis refers to the destruction of a cell through the action of its own enzymes. The term “autolyse” was coined by French baking professor Raymond Calvel. The term derives from the Greek words αυτό (”self”) and λύσις (”splitting”).

For making sparkling wine, autolysis involves killing the yeast and encouraging the breakdown of the cells by enzymes. It is used to give different flavours.

Steve Goodwin is a sparkling winemaker at Seppelt, Australia. He was once interviewed on the cause of the bready, yeasty character found in champagne and other sparkling wine: “most of that is just bottle-developed pinot noir character (rather) than autolysis,” said Steve. His comment contradicts the traditionally accepted view that contact between the wines and autolyzed yeast lees - i.e. broken down yeast cells - is responsible. Curiously, a former Seppelt sparkling maker, Warren Randall, claimed that the bready character came mainly from pinot meunier.

I asked French champagne maker Benoît Gouez (of Dom Perignon) about this. He had no doubt that autolysis causes the yeastiness in champagne, adding that autolysis is expressed quite differently by different grape varieties. “However, the more fruit in a particular wine the less yeast will be evident,” he explained.

Well-known amateur sparkling winemaker, MF (those five years spent as sous-remueur - translation: riddler - at Bolli were not wasted) reckons that the bready character does in fact come from yeast autolysis — rather than aged pinot noir or pinot meunier. His reasoning? Rising bread dough and bread just out of the oven have this smell. Where does it come from? Er, the breakdown of yeast cells after the bread has risen.

Pertinent questions: Has MF ever encountered this yeasty smell in bottles of still pinot noir or pinot meunier of any age? No, never.

Has MF ever encountered this yeast lees character in bottles of bubbly that do not contain either of the pinots, i.e. blanc de blancs made solely from chardonnay? Yes, your Judgeship, often.

If so-called yeast autolysis character comes mainly from pinot noir why do sparkling wine makers waste their time and money leaving fizz in contact with yeast sediment for years, when they could just as easily add more pinot noir to the brew? Beats me, your be-wigged Excellency.

The court will rise…

To help you make up your judgment, here are related articles — at other sites:

• Bubbly tasting notes;
• Matching Champagne and Food;
• Champagne with food;
• Cabbage in Champagne;
• Fredric Koeppel about Champagne.

Let’s first tackle the delicate business of taking wine to a dinner party, not to drink yourself, of course, but as a gift to the hosts. Don’t be offended if they whisk it away for another party, one to which you may not be invited.

Most people plan a dinner carefully, right down to the wine they want to serve. Unless you called in advance and were asked to bring something specific, don’t expect them to change their meal plan for you.

Of course, if it’s a small party, you can make a big hit by offering to bring all the wine. No right-minded host would turn you down.

If spending too much on glasses is foolish, spending too much on wine for guests is even more so. Not possible? Oh yes it is. Rare wines are not for everyone’s taste. Unless the guests are demanding connoisseurs, and who invited them anyway?

Wine for a group should be moderately priced, not just to save money but to provide something everyone will like. Great Bordeaux is like chamber music; great Beaujolais is like Rodgers and Hart. And make sure there is enough. Count on a bottle a person at a dinner. That sounds like a lot but, divided between white and red, and spread over a long evening, it’s not much at all.

Let’s now fell wine as a discussion topic.

One irritating lapse in wine etiquette is making wine the center of the evening. Wine should be part of the meal, not the reason for it.

Beware the host who lectures on his wines or, worse, plays wine games with his hapless guests. A considerable part of the populace has no objection to a bit of the grape now and then, but little or no interest beyond that.

Blathering on about the recent vintage is boring; asking someone to guess which glass is the merlot is boorish. Makes you want to call for a beer.

Yet wine can be the supporting partner: you’ll enjoy your friends and discover wine at the same time.

Here are other images of falling rugbymen.

Establishment vs. bloggers

Two websites clearly stand out as the biggest wine hubs: the Wine Spectator and the Wine lovers page. This in part is explained by their quality. It is also explained by the long time they have been known by wine enthusiasts.

Having an off-line reputation clearly helps. This is illustrated by the presence in the top five of the Wine Spectator, the New York Times and Robert Parker.

In the last few years the wine web offer has immensely diversified. There now are many quality wine critics who blog on line. The list attempts to highlight writers that you should discover. Only the better 40% of the websites are shown.

Recession

The websites are still as good as they were before the credit implosion of September 2008. Yet their financial possibilities are greatly reduced by the coming depression. This is why the valuations shown are smaller than in the previous quarter. Many websites have seen their valuation divided by about 3 in the course of a year (since the contest started).
In the middle of the pack, compare the struggles of many US sites to the growth of sites based in Asia.

What other trends can you see from the rankings?

How to participate

Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the type of information is different.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the websites are also considered for addition to another tool: a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the metrics I use for rating the wine sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites .

To find websites I’ll like, I follow websites I already like. This is not the point here. My contests attempt to be open, diverse and objective by using publicly available figures. How do websites get added to the list?

This methodology estimates the quality of websites. It is scientific in that it calculates valuation from objective metrics.

Two criteria are used for assessing online marketing success: Google PageRank and traffic. Then we aggregate them into a valuation figure.

PageRank

PageRank has a patent by Google. It was supposed to represent the likelihood of a websurfer to stumble on a given web page.

In practice it is now correlated with the level of trust Google puts in the website domain. It is biased to older websites and big corporations.

Google also manipulates the public PageRanks for their corporate agenda. That makes at least two reasons why we should not limit ourselves to this metric. You can find details at a rant on Google PageRank.

Traffic

This is the democratic metric. It assesses the number of people who are likely to visit the website next month. These numbers are not taken from the webservers and therefore do not show the actual traffic.

This measure derives from the USA traffic levels measured by Compete.com. The metric is not the Compete value. The Compete figures over the past year are averaged and trended so that an aggregate is built. A bonus is given to non-US sites so that the final figure shows worldwide traffic.

The Compete figure is not available for sites that do not use their own domain name. Such sites are thus put at a disadvantage on this criterion. The public numbers and those of many other hosted blogs are very low because their traffic is not tracked independently of that of their platform.
There are two separate ways out of this problem:
- Get your own domain as Robert McIntosh did. This shows a long-term commitment to the site.
- Get liked by Google. This is the situation of the numerous sites currently showing in the ranked list.

On the contrary the same sites are favoured by the other metric (PageRank) since they receive links from well known platforms — which (usually) have nothing do to with the niche (food or wine). Examples: the New York Times, Blogspot.

Valuation

The valuation is a sum (in USD) that the website could sell for. This is hypothetical: it is a value that would serve as a reference if the owner wanted to sell and if she negotiated with a buyer.

There are a lot of things to consider for assessing how much a website is worth. Most of them are not public information: the revenue, the number of subscribers and registered users. Cellarer.com calculates the valuation by aggregating two metrics: PageRank and traffic. Eh! we have just done bulk site appraisal!

The choice of only these two metrics is based on a previous study that evaluated all possible metrics for website appraisal.

Wrap-up

This methodology of PR + traffic is used to assess websites related to wine or food. Here is the directory of the best wine websites.

Follow up

You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed of website articles or by subscribing to the mailing list of comments available below.

If you have a different view on website metrics, please share it by posting a comment.

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The domaines, which give it 10 percent of production, also give it some superlative wines, in particular the great Corton-Charlemagne, of which the firm owns 22 acres. Whites are generally regarded as better than the reds here, with new oak barrel fermentation giving considerable richness and complexity.

The reds, traditionally pasteurized before bottling, are more controversial. Some believe the technique ages the wines too fast, while others enjoy the immediate richness and softness. Good reds to follow are the Beaune premier cru Domaine Latour and Chambertin.

Winery:
Louis Latour
18 rue des Tonneliers - Beaune 21200
Phone: 03 80 24 81 00

Here are some articles that you could read.

Burgundy-Report » Rebuy - No

1WineDude : Where Are The Ratings?

danah boyd, Facebook and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Date:
Location of tasting:
Brand:
Variety:
Vintage:
Appellation:
Place of Purchase:
Price:
Appearance:
Aroma:
Taste:
Overall Impression:

This list is also available as a nice PDF sheet waiting to be filled in.

A competing sheet is available with more explanations at The Frugal Oenophile.

With the arrival in 1987 of Michel and Marc Chapoutier at their family’s negociant house of M. Chapoutier, a total change of style emerged from the cellars in Tain l’Hermitage.

Gone were wines that were aged too long in old wood, and in their place came in hugely powerful examples of Hermitage and other reds from Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph and Côte-Rôtie. Elegance has now been added to the power of the wines, which are produced bio-dynamically from a 240-acre estate.

Recent purchases of vineyards in Australia (Mount Benson), in Côteaux d’Aix-en-Provence (Domaine des Béates), in Côteaux de Tricastin (Domaine des Estubiers) and in Banyuls in the late 1990’s show the family’s expansion policies.

Winery:
18 avenue Docteur-Paul-Durand - 26600 Tain l’Hermitage
Phone: 04 75 08 28 65

I’ll profile more well-known Shiraz wineries in the future. Please subscribe to the Shiraz feed.