Make your own judgment about the wine you drink

I always mention during my tastings that wine is very personal, we can assess the quality of the wine, but everything else is left to our personal taste and we all have a different taste. To better explain my point, I tell you what happened to one of our wine. We submitted a wine to two different International wine competitions, probably the most famous, that includes amongst their judges plenty of Master of Wines and experts. Result: in one competition won the highest award, in the other one not even a mention. Nothing can prove my point better than this. Everyone has a taste and we judge what we drink based on it. So, what I want to say with that is that you are the only judge of your wines and make your own mind based on your personal taste and don't buy wines only because they have been reviewed or awarded and find out the origin of the wine and the producer's philosophy.

I also want to mention another subject. Wine reviews. Many people buy a specific wine only if it has been reviewed by one of the many wine writers. Recently I came across one of them and I was very surprised about what I read. I read about a wine writer recommending the Asti Spumante Martini. Still now, I cannot understand why he put it amongst the other wines that were pretty good. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the Asti Spumante but in Italy now we only use it for Christmas boxes, the cheap ones, that contains a bottle of spumante and a panettone or pandoro and I can ensure you, nobody drinks it. Amongst all Spumantes I have tasted, Asti Spumante is probably the worst. There are also plenty of good reviews that introduce the public to wines otherwise unknown but don't take them for granted and also look for the provenance of their wines, you will often see that they come from the major supermarkets and chain. So, once again, read carefully and behind the lines.