Can one have too much of a good thing? As a child I recall my mother telling me so. In those days it was ice-cream, which I heaped out by the pint. Today, well...
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Wine Spectator
Can one have too much of a good thing? As a child I recall my mother telling me so. In those days it was ice-cream, which I heaped out by the pint. Today, well... |
| I make mention of this because in
a sense, Wine Spectator is too much of a good thing. How so?
Simple- each issue of Wine Spectator has 150 or so big pages, and
a yearly subscription brings you 18 issues. You do the math.
I recall once hearing someone knock Wine Spectator as "California-centric." I wonder whether this person had picked up a copy of the magazine in recent years. Taking an unscientific sample- the August 31, 1998 copy had stories on California wines, French wines, Swiss wines; the December 15, 2000 issue had a cover article on the Rothschilds (certainly not Californians), Spain's wines, the Rhone Valley, and a couple short bits on California. Yes, the June 15, 1999 issue was devoted to California wine country vacations (an eminently useful issue for vino lovers headed to the sunshine state). But the March 31, 2000 copy contained articles on Oregon, Burgundy, New York, New Zealand, Loire Valley... You get the point. Wine Spectator does cover California well (how could it not with James Laube on staff?) but it also reports on the rest of the world. And articles are not limited to wine. The March 31 copy had a cover story on goat cheese, and every issue seems to have something to say about food, restaurants, new wine books, and, of course, pages and pages of wine ratings. For the oenophile, a subscription
to Wine Spectator is a must. Be prepared, though, to block
out a couple evenings each month to digest the issues.
Subscriptions run about $45 for 1 year and can be had by calling 1-800-752-7799 |