The Auswine Forum

Does anyone have a view on what are some of the better wine mags to subscribe to?

Gourmet Wine Traveller ... just take the NZ wine scores with a grain of salt.

Thanks Andrew, I have picked up the odd one of these to read on planes and thought it was ok

Andrew Jordan wrote:Gourmet Wine Traveller


... just take the NZ wine scores with a grain of salt.

just minus about 5 points, and may be about right!

.

GTW is a good read although it has lost James Halliday's regular Great Tastings which will be sadly missed. It was always the first article to be read with his writing style the best. Being an ex-lawyer he is a true word smith.

Carl

Are you after printed magazines only?

What is your focus? eg Buying Australian wine, buying international wine, wine tourism, education, wine and food matching, trade etc etc?

What is the depth of knowledge you're after?

rossmckay wrote:Are you after printed magazines only?

What is your focus? eg Buying Australian wine, buying international wine, wine tourism, education, wine and food matching, trade etc etc?

What is the depth of knowledge you're after?

Good point Ross, was a bit light on info. I'm mainly interested in buying Australian wine and wine education, though some international wine articles and wine tourism is always great to read about.

I much prefer printed mags as I am a technophobe who does not own a tablet, but I could be convinced to get a digital subscription if there was something really good.

I am a beginner so am after only an intermediate level of knowledge really.

if you have an ipad or have access to one, join winecompanion for a year , you will have free access to his mag. on ipad as well.just ignore the score and chew through the tasting note , that's how i enjoyed it.

GT Wine and James Halliday as previously mentioned.

Older Australian based mags are Winestate and Winewise but I haven't subscribed to these for a while

OS magazines I regularly get are Tong and Decanter

Online, Jancis Robinson, Wine Searcher and a heap of blogs

Best wine magazine that I have come across has been World of Fine Wine. Sadly it is priced at a premium but the level of detail is really impressive and hard to find on the interweb thingamajig. But fortunately it doesn't focus on Australia.

Decanter for me. Great mix of general interest wine articles, regions, and tastings.

griff wrote:Best wine magazine that I have come across has been World of Fine Wine. Sadly it is priced at a premium but the level of detail is really impressive and hard to find on the interweb thingamajig. But fortunately it doesn't focus on Australia.

Possible to subscribe for a decent discount if you look around as well.

I get Decanter each month and GWT every second. I have a preference for Decanter and its insight into European wines since I can get most of my Aussie wine knowledge off friends and forums such as these. Gave up buying Winestate 10 years ago and Winespectator is a shadow of its former self now that they try and force you to do everything through their website.

I'd highly suggest WBM - Australia's Wine Business Magazine. Covers plenty of issues in the industry, a bit of education and good reviews. Also has some good online content that is worth checking out.

www.wbmonline.com.au

Andrew Jordan wrote:Gourmet Wine Traveller ... just take the NZ wine scores with a grain of salt.

And I thought this was just me- why are they rated so much higher ?

michel wrote:

Andrew Jordan wrote:Gourmet Wine Traveller ... just take the NZ wine scores with a grain of salt.

And I thought this was just me- why are they rated so much higher ?

For an honest assessment of NZ wines have a look at Bob Campbells website http://www.bobswinereviews.com/. He does a lot of the reviews in GWT. You will note the reviews on his site are almost always lower than those with his name in GWT. A friend in the industry once told me he was required by the publisher to add points to his scores to bring them into line with the likes of James Halliday. I asked him once whether this story was true but got no response. In my opinion Australian wine critics are much more generous than their overseas counterparts. To make sense of Australian critic's scores you have to benchmark them against their other scores. Hence 93-94 from Halliday is probably equal to 88-89 from Winespectator or Robert Parker.