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Ah yes. I see what you mean. Having logged in via Twitter, asking me for my Facebook account details seems unnecessary.

Roy Hersh has drawn my attention to the ‟competition” at winefolly.com/tutorial/wine-placemats/.

Different, and not without merit, but I prefer mine. Comments welcomed.

jdaw1 wrote:Roy Hersh has drawn my attention to the ‟competition” at winefolly.com/tutorial/wine-placemats/.

Different, and not without merit, but I prefer mine. Comments welcomed.

Fussy and didactic. Also, how can you read what's under the glass? Maybe for beginners or a taught class but otherwise not liked.

Meh. Might be useful for a beginner's class on wine tasting, but far too fussy for the kinds of tastings that we hold.

JDAW's placemats win hands-down.

Apart from anything else, how are you supposed to write in all those spaces on the placemats Roy sent, once you have glasses in the way..?

Horses for courses. For somebody rather shy and uncertain, wanting to have a small informal event with a few friends perceived as non-expert, it could provide structure and thereby confidence. For our needs, and in particular our scale of tastings, not so much.

What I found surprising is that they are available in only 8½″×11″, not A4. Yes, Americans can be rather parochial a side-effect of living in a big country but a wine person should know that there is a rest of the world, and it uses A4.

djewesbury wrote:the placemats Roy sent

Roy didn’t really send them; he drew my attention to some made by a third party, not obviously endorsing or criticising.

I did like the rating system, which could be added to my TN pages (perhaps for only some people?):

but in extracting this detail from the page noticed the grey speckles. What are they for? To make the paper less white, so one is less able so see the colour of the wine?

The branding is also a bit OTT: I see seven mentions of WineFolly.

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=107]Roy Hersh[/url], by email, wrote:I am now traveling and on a diff computer and don't have TPF log in info here or I'd have responded in the thread.

If you can please just quote me directly:

'This young lady is sharp in that she won the IWSCompetition in London a few weeks back, for Best Wine Blogger 2013, actually a worthy honor. She fact checks and often teaches Somm classes and especially server trainings etc. where six-eight wines are the norm for tasting. I don't believe that Madeline ever conducts tastings like you folks do in London or we do here in the USA with Port and Madeira etc. Two different purposes. Nobody will ever create a program like Julian has for complex tastings. My original email to him was tongue in cheek with the title, "competition" but in reality, there is none.'

FTR, I thought that the term ‟Competition” was entirely fair. A sufficiently similar idea that there might be overlap in the audiences, that’s all.

Maybe the scoring tasting-note sheets could have added something like:

which might be used, if scoring three from five, as


Comment?

(Edited to lessen ambiguity.)

That would make adding up when full of port even more difficult than it is now.

Not on the voting sheets, on your TN sheets. Would that help you score your drinks? (My fault: I said ‟scoring sheet”.)

Ah. Yes, it would encourage lazy people like me to venture a score.

DRT wrote:Ah. Yes, it would encourage lazy people like me to venture a score.

I didn’t want to put it so indelicately, but yes, that would be its purpose.

And though I attempt to describe, I rarely score. It might nudge me as well.

A PM has been sent to the Placemat makers group requesting comment.

jdaw1 wrote:

DRT wrote:Ah. Yes, it would encourage lazy people like me to venture a score.

I didn’t want to put it so indelicately, but yes, that would be its purpose.

It is not often that you are less direct than me. Perhaps you are enjoying Christmas too much?

Make it an option, certainly. As an aside (perhaps interesting to placemat makers) I found scoring and voting difficult at The Bell because of the number of different pieces of paper, the eccentric numbering, and the need to drink up before drinking more. This was purely my own lack of experience with the set-up - but I think it shows that the usual arrangement, with glasses and tasting pages, makes the job of scoring very much simpler.

djewesbury wrote:I found scoring and voting difficult at The Bell because of the number of different pieces of paper, the eccentric numbering, and the need to drink up before drinking more.

All compromises that have to be made if we want to keep up the tradition of using that venue at Christmas with more than four people at the table. I find that trying to take notes in that environment quickly becomes a frustrating distraction to the event, so prefer not to try.

DRT wrote:

djewesbury wrote:I found scoring and voting difficult at The Bell because of the number of different pieces of paper, the eccentric numbering, and the need to drink up before drinking more.

All compromises that have to be made if we want to keep up the tradition of using that venue at Christmas with more than four people at the table. I find that trying to take notes in that environment quickly becomes a frustrating distraction to the event, so prefer not to try.

I completely agree. But by the end of the night I'd pretty much forgotten what I'd tasted at the beginning. Hence my votes were rubbish.

There are three obvious ways of arranging a row of stars.

1. Alternating orientations, as already shown.


2. Facing sideways.


3. And on their feet.


For my taste, the third uses too much space, and I favour 1 over 2. But if there is to be more than one row (e.g., for Tom’s scoring system), then each row will look the same, in which case 1 and 2 differ by only a rotation. I still favour 1 over 2.


Any strong views?

2 rows is far too confusing and probably difficult to use. I also prefer 1.

djewesbury wrote:2 rows is far too confusing and probably difficult to use.

The default parameters will specify one row of five stars, but the code will allow multiple rows.

I like the stars, but would probably never use them. I prefer the 100-pt system because that's what I'm used to. But for those who use the 5-star system, this would be ideal.

Glenn E. wrote:I prefer the 100-pt system because that's what I'm used to.

OK, I concede that one.

Of course a 100-point system is really only a 30-point system at most since anything below 70 would equate to "do not drink". Why not just mark out of 30?

jdaw1 wrote:There are three obvious ways of arranging a row of stars.

1. Alternating orientations, as already shown.


2. Facing sideways.


3. And on their feet.


For my taste, the third uses too much space, and I favour 1 over 2. But if there is to be more than one row (e.g., for Tom’s scoring system), then each row will look the same, in which case 1 and 2 differ by only a rotation. I still favour 1 over 2.


Any strong views?

I much prefer 2 over 1, both aesthetically and for compact packing. For multiple row, alternate rows could be tilted in opposite directions, which would both distinguish rows and enable further packing if wanted.

Overall, however, I see no need for this on our sheets. We have many different ways of scoring between us, and I don't think any of us use marks out of five? Though I'm sure we could translate, it's probably easier for us to mark by whichever method we finds suits us. Is there a desire for a common format?

I quite like the WineFolly sheets, they seem well designed for the purpose I assume they are intended for: a small informal tasting of a small number of wines. I could also imagine a port variant, with scales for colour and such-like, but perhaps for a small informal group of relatively inexperienced tasters; not especially suitable for TPF events I think. The one thing it reminds me is that I must print out, or obtain/create an android app, or similar for a flavour wheel, as I really would like to improve my ability to recognise/name the flavours. However, while the WineFolly sheets do provide a basic nudge for that, I think it is probably too basic, and impractical on sheets with more than four glasses.