There are wine review sites I do not charge an upfront processing fee (under whatever guise) to assess tasting samples for review purposes. I’ve never done so in three decades of publishing my considerations about thousands of wines. (The only exception to this is for the Copywrite* service that I’ve begun providing recently: please see more detail below).
As with all tasting samples these wines will be rigorously assessed in small, half-blind, randomised peer-group line ups where this is practicable to do so. If I happen upon a wine that stimulates me—and fortunately many do—then I’ll review it. It may sometimes take me a while for me to do so (as I’ve never been the most prolific taster or publisher) but when I do there are a few options for reuse of my work, should you consider doing so.
As mentioned above, if you wish to use or republish/redistribute one of my complete tasting notes (a ‘work’ as defined by the Copyright Act) then a copyright licence must be acquired. This assists in me maintaining my efforts and continue publishing these reviews and other things online which are free for all to access. This for me is important as there are so many barriers for potential wine lovers, customers, consumers etc.
However, if you just want to grab a few words about your wine from the review I’ve published and the score I’ve accorded then you are most entitled to do so. You see, there’s this copyright thing called Fair Dealings and Fair Use (terminology varying depending on your territory) where it’s considered permissable to use a small amount of an author’s piblished work without prior approval, although it is considered courteous to do so.
Importantly any use of my work must be credited accordingy with my byline—name—as well as the published source—my website. A link to my work should also be provided.
This ‘fair dealings’ stuff I explain as I know it is a bit tough out there for some wine producers and there are enough demands on your marketing expenditure. So I don’t want to be yet another wine review spruiker demanding payment—and this must to be said—for a sometimes questionable return on your part. But for those who wish to utilise my unexpurgated tasting notes in full, as they are published and presented on my website, there are a couple of licencing options available.
There are a two copyright licensing options available for the work — tasting notes and other descriptive passages — that I publish to my website. In addition, I also offer a review and tasting note provision service — a bit like wine show submissions, only with customised feedback — and you will find details of this below.
1. If you wish to use just one of my reviews for marketing purposes the fee is a one-off $50. Once the reproduction right fee has been paid, the review may be used by wine producer, distributor, and retailer alike.
2. If you are a wine producer who wishes to use multiple reviews of wines published to my website on an ongoing basis the annual copyright licence fee is $250-$350 depending on the numbers of samples a winery submits for review. However, if you have large number of labels and/or alternative sub-brands you can contact me directly for a quote, but a few additional wines under another label I’ve been charging in additional $50 block increments.
3. An important point to make: The purchase of an annual copyright licence fee covers any review published to my site within the period specified on the invoice. But these reviews, once published, can be used by the purchaser of the copyright licence in perpetuity, and also by any agencies that represent them: be they distributor, retailer, or marketer.
At the suggestion of several wine producers I’m also offering an assessment service such as one might traditionally receive in an Australian wine show. With the difference that there will be. Becasue not all blemishes are bad things. For $75 per bottle submitted you will receive — to quote one producer — a ‘warts an’ all’ assessment of each wine as it presents in the ‘half-blind’, peer-group line-ups that I frequently undertake.
This ‘raw’ note will be accompanied by a tasting note in my style, as well as a more restrained one which might be used — say — on a winery tasting note specification sheet. Any of these notes may be used at the discretion of the exhibitor, of course. Or a combo of each.
This service should proves useful for a number reasons. Firstly, the producer is going to get rigorous appraisal from an experienced wine show judge and critic. Second, the tasting note and review are ready for immediate upload or other form of publication. Lastly, it takes some pressure off the winemaker / winegrower / marketer to conjure up a tasting note of their own. Which I know some find pressure — occasionally difficulty — in doing. Additionally, there is no need to supply multiple bottles of the same wine.
I’d pondered describing this service as ‘Alternative Rigorous Sensory Evaluation’. But I thought the acronym sounded a bit too clever by half, nor commensurate to the seriousness of my assessment and review service proposal. Any wines submitted for this purpose will, however, be assessed in exactly the same rigorous manner as I approach all other wines submitted for evaluation.
There is, however, one DYI aspect for anyone who submits wines to me for this evaluation process, and this pertains to colour. For one thing I assess all wines in Riedel Sommeliers Blind Blind glassware as I find the look of a wine may — sometimes unfairly — predispose the palate and opinion of the taster to either the positive or negative (it’s rarely in between in my experience).
Also: while I’m deuteranomolous — that’s colour-blind — red-green colour-blind — in old speak, and so subtleties of hue and all shouldn’t predispose me one way or the other, issues of turbidity and the like certainly might. My colour vision issue can, on occasion, be a little embarrassing — not being able to pick subtly-hued rosés in line-ups, for example — it doesn’t appear to have hindered my tasting capabilities. So my focus is always on the is always on the smell and taste of the liquid in the glass, not the look of it. Which is why you’ll rarely find any observations about what a wine looks like.
I've frequently made a point of this sensory deficiency whenever I’ve been a guest judge on The Australian Wine Research Institute’s Advanced Wine Assessment Course. And as it currently stands I still hold the record as the longest serving guest judge ever on the AWAC, so this inpediment doesn't appear to have hindered me too much. So one thing you’ll never find me debating is colour. It has little bearing on complexity — or intensity — of aroma, flavour, and texture in wine. Some of my absolute favourite cultivars — Nebbiolo, Grenache, Sangiovese — are often quite anthocyanically challenged.