Although Hughesy's writing about wine has veered increasingly towards the short tasting note aimed at informing future orders, the format of The Little House of Concrete Wine Rack blog involves an introductory paragraph or two (yes, and sometimes it's a bit more than or two, but we're talking generalities here) so it's handy to have reference material close at hand.
While there's plenty of fairly to detailed information out there, for my purposes I want something that doesn't involve much leg work, something in click and you're there mode.
While I could set up a shelf full of handy reference volumes and an array of useful hyperlinks (which I have, but there's still that leg work bit isn't there?) I'd prefer to have something that's copy and paste-friendly for that introductory remark prefacing today's tasting note if there's something in the glass or on the bottle that has attracted my attention.
I also want somewhere I can insert those handy little tidbits of information you tend to pick up along the way, like the reference to a particular hybrid yeast that, if I recall correctly, explained the surprising depth of flavour in the Oxford Landing Sauvignon Blanc a few years back.
So, from time to time I've headed out, gathered all the information I can find about a particular grape variety or wine-associated term, bunged the lot into a text file and then set about removing anything that's not relevant to my purposes.
For example, there’s no point (at least not at this moment) veering off onto the various labelling requirements for German-produced Riesling. Those labels don’t apply to Australian styles, and if I need to gather some details along those lined, the best place to locate them would be over there in the Wine Terms, wouldn’t it?
We could also get ourselves mired into the way Chardonnay finds different expressions in different French appellations, but I’m not able to explore French wines at the moment, and if I eventually am, that’ll be the time to go sniffing around the differences between white Burgundy and Chablis, won’t it?
Having consolidated all the info into a relatively short and reasonably integrated parcel I might as well place it somewhere I can find it easily, and if anyone else is inclined to use the same material, fine.
So that's what you'll find over in the side bar - Hughesy's notes on a number of white wine varieties. There are, predictably, some notable absences. In those cases it’s safe to assume there’s a large data file on Hughesy’s hard drive that’s still in the process of being whipped into Hughesy-friendly shape.