Reviewing The #7wordwinereview

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Those of you who follow us regularly might have read our previous blog introducing our new favourite thing, the #7wordwinereview on Twitter.  The purpose of the #7wordwinereview was to provide a convenient, immediate, concise, peer to peer tool for sharing wine reviews online that anyone could get involved with.

Although it has only 2 weeks since we introduced #7wordwinereview, it is worth reflecting on how things are going so far.  Here are the facts:

Over 65 people have used the #7wordwinereview on Twitter already.

There have been 300 tweets that included the hashtag #7wordwinereview.

These have included tweets in 9 different languages.

Those who have used the #7wordwinereview have included 10 respected wine companies…

…AND Chateau Brane-Cantenac!

We’ve had some bad reviews, and also some really positive ones.  Mr Joseph makes the interesting point that we have not really left room for a score in the #7wordwinereview – true enough.  But even the great Robert Parker has been known to complain that his scores tend to blind people to what he actually says about the wine – the tasting note becomes secondary to the score.   So for the purpose of the #7wordwinereview, we are not ashamed to dispense with the scoring of wines.  Peer to peer, we don’t use scores when we are discussing wines with other wine enthusiasts – so why include them here?

We don’t take ourselves too seriously here at 12×75.com (if you have any doubts about that, read our other posts!) but we genuinely think the #7wordwinereview is here to stay.  Here’s how it can benefit you…

Wine merchants – start using the #7wordwinereview to sell wines!  In addition to the tasting notes on your website, joining the twitter revolution will introduce your wines to a whole new audience.  Look how popular it has become in just a few weeks – why not get in on the action? Perhaps make your 7th word BUY?

Wine tasters –  all know how demanding it can be having to taste some 200 clarets in a row, (my heart bleeds) and diligently making tasting notes when your palate is jaded can be a tricky task.  A jaded palate might not be able to detect the nuances of flavour behind great lumps of tannin in the 200th wine of the day but I bet it can find 7 words to say about a wine that will help the taster to remember it, and distinguish it from the 199th.  The #7wordwinereview is the most useful tool you can have – jot down your #7wordwinereview /s at the tasting and tweet the ones that excited you when you get back.

Wine buyers – #7wordwinereview allows you to own your choices and be your own reviewer.  We like to make jokes on 12×75.com about replacing Parker but ultimately we know that the most experienced palates on earth will always have a place in advising us what to drink (Not least because they have access to more and better wines than us mere mortals!)  So maybe we don’t want to replace them, but why shouldn’t there be a sub-culture wherein we advise each other what to drink?  A sub-culture whose participants are influenced only by their own palates, and where busy people can write a #7wordwinereview and send it off into cyberspace before they have even finished the glass, so that other busy people can read it and respond?

Also, many of us simply don’t write tasting notes  – which often means that we forget wines, or forget what we liked about them.  So a #7wordwinereview tasting note is an appealing idea – we need never forget a wine again, nor worry about a lengthy tasting note that we don’t have time to write.

So there you have it!  We don’t think #7wordwinereview is going anywhere and there is plenty of time for YOU to get involved.  Wine tasters, why not aim to write a tasting note this week but instead of (or as well as) writing your usual note, think about how you would sum up the wine in 7 words, and post it to twitter with the hashtag #7wordwinereview.  Above all, the #7wordwinereview is fun and social, and you might just find like some of us did, that it is slightly addictive too!!!

Later this week, we will be posting some of our favourite #7wordwinereview /s but for now, I think the following paragraph has turned out to be quite relevant  and was posted on @winekat s blog 3 days after we launched the #7wordwinereview

I don’t know if it will really take off, but there are quite a few people involved now and a crowd draws a crowd… we shall see. For now, it’s an interesting discipline; how to get down to brass tacks about a wine. Sometimes it’s good to KISS.