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Notability of individual Vin de Pays

I noticed that a lot of the VdP articles have been merged into or redirected to regional wine articles. Was this a collective and overarching decision, or just a case by case deal? I think that even small vin de pays can establish notability by the usual means of appearing in wine reference books or trade magazine articles about how the region is notable. I'd like some consensus before I spend a lot of time finding references on my favorite VDPs. --Mroconnell (talk) 09:31, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

It was mostly a case by case deal. There are certainly VdPs that are notable and would merit more than a stub's worth of text, and by all means you are welcomed to create those articles with your references. Some VdPs (as are some AOCs and DOCs in other regional articles) are currently redirects as just a "holding place" until references are found to create articles. The only VdPs that are on "questionable ground" when it comes to their own articles are those that would only merit but a paragraph stubs worth of text. Rather than have separate articles, I can see those VdP's most likely being brought together into an article like Vin de Pays of the Loire Valley, etc where having a broader scale of context would serve the reader better than having lots of little stub articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Speedy of Chateau Morrisette

See Chateau Morrisette which is tagged for speedy deletion, please help to save if it is worth saving, a quick google check does not give any indication that it is notable. --Stefan ^talk 00:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh boy....lots of issues with the article. I agree that a google search doesn't offer many promising leads to establish notability. Would be a toughie to save. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 00:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

"List of" articles

I have to admit that I'm baffled by the utter uselessness of articles like List of wineries in Missouri, List of Oregon wineries and vineyards, List of wineries in Illinois and several other articles in the Category:List-Class Wine articles (Not to mention the infamous List of vineyards and wineries mentioned above). As a project, I think we really need to look at WP:LIST maybe add something to WP:WINEGUIDE to address the issue. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yikes! I also just noticed the nav box at the bottom of the List of wineries in Missouri titled Lists of wineries in the United States by political division. It is very bizarrely coded because all the View/Discuss/Edit links go to the Template:United States topic. I have no idea who created this winery template but it is exceedingly useless and only promotes wineguide spam lists and links. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:17, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Update Several of the articles in that nav box clearly did not pass WP:LIST so I nominated them for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of wineries and vineyards in Maine. A couple of the articles do seem to conform on the surface to WP:LIST so I didn't nominate them for deletion but rather put them forward for discussion. Hopefully we can get some input from the community on the overall appropriateness of these articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Help from native english wine-writers

Have you specific (better?) names for the containers in the commons:Category:Back basket? (in german i have now 29 differnet names which would be discribed in a future article. :-) ) And are they only common in USA in California? (i found only pictures from there.) --Franz (Fg68at) de:Talk 19:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, we just call them baskets. :) They are not very common in the US, though some wineries that do hand harvesting use some sort of basket container. But again, I'm not aware of any other label for them except perhaps colloquial names like "harvest basket". Agne^Cheese/^Wine 23:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

POV created Category:Wineries of Syria

It looks like Category:Wineries of Syria has been created just to make a POV-oriented WP:POINT on Golan Heights Winery. I have no personal opinion on the Israeli/Syrian conflict, but this is a non-issue in the wine world. All the wines of Golan Heights Winery are classified as Israeli wines-without exception. I can't even find the existence of a "Syrian winery" and there is some suggestion that Syrian law may even prohibit winemaking as a Muslim country. My inclination is to put this up for CFD but I wanted to hear other thoughts. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 23:11, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The disputed (occupied) status of the Golan Heights are explained extensively in the Golan Heights article and is mentioned briefly in the Israeli wine article. I believe this is the NPOV treatment of this subject, and thus don't belong in an article on an individual winery. In the case of Golan Heights Winery, I also don't see how it could be classified as a Syrian winery, since it apparently was set up after the Israeli occupation of the area. Tomas e (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

For those who are interested in the next chapter of this story, we now have Category:Wineries of Israeli occupied territories. Tomas e (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Is it time to take this stuff to ANI?

For the last several weeks Golan Heights Winery and Israeli wine has been hit hard by POV pushers interested in dragging the Israeli/Syria conflict over the Golan Heights into wine articles. From spurious POV category creations to political edits to the articles themselves, I think such conduct is wholly inappropriate with wine articles being the absolutely wrong forum for this POV war to be raged on. But what can we do? Is this something we can take to ANI? I'm not sure what we can even accomplish there outside of a full page protection for maybe a couple days. Perhaps we can get admin backing for a strongly worded template on the talk page reminding people that these are WINE articles and all edits/categorization should be kept within the context of the wine world and follow wine-related reliable sources. Discussions about the political climate and conflict of the Golan Heights should be kept to that article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that a specifically tailored template for "keep your politics/POV/wars out of wine" would be suitable, or reach consensus. Actually, all type of politics can't and shouldn't be kept out of all wine articles (alcohol distribution regulations, wine taxation and so on), but it's another story when you see a small number of editors trying to front-load the lead section of an individual winery article with international politics and condense one view of it into pupose-made categories that it becomes disruptive. Tomas e (talk) 23:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Wineries in Australia

I am a wine aficionado from Australia who is interested on working towards improving the quality of articles pertaining to wineries in Australia. If there are any suggestions on how I can improve existing articles, please do not hesitate to let me know. I also hope to contribute by adding some new articles pertaining to Australian wineries in the near future. Rrwhine (talk) 03:55, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Well in all honesty, the best help you could contribute to Australian wine articles is helping to fill in the extensive gaps in coverage on the history and many wine regions. So many Aussie wine articles need love and attention like West Australian wine, which is just a stub, History of Australian wine, Barossa Valley wine, Clare Valley wine, Coonawarra wine, Hunter Valley wine, etc. But if you have your heart set on working on wineries article, there are several guidelines and policy pages your should be aware of....

• First and foremost is WP:CORP, which gives an outline of the notability standards for businesses including wineries. As an extension of corp, the project has written an essay Wikipedia:Notability (wine topics) that gives more clearer guidance.
• An important part of establishing notability is the including WP:CITEd Reliable Sources from independent, third parties. (i.e. not the winery's own press packet on their web site or online wine retailers but rather news articles or books, etc)
• It is extremely important to write your article in a WP:NPOV tone and avoid any impression of being an WP:ADVERT for the winery. We are trying to write an educational encyclopedia article on the winery, not a sales piece to get people interested in looking for their wine.
• Similar to the above, we need to remember that Wikipedia is not a wine guide. Again, use the benchmark of educational vs persuasion. Ask yourself, is it really educational to know "so and so" critic is a big fan of this winery or would that be something you are more likely to bring up if your just trying to sell the wine?

Writing winery articles can be tricky at first, but hopefully this will help you become familiar with all the pertinent guidelines. Again. we greatly welcome any efforts to improve the wine related content on Wikipedia and do hope that you consider devoting your time and efforts to some of the pressing needs in our Australian wine coverage. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Agne, thank you for your comments and suggestions on the Seppeltsfield article. I will continue to look into ways to help improve that particular article and future articles I write. Rrwhine (talk) 10:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Winery Lists?

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of wineries and vineyards in Maine recently closed as no consensus. Other similar lists were also included in that listing. Much discussion was had about whether state/regional based lists of wineries are appropriate for wikipedia. the current lack of consensus leaves things in a no man's land (on wikipedia? can you believe it!?!!? haha), but i think it would be better if we could develop some consensus one way or the other to apply in the future. I hate to see people creating lists that take a lot of work if they aren't going to stay or will be under intermittent attack. I encourage anyone interested to read that debate and add their comments about whether such lists should be on wikipedia.

Here is an except of relevant discussion between myself and Agne27:

• Keep Winery Lists: I was one of the 1st to comment on this AfD, but I assumed there was some precedent/guideline/essay that would apply more directly here. After reading the discussion to date, I see there's not. Neither WP:LIST nor WP:NOTDIRECTORY help me that much either. I find ThaddeusB's thoughts most aligned with my own. Its clear that Wikipedia encourages lists of certain types, e.g., high school lists such as List of high schools in Florida, List of high schools in New York; breweries, e.g., List of breweries in Scotland, List of breweries in Australia, List of Quebec microbreweries, List of Illinois breweries; lighthouses,, e.g., List of lighthouses in the United States, List of lighthouses in Manitoba; or try List of restaurant chains or List of nuclear reactors or List of radio stations in Ohio or List of caves in Slovakia or List of golf courses in Portugal, etc. (Now, before you start typing GOLLY GEE, WP:OTHERSTUFF!! in opposition, note that that guideline states: "In consideration of precedent and consistency, though, identifying articles of the same nature that have been established and continue to exist on Wikipedia may provide extremely important insight into general notability of concepts, levels of notability (what's notable: international, national, regional, state, provincial?), and whether or not a level and type of article should be on Wikipedia." That's why I'm citing other stuff here.)

So, the question to me is whether wineries are a type of item where we think its appropriate to maintain lists (typically by region I would expect), or the type of list we think isn't appropriate, like List of pizza places in New York City or List of petrol stations in Wales. To me, the cultural significance of wine and as a hobby or passion of many suggests winery lists are notable and appropriate for wikipedia. It would be nice if an essay developed out of this AfD to provide guidance on winery lists. (E.g., don't include redlinks for every winery, do include link to individually notable wineries that have individual pages, try to make list manageable in length -- all wineries in U.S. or France would not be usuable in one list). Alternatively if consensus is that such lists shouldn't exist, that guidance should go into WP:WINEGUIDE, an essay which currently suggests these lists should probably not exist, but the talk page suggests may not be a consensus view, hence where we are today. It would nice to have some consensus and some direction so we aren't constantly revisiting this issue.--Milowent (talk) 05:34, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

As an avid wine lover, I certainly understand the romanticism of wine. But, at its core, the realist in me understands that wineries are not that different from pizza shops or petrol stations. They are a business just like any other business under WP:CORP making a product. It is pretty freaking awesome product but still just a product like mustard. We don't have List of mustard producers articles either. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 05:43, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Agne, that is exactly the dilemma I see. Is a winery more like a lighthouse (or List of independent bookstores in the United States), or a mustard manufacturer. The project has made value judgments like this over time, presumably often without any grand plan but just what stuck and what didn't.--Milowent (talk) 05:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a fundamental questions to this dilemma is if the community is willing to give winery articles a "free pass" so to speak on establishing their notability according to WP:CORP? If the community is willing to ascribe wineries to a kind of special place and significances over other businesses (kinda like how we give WP:SCHOOLs and WP:ATHLETEs special significance over other buildings and people), then I can see a more valid reason for having a WP:DIRECTORY of non-notable wineries. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 15:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• So, some of the options seem to be:

(1) State/regional based lists of wineries that are comprehensive -- all wineries may be listed on the theory that the list itself is notable; only some will have their own pages if individually notable.

(2) Allow state/regional based lists of only "notable" wineries.

(3) The issue should be covered by category usage. This will allow automatic access to the list of notable wineries for a region, i.e., those with their own articles.

(4) No lists at all

Thoughts? --Milowent (talk) 16:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

To me, it's partly a question of how a winemaker would qualify to be in such a list; partly of notability.

1. The problem with wine-and-reference-sources, in many countries (not all), is that wine is too systematized. How would we build a list of vineyards of Saumur? Wouldn't we just be following some official listing of winemakers of Saumur, and probably borrowing the list from the local association's website? Would we omit, as that list probably would, anything each winemaker produces that doesn't fit in the appellation categories? But it might be the only notable thing they produce! Since that list omits winemakers of historic interest who have now ceasing producing, would we omit them too? If so, our list would be no better than theirs, and only winemakers currently on good terms with their local associations would be in it. Is that useful? [Added: fr:Saumur (AOC) specifies that there are 312 growers, 187 vintners in this single appellation]
2. The work of the majority of winemakers, in most regions, is doubtfully notable. Italy recently (I'm quoting from Burton Anderson, The wine atlas of Italy, 1990) had 1,200,000 registered vineyards, 340,000 cellars, 700,000 growers. A "free pass" for all of those?

Sorry, that's a very negative response. I would do it via categories, I think. Andrew Dalby 19:13, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This whole AFD discussion was completely confused and I have problems beliving that some participants had read the relevant policies. How is it possible to read WP:LIST to mean that lists of a small selection of the world's non-notable wineries would be encouraged or even tolerated? The list of all non-notable wineries in the world would run into several hundred thousands! I can't encourage anyone to waste their time by adding non-encyclopedic material, such as "phone directories" of all wineries in some state/region/country or other, to Wikipedia, because such material is guaranteed to be deleted sooner or later. I hold List of vineyards and wineries to be one of the most pointless articles in all of Wikipedia, just because of the numbers illustrated by Andew D above, and the complete lack of inclusion criteria other than editors' random whims. Tomas e (talk) 23:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

One missing from the options Milowent posted above: structured lists would work better than standard alphabetical ones (listed by country, structured by region) and could be built from existing categories. It might appear to be a WP:FORK but it actually removes an obstacle from categories – they're not in main namespace – and (strategically speaking) disarms any misguided drive to list all n million wineries on earth.Otherwise I'm very sympathetic to all viewpoints here and agree that notability = article (even a stub + RS) = list qualification. No exceptions. mikaul^talk 01:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Ahem. We have a proposed guideline in the Wikipedia wine project: Wikipedia:Notability (wine topics). The section on lists isn't comprehensive, but generally the consensus so far in WikiProject Wine has not been in favor of indiscriminate lists of wineries. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that a while back, figured we would get to that once this was thrashed out here. If you think it should getting debated there I guess we could move it. While we're on the subject, what we do have in the way of notable French chateaux is already "listed" at Category:Wineries of France. That's basically what a country-based list would look like and I don't see any real value in it beyond moving it into article mainspace. If it was structured by region, OTOH, it would actually serve a purpose beyond basic listing and even be <hushed tones> worth having </hushed tones>. mikaul^talk 03:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree Mick. That structure would give it some encyclopedic value. Not a lot, but some. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 05:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I see that I didn't appreciate the problem of huge useless lists being created, which could occur if lists including individually non-notable wineries are created for entire countries or large regions. (The whole world list? Idiotic!) On the other hand, Maine doesn't apparently have many wineries, nor do offbeat U.S. areas like the Linganore AVA or Yadkin Valley AVA. It was the latter type of list that I was thinking of as potentially being useful to have, though there must be off-wiki compilations of this information as well that could simply be linked to in almost all cases. From a control perspective, allowing some of these lists is going to encourage useless huge ones as well, though.--Milowent (talk) 18:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't bring up the proposed guideline to suggest that this discussion be moved there. I brought it up to reinforce the idea that a list of wineries should be discouraged.

Categories are fine. Category listings aren't articles. Any winery notable enough to warrant an article here would appear in a category listing, and that's well and good, in line with all inclusion criteria. I personally dislike lists as articles, and feel that any list should be relegated to a category whenever possible. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Categories serve a specific purpose, it's true, and as I stated above, like you I don't see any point in a mainspace equivalent in the form of an alphabetical list. However, as we've seen recently, there are a significant number of editors who see the need for list-like navigational aids. The proposal below will provide this list functionality in the form of a summarised overview of notable wineries by country. Structured lists are (arguably) neither lists nor articles; they're basically a kind of illustrated contents page, which in the case of wineries would be organised by region. For this particular topic, with diverse (and frequently obscure) content, I see the outline format providing coherent organisation of an area we currently only cover in a very haphazard and disorganised way. There's also a good chance that this will stall and even reverse the growing proliferation of minor lists of non-notable wineries by establishing a format and criteria that all wineries must conform to. We clearly can't beat 'em so we should pick up the ball and run with it, I think. mikaul^talk 11:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A compromise idea

I think Mick is onto something with the use of outlines and emphasizing structure. I know a big sticking point in the AfD discussion is the inclusion of non-notable wineries in the list which clearly steers the article away from being informational/developmental/navigational into a WP:DIRECTORY. But judging by the behaviors exhibited at List of wineries in the Barossa Valley, some editors do not wish for the articles to be fixed up by removing the red-links (and don't get me started on the WP:POV WP:ADVERT eye sores of "iconic" wines that is still there). My idea would attempt to reach a compromise between the two sides that still maintains the encyclopedic integrity of the mainspace but also can serve the benefit of a development tool for what wineries articles still need to be created.
Anyone can claim that a redlink winery is notable but the proof is in the WP:RS available to create an article that passes WP:CORP. I fret that too many people are misguided into thinking that a winery's mere appearance in a wine guide (such as the Halliday guide used in List of wineries in the Eden Valley) establishes its notability, and therefore want to list every entry. From my perspective, the only fair and unbias route is to list only the wineries whose notability has been established by the creation of an article. Judging from the comments above as well as previous discussions on this page, it seems like this is fairly solid consensus within the Wine Project.
Now as for the development potential for articles on notable wineries that should be created, I suggest doing something similar to what we did with some of the American AVA articles like Talk:Oakville AVA. We created a redlink list on the talk page and then moved the wineries over as they became notable and had an article that passed WP:CORP created. Rather than just list them on the talk page, we should make it a sub-page something like Talk:Outline of notable Australian vineyards/Possibly notable wineries with a note on the talk page (and a hidden note in the mainspace article) explaining that any winery which an editor feels is notable but doesn't yet have an article should be included on this page. This would be a single consolidated area for red links that can serve as a valuable development tool for what winery articles still need to be created and then moved to the outline list. Now, of course, not every winery listed on that sub-page will be notable enough for an article but its inclusion on that sub-page is far less of a WP:NOTDIRECTORY violation than it would if it was in the mainspace. Thoughts? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 06:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It has to be the best way to go. There's no reason not to positively encourage articles on notable wineries and if we insist on proper RS refs it will only do our coverage some good. I can see this really helping us create potentially featurable lists, for example, which means main page coverage we never had. The Oakville AVA article is a decent example of how the redlink tabling might work, in that the talkpage there now lists a few blue ones that could be listed*, one of which redirects to Constellation Brands (how do we deal with redirects?) and one is a typical stub. This stub thing might be an issue. Someone on the Barossa Valley list talkpage suggested a kind of stub-generator on which I've based this:

{{|winerybox|owner = a|name=b|homepage=c}}
The x is a winery in the Barossa Valley.  The winery is owned by y.  Its specialities are z.<ref>WP:RS</ref>

== References ==

{{reflist}}

== external links ==

* weblink to homepage  

[[Category:Barossa Valley winery]]  

{{tl|Barossa Valley winery stub}}

...but is it something to consider, or something to recoil in horror from... I think we should be told. The only real problem I see is ensuring the category members get listed once an article is created. I'd be very keen to see this get off the ground and address the list issue head-on. mikaul^talk 22:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC) *is there some reason why they're not in the article now?

Stubs, by themselves, aren't bad but the example you listed above is one to recoil in horror from. A key component of establishing notability via WP:CORP is the presence of multiple WP:RS that testify to the subject receiving substantial coverage from secondary sources. An editor will need more than one reference citation to establish this. I fret that if we don't draw a hard line on this editors would use wine guides or the winery's own website to create these "one and done" type stubs. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, I see your point. It's the nature of the subject – because of the cultural significance of wine and its many afficionados, to paraphrase an earlier point – that we have always been quite hardline on RS requirements, POV and linkspam, and we should extend that to winery lists, without a doubt. mikaul^talk 11:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Need more opinions at Talk:Israeli wine

It's the Golan Heights issue again. Though this time I think some productive discourse is taking place. There are about 5 editors (including myself) trying to hammer out wording and improvements to the Israeli wine article. Having more objective and unbias, wine oriented view points would be helpful. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Acids in Wine Page Cleanup

Hi all, I've never posted to the Wiki before so please bear with me. I'm a scientist at a winery and there are a number of critical scientific problems with the "Acids in Wine" page. I was thinking about fixing them but I don't have much to put in their place. One of the sections states that the pH determines the color of the anthocyanins and this is flatly wrong. We regularly adjust the pH of a wine with ammonium hydroxide (strong base) and bind it to a solid-phase extraction column for HPLC analysis (to split the wine into individual acids). The pH of the wine doesn't change the color until it gets close to pH 7. Should I feel free to try and edit this with more relevant information? If I don't have published information is it technically irrelevant on the wiki?

Thanks for your time all! —Preceding unsigned comment added by IsotopeC14 (talk • contribs) 22:15, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

The use of published reliable sources is very relevant to Wikipedia. Everything should be cited to a reliable source. Of course you are welcomed to help us improve any wine articles but we do ask that you back you edits by citing them to reliable sources that can be verified. The policy pages of WP:RS, WP:CITE and WP:V have more information. In the meantime, I will take a look at the sources cited in the Acids in wine article to see if the text is accurately conveying the source. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The article "acidity" in Oxford Companion to Wine (OCW) (p. 3 in the 2006 edition) does in principle say what the article acids in wine say, lower pH = redder wine, higher pH = more blue wine. However, it seems the OCW text doesn't differentiate too clearly between immediate effects and medium- and long-term effect, from the acidity's effect regarding stability of the wine against oxidation and so on. If the effect is somehow related to changes in, or binding to, tannins it could possibly take a while for the effect to show. One solution would perhaps be to refocus these phrases more to the effect of acidity on colour stability. Ultimately, our favourite one-stop source OCW is written by a lot of people who have deep technical knowledge, but it's a wine trade/wine appreciation/wine history encyclopedia, not a reference volume for academic oenology or wine chemistry, so when we're into pure wine science it's not the ultimate reliable source. Regards, Tomas e (talk) 23:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

As you state above it "is not a reference for wine chemistry" but the fact is that people looking for pages relating to wine "science" may stumble upon this page, much like I did, since the page title is "Acids in Wine". Acidity is a scientific concept and much of the page implies that the information on the page is quite accurate, yet the source material, "The oxford companion to wine" is clearly in error. Normal pages dealing with science would never site just one source. That in of itself is highly questionable. In our facility in which I run the lab we have produced plenty of pH 4.0 light red wines and of course also make wines that are pH 3.3 that are black-purple in color. If the purpose of the wikipedia is to inform, is it not the responsibility of all involved to ensure that the content of the source material isn't flawed? Thanks all! Isotope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.90.96.21 (talk) 18:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Oxford is guilty of oversimplifying rather than being in outright error. Again, you are welcomed to help improve the text but be sure to cite your work with a reliable source (such as an enology or chemistry text book). The only thing that wouldn't be acceptable if you just put in personal experience or what we would call original research. While your original research maybe 100% correct, it is not verifiable to our readers as if they could walk into you lab and look at your results. We ask for citations to reliable sources because then any reader can get that book or go to that webpage and look at the information for themselves. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Categorization of wine articles, and the "Category:WineS" hierarchy

Fellow wiki-vinos, I've lately been going through articles that have been categorized in Category:Wines (not to be confused with Category:Wine) and its subcategories, and like to explain to you what I've done because at the end there has been a case of objection from another editor (not part of the project as far as I can see), so bear with me despite this being quite long. "Wines" were primarily "by country" categories that have been a parallel set of categories to Category:Wine by country. In principle these categories have been intended for article on individual wines rather than other wine-related subjects. Now, per WP:WINEGUIDE as well as Wikipedia:Notability (wine topics) and the overall Wikipedia policies they are built on, there are rather few instances where it's motivated to write an article on what is really an individual wine (such as the bottle of Domain Maillard Père & Fils Corton-Renardes Grand Cru 2000 I finished off a few days ago - good stuff!) rather than instead writing about the winery, the wine region (this was a Burgundy wine, from the Côte de Beaune subregion), in applicable cases the appellation or other protected designation of origin (Corton (wine) in this case, with the climat Renardes indicated), the grape variety (in this case of course the noble Pinot Noir), and also are not about wine styles (red wine) or other designations (Grand Cru in this case). The remaining cases are mainly those which belong into Category:Wine brands, which I created a few days ago as part of my operation cleanup. By the way, although we have a large influx of articles on wineries, where not all are notable, articles such as Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles Domaine Leflaive (an old version), really on an individual wine, are hardly created any more.

I've had my eyes on this hierarchy for a long time, because it seems that a majority of editors who have put articles there didn't understand the distinction between wine and wines; some national and regional wine article were categorized under "wines" and not "wine", which meant that they weren't visible where they should have been! To the best of my knowledge, there are also no instances of this parallel categorization having ever existed in any of the other major language versions, despite German and French Wikipeda having specific wine projects. We also got questions from frwiki some time ago, because they couldn't really understand our categories when they tried to correct the interwiki links between their and our categories. Thus, "wines" has caused problems, but I haven't seen it being really useful in the way other wine-related categories are.

One of the problems in dealing with the contents of the categories was that it wouldn't be a case of a simple merge of "Category:X wines" into "Category:X wine". No, the categories contained to a large extent of wineries and appellations, but also some wine countries(!), wine regions, wine styles, wine brands and so on. To me, an additional indication that these categories had been misapplied and/or mostly misunderstood. Also, the regular "wine" hierarchy has evolved in the last years with many more regional categories, rather than just national categories, which was the main structure of "wines". This why I've put the cleanup off for quite some time because I couldn't really see how much help a bot could be in dealing with this. Finally I got started with a manual recategorization, which also gave an opportunity to do some assessment and reassessment for this project. In many cases it was a matter of removing WP:Overcategorization rather than performing recategorization to a more suitable category. The largest group of related articles affected were a large number of Bordeaux châteaux (mostly Murgh's work) which were previously found in Category:French wines but now make up the bulk of Category:Bordeaux wine producers.

A while after this work was underway, I could see that the whole wines category could go, rather than just being pruned down, as I initally thought. When the country categories became empty, I tagged them for deletion as empty (this is called Wikipedia:CSD#Categories CSD C1 and involves a four day waiting process), while checking at least once per day if any articles returned to them. Not a single article was returned to the wines categories, and I didn't get a single feedback on my talk page or article talk pages.

Now, just at the end I got some negative feedback from Occuli (talk · contribs). I thought his objections were procedural, since his very first communication to me branded my edits as "abuse", and talked about using WP:CFD instead. Which of course will be done now with Category:Wines since there's a "holdon" to my delete tag. This editor must also have come to the conclusion that I've entered a phase of WP:Vandalism fairly late in Wikipedia career since this editor has asked for administrator intervention in mass-reverting my edits or something similar.

But quite possibly the editor also has objection on substance, i.e., the actual categorization on wine-related articles since he started off re-adding a category to Category:Medieval wines, followed up by saying that "wines" was a perfectly sensible scheme (and specifically pointing me to an edit as of July 2006 saying the same), and then explained that Denominazione di origine controllata not are wine regions, but simply wines, which was an assertion which frankly surprised me.

So what's the conclusion of all this? Well, there's Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_18#Category:Wines which will need input. Then there is also the principle I've tried to explain, not to use the IMHO very unhelpful and uniformative category "wines" also for articles on wine countries, wine regions and subregions, appellations, grape varieties, wine styles, wine brands and a couple of other things which are really the wine subjects that are notable. If my methods (which to me was much more WP:AwfullyBoringWork than WP:BOLD or WP:BRRR) are in question, then really it should mainly be other people who give their views over at e.g. CFD. Quite obviously some knowledge of the subject matter is needed, since the principles of wine classification and labelling, and the fact that these principles vary between countries (with knock-on effects on article structure and notability criteria), isn't everyone's knowledge. Thanks for reading all the way to the end, Tomas e (talk) 23:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Section break

To keep Tomas' epistle in tact :)
Holy cow there is some misguided thinking going on the CfD. I am really struggling not to sound snobbish or condescending trying to explain to Occuli how his comments on wine categorization are not credible and simply do not make sense to anyone with a solid understanding of wine. Of course we don't expect other wiki-editors to be Masters of Wine but his comments on the CfD and other areas shows that he lacks fundamental understandings of what an "individual specific wine" is, much less how it should be categorized. He keeps saying that we need to have a separate category for articles on individual wines (such as the 1998 Ornellaia, Chateau Petrus (wine), and 2005 Quilceda Creek Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon) to distinguish them from the category for the articles on the wineries of Ornellaia, Chateau Petrus and Quilceda Creek Vintners. His entire contention is faulty and yet he steadfast in wanting to apply the standards of categorization for other Wikipedia topics (such as Opera) and jam that square peg in for categorization of wine articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 15:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I have been frustrated many times about the categorisation of wine,wines,wineyards and wineries, tried to sort it out a few times but never figured out what we wanted, since nothing was clearly described and the contents in the categories where inconsistant, I gave up when I realised how much work it would be. What is needed is to describe in detail what goes where (Tomas is doing a good job of starting that above) and then I will help to fix it, if the delete/merge does not happen it does not really matter, since there probably is VERY few instances pages that will go to the contested category. Please write a clear description on the categories what is supposed to be in them, write both incusion criteria and exclusion criteria with examples, put that text in the category (or discuss here first), and then we just change when people use the wrong catergory. What I also would like to have is a category tree, that describes what we have and should have for categories, when I find new articles I often struggle to find the correct categories to put them in. --Stefan ^talk 02:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent idea Stefan! Why don't we start Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/Category tree and hammer out some details on the talk page? If we can come up with something clear and consistent at a project level, it will probably be easier for people without an understanding of wine to see how logically wine articles should be categorized. From the comments on the CfD, it looks like some people are having a hard time distinguishing the difference between individual wines, producers, regions and quality designations. If no one has started the page in a couple hours, I'll take a hack at it. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

• UPDATE: I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/Category tree but ran out of time to continue further. Please take a look at what I've done and tweak away. If we could hammer something consistent and logical out over the next day or two, we could present it to the CfD as a clear presentation of how wine articles should be categorized. I think that would go a long way towards showing the category folks that the Wine Project has a plan and focus for cleaning up our categories. It is not about "circumventing CfD" or whatever, but rather doing something to improve the encyclopedia and make it easier for our readers to find relevant wine articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Sneaky spam or truly notable?

What are your thoughts on 'Best Of' Wine Tourism Awards and Great Wine Capitals Global Network? At the very least, I think the awards article should be merged into the business article since they seem to be intimately linked. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

French and German speakers need to check notability

There are some google hits for Marie-Thérèse Chappaz but (the reliable looking ones at least) mostly appear to be in French and German with google translate not giving much help. If someone who is more familiar with either language can check out a few of these links to see if there is any fodder for a notable article, that would be great. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

She's probably stub-worthy but that's about it. Mildly famous as a Swiss winemaker (are there others more famous, I wonder?) but not notable enough for an article in fr:wp or de:wp; apparently mentioned in the German edition of Johnson's Wine Companion but not AFAICS in the English one; the only RS info of any import appears in an issue of the Swiss version of Le Matin, here. Translating that means getting rid of a load of hype and tasting notes to pick up some raw facts and basic history, not difficult and I guess better than nothing..? mikaul^talk 03:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Several Wine cat renamed proposed at WP:CfD

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_23#Category:Italian_DOCG and the discussion below for proposed renames of Category:Italian DOC and Category:French wine AOCs. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 05:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I can only second that strong recommendation! These nominations aren't even specified to where the user wants to move them - ONMG, I can't believe what I'm reading! If someone would be interested in really improving the categorization of wine-related articles, you would expect that involving this project or checking out reliable sources would be a step in the process. Tomas e (talk) 13:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't look good if there is a rule stating acronyms in category names should be avoided at all costs, but I haven't seen one so far in WP:NCCAT (and as far as otherstuffexists, Category:NATO, Category:BBC, Category:NAC Breda, Category:HIV/AIDS etc. may be just tip of an iceberg). Since being under CfD scrutiny freezes our own efforts to houseclean, I hope there is a quick and painless way to resolve all this. MURGH ^disc. 14:50, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There is one thing I can agree on, and that is that any acronyms used in a category name should be explained on the category page. I noticed that this was not always the case, so I added or improved explanations to some of the Italian and French categories. This should reduce concerns for non-wine-savvy editors regarding the use of acronyms, I hope. I'm sure there's more that could be done in the area of adding explanations, if we would be able to concentrate on optimizing the category structure. Tomas e (talk) 15:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl apparently doesn't think very highly of us

In a recent interview with the wine writer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the author of the recently released book Drink This: Wine Made Simple, had this to say about researching wine on the internet.

“ On researching the book: “One of the things that I came across was how useless the Internet is. It’s a hard place to learn anything about anything, let’s say you wanted to learn about Champagne and you went to Wikipedia, you would know even less.” ”

Considering the litany of lengthy and illustrated Champagne related articles (some of which are listed Champagne), I don't think she did very thorough research. While Wikipedia is certainly not perfect, I think our efforts and articles are worth a little more than that passive dismissal. I wrote the Star Tribune writer about this and will see if he responds. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 23:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

In the Star Trib Q&A, Moskowitz Grumdahl doesn't quite convey the brightest of impressions at any rate. James Beard nominee, eh? So, does she think our references aren't up to snuff? MURGH ^disc. 23:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm really not sure. My suspicion is that she really didn't do any research here. She may have glanced at some of our Wikipedia pages 3 or 4 years ago (before this project was really active) and is still operating under the same impression of our coverage from back then. That said, reading some of the other reviews available on her book it looks like it covers very entry level wine knowledge on varietals and wine tasting in general. While I haven't read the book, I wouldn't be surprised if the coverage here is greater or equal than what a reader would be getting after paying $18 or so for her book. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 00:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)