8 Comments

I would add a choice to your poll: Reliably okay. I've never had a bad one, or a great one. For the price, it'll work with a cheeseburger.

Expand full comment

Ah yeah, would have been a good extra choice 😂. Definitely enjoyed all of these well enough with food, but given how much variation in the flavor profiles we got from these ones, holding out hope we'll eventually find one that really blows us away with or without. In the meantime, we can always count on Tuscany!

Expand full comment

This is another grape that I don't know much about so I'm hesitant about having an opinion. I've never been offended by the wines I've tried...but I also haven't tried enough quality wines showing typicity to be able to identify it blind. By and large, I quite like how easy going and simpler these wines have been. They're food friendly and facilitate rather than dominate conversations. Honestly, I kinda want more of this sort of thing on my shelf.

Expand full comment

Yeah I think they have a place in the wine eco-system for sure! Before writing this post my (Isaac's) experience with Nero was fairly limited, mostly just tasting it at restaurants and maybe a handful of instances grabbing a bottle from a wine shop, but never had anything particularly memorable in a positive or negative direction. Our main takeaway after tasting through some readily available bottles was that re: value reds from Italy, you can probably do better at the same price point (even for food pairing). Anyway needless to say that's subjective, and of course the best way to figure it out for anyone is going to be to taste as many different wines as possible! 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷

Expand full comment

I'm with Joaquin here - simple, light, and fruity is a far cry from "plonk", I feel like that's an overreach. When you're in the mood for simple but still gentle even with the fruit flavors, Nero's your grape. I like that your scroing system is opening up lower ends of the 100 point scoring system, but that means scores in the 70's is still pretty high, all things considered. Let's save "plonk" for the truly failing grades.

Expand full comment

Haha you're absolutely right, "plonk" is a little sensationalized language there, but it starts a conversation! And totally agree, I even still have some trouble separating my old impressions of what a 70 means when writing these reviews because I worry that people will misinterpret them, especially if they haven't seen our breakdown of the system we're using. Anyway, none of these deserved failing grades - I look back at how we reviewed some mass market wines I truly can't stand (ones I would argue deserve the title of plonk) before implementing this system and I think we may have even scored them higher 😬. Living and learning! 🥂

Expand full comment

I mean, according to the standard 100-point system, a 70-something score is essentially fruit-flavored vinegar. Which is stupid, but that's absolutely how we're all trained to read it. You might want to add a link to your own scoring system breakdown right under "AND NOW FOR THE REVIEWS [divider] "READ HOW OUR SCORING SYSTEM WORKS - IT'S NOT YOUR DADDY'S 100 POINT SYSTEM!" [divider] at the top of every review section.

Expand full comment

Great suggestion!

Expand full comment