I taste a lot of New York wine. I mean a LOT of New York wine.

In the past, I’ve only posted a small sampling of these wines, mostly because I don’t like to write one-paragraph reviews that only offer the smells and flavors of the wine. I like to provide a little history, a little context.

Where does the wine fit into similar wines in the region? How are the growing conditions of the vintage displayed in the wine? What foods did or would I enjoy with it? These types of reviews take a lot more time to write than I seem to have lately — at least if we’re talking about doing them for every single wine that crosses my lips.

On the other hand, I’d really like to be able to tell you about more of the wines I’m tasting. I get a lot of emails "Saw your review on Winery A’s merlot, have you tried their cab franc?" In most cases, yes I have…but I just haven’t published reviews. I can also be somewhat arbitrary when I pick wines to publish reviews for.

So, I’m going to start publishing more reviews here, even if they are a bit scaled down and largely comprised of my tasting notes. I think it’s important to give a fuller picture of the state’s wines.

I’m absolutely not looking to become the Robert Parker of New York wine however, so I’ll never resort to the "smells, flavors, score" mentality.