Morris: Feedback to winery reviews are rare

Anyone familiar with the wineries of the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail has read the sentiments of Roger Morris, who has been writing about wines for a number of publications for years and who manages a blog called Been There Tasted That.

I had a lengthy conversation with Moris the other day, most of which I plan to post later. But I was curious what kind of reaction he got from wineries when he was even a bit critical. A review of Dove Valley Winery in Rising Sun, Md., that he wrote for the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal pointed out that the year-old winery needed to improve its wine if it hoped to compete with those around it. Unfortunately, those stories only stay online for seven days before the news operation charges for them, so I can't link to it. Nonetheless, Morris did admit he felt compelled to include that in his review.

"Usually most of the things that somebody has said, it's usually a matter of interpretation," he said Thursday by phone. "I don't get much feedback at all. First of all, unlike film criticism, which I did when I was very, very young, I don't have to review everything. So I think that most wine people out there, unless they’re slaves to wine ratings, they’re more interested in me saying 'Hey, here’s something that’s interesting you might want to think about, or here’s something that you may want to try or here's someplace you may want to go.' I thought that when I did Dove Valley though that I thought while I was writing about it that I had to sort of let my readers know what I thought they were going to get. Just basically nice, simple wines that pretty much taste the same from one to the other."