Deviant Guide

To make sure that we’re headed in the right direction to find something different, I came up with the different ways in which a wine (or other beverage) could be reviewed:

  • Is the flavor or aroma of the beverage showing a characteristic not typically found/noticed?
  • Is the label attractive or appealing in some manner away from the industry standard?
  • If a tasting room is available for a particular company or brand, does it somehow look different from the rest in their region?
  • In the wine arena, are we looking at a varietal that isn’t talked about as much as the others?

I also thought it might also be nice to have a scale to identify it’s “drinkability” factor. I’m not talking about if it’s properly aged. I’m talking hedonistic style. This is a scale that I created along with a few pals from a group I ran for a while, but I’ve updated the translations of each point a bit. And so, a primer was born:

Hedonistic Score
1 – Why did they bother bottling/making this?!?
2 – Pretty disappointing performance a.k.a. “What happened?”
3 – Average bottle, but I’m still left wishing for a certain something…
4 – Okay, we’ve got some magic happening. I’d be happy drinking this for the evening.
5 – Aaaand, I’ll take 2 more bottles for now, please!

Now, let’s talk bonus round.
In the event I’m able to review wines (or other beverages) at home, versus “out in the field”, I’ll be testing that bottle to see if it can still taste good after 24- and 48- hours. Why? Because although it might get a high hedonistic score, it might not fare so well in the longevity department. And this, my friends, is where single folks like you and I get in trouble.

For many of us (like me), we can’t drink a whole bottle by ourselves and still be ready to function for [insert daytime activity here] the next day. We want to know that if we open a darn bottle, that it’ll still be good the next evening when we get back to it! And I’m telling you…there’s next to no one giving us this kind of information out among the masses of companies and people providing their scores and opinions. So, I’ll be sure to provide that 24- and 48- hour report whenever possible so you have an idea of what you’re looking at when you come home the next night.

Hey, if we’re gonna be Deviants, we need to take a different approach than most out there, right? Right.