For readers

What this is

barberry.io is a wine notebook I keep, slowly. It started as a place to remember what I drank and what I thought of it, and it grew from there. These days it holds tasting notes, reports from blind tastings and dinners, sketches of producers I keep coming back to, and the occasional digression. There is no schedule. Things appear when I have something worth writing down.

What you'll find here

The home page is a feed of the most recent things — that's usually the easiest way in. Beyond it, the site has a few main sections:

• Posts — the journal. Tasting reports, event write-ups, the occasional longer piece. Best if you'd rather read than browse.
• Wines — every bottle that's been written about, searchable and filterable. Useful if you're hunting for something specific or curious about the kinds of wines we drink.
• Producers — the people behind the bottles. Worth a look if a name keeps catching your eye and you want to read more.
• Events — past tastings, scored and annotated. This is where the community side of the site lives.
• Calendar — what's coming up. Open tastings, dinners, anything you might want to join.

How to read the scoring

Scores here are personal. There is no Parker scale, no 100-point ladder of authority. A wine gets a number on a five-point scale (with two decimal places of precision) that reflects how much the taster actually liked it on the night, with the room and the food and the company taken into account.

If you think in 100-point terms, the conversion is straightforward: multiply the score by ten and add fifty. A 3.5 is an 85, a 4.0 is a 90, a 5.0 is a 100. Treat the numbers as a rough sketch — the words around them are usually more honest, and a low score from someone who knows the style they're tasting tells you something different than one from someone who doesn't.

How to find a specific wine or producer

The search boxes on /wines and /producers take name fragments and accents in stride, so a half-remembered grape or village is usually enough. The posts page accepts tag filters if you'd like to narrow things down to a region, a style, or a producer. The catalogue is small enough that browsing often beats searching.

Want to do more than read?

There is more to the site than reading. Some people show up as convives — regular tasters whose scores get folded into event reports. Others contribute notes, co-author posts, or host tastings of their own. Each of those roles has its own guide, and they'll land here as the site grows. If any of it sounds appealing, register an account and we'll figure out the rest from there. Registration is reviewed by hand, so it may take a day or two before you hear back.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections, or a wine you think I should try? Drop me a line or find me on Telegram.