Winebits 833: Anthony Dias Blue, AI, back labels

This week’s wine news: Legendary wine writer Anthony Dias Blue dies, plus another attempt at AI wine tasting and back label writing advice

• Anthony Dias Blue dies: Blue, perhaps the most important writer of his time, died on Christmas Day. He was 82. Blue was the Wine & Spirits Editor of Bon Appétit, co-founded The Tasting Panel, was an award-winning radio host, and helped start the . How big was Blue? I was talking to a Big Wine marketer at an important wine event in Dallas, and the marketer stopped in the middle of our conversation and said, “Sorry. There’s Andy Blue. I need to go say hello.”

• AI tasting: Yet another group of researchers say they’ve figured out how to teach a computer to taste wine. This time, they used tasting notes from the Vivino app, combined with the results from a consumer tasting panel. Said one researcher: “The dimension of flavour that we created in the model provides us with information about which wines are similar in taste and which are not.” The catch, of course, is the idea of “similar wines” — one can argue that even chardonnays aren’t particularly similar in taste, let alone chardonnay and sauvignon blanc.

• Better back labels: Finally, just as the blog is ending, a marketer offers practical advice for writing a back label. First and foremost, don’t use jargon or terms most consumers don’t understand, like malolactic fermentation or salinity. “While no one is asking you to be Einstein, the message holds: don’t get lost in the details, pick words that make sense to as large an audience as possible, and keep it simple.” The saddest bit about this? That wineries need to be told these things.