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An Introduction to Vintage Assessments by Gilberto Bojaca
Tasting and sharing information has been a life-long passion for Michael Vaughan a Toronto-born economist, teacher, journalist and owner of Michael's Mussels (1980-1998). As a consumer wine advocate, he developed this not-for-profit website to share his reviews on wines and spirits for new LCBO VINTAGES releases.
Vintage Assessments was first published in 1990 for the Sommelier Guild of Canada at George Brown College. Prior to the pandemic, he had personally tasted every Vintages release at weekly tastings in the LCBO's head office Toronto lab. Today only limited number of releases are personally assessed and made available to all visitors.
The paywall-free website database currently provides readers with 75,000+ detailed linked releases.
For consistency, all tasting notes are based on the ISO certified wine tasting glass. Until recently up to 7,000+ bottles were assessed annually. These unpaid-for & unsolicited reviews are posted for fellow wine lovers on his website which currently receives up to 4,000+ individual visitors daily.
An internationally-accredited wine judge & founding director of the Society of Wine Educators at University of California (Davis campus), Michael is one of Canada’s leading wine critics. For 9 years he was the award-winning weekly columnist at the National Post. Before that he was the national wine columnist at the Globe & Mail and Financial Times of Canada along with Toronto Life Magazine.
He has traveled extensively judging at numerous international competitions - including the California State Fair, Vinexpo Bordeaux, VinItaly, South Africa's VERITAS & ABSA Top Ten Pinotage, Argentina's Vinos Los Andes, etc. His most recent judgings were the Concours Mondial du Sauvignon and Concours Mondial de Bruxelles.
All 400+ weekly National Post features are archived on this website. A former economics professor at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) he holds a UofT PhD in international trade theory.
He is also involved with various fund-raising activities and in 2021 donated 2,500 bottles of curated & controlled-temperature stored Canadian wines from his personal collection to Brock University's CCOVI Canadian Wine Library. He has supported the Scarborough Health Network Foundation with various donations and appears and donates wines at various tasting events, including CAPS, Dymon Wine Cellar, Toronto Winetasters, Deppaneur, etc.
As the LCBO no longer permits certified wine writers to taste upcoming releases, only a limited number of biweekly wines are currently being reviewed. The website offers linked pdfs of Vintages Release Catalogues plus unique linked Release Summaries (with case numbers & agent id) along wrth new discoveries from judgings & tasting events from around the world. For more information email mbv@uniserve.com