Reviews For In Vino Veritas
Name: Flipinpenname reviewed Epilogue on Jul 25, 2012 10:24 am
i really like this story. its really cute.

Author's Response: Thank you! :)
Name: GoldenFawkes reviewed IV. Fermentation on Jan 28, 2010 11:41 pm
Oh, I love this Narcissa.

Author's Response: Thank you!
Name: Flipinpenname reviewed Epilogue on Dec 03, 2009 06:51 pm
this story always makes me smile. haha.

Author's Response: Thanks! I'm glad you like it!
Name: Tonks3255 reviewed Epilogue on Nov 30, 2009 04:10 pm
Well written story, honestly. Wonderful wine comparisons.
Made me eager to become legal so I can learn to appreciate wine.

Author's Response: Thank you! I'm glad you liked it! And I hope you end up appreciating wine (when you're old enough, of course)! :)
Name: bere reviewed I. Variety on Oct 26, 2009 09:23 pm
You mentioned that you didn't know if they sold Thunderbird in the UK so I thought I'd post this little tidbit from Wikipedia. Someone may have already sent this to you, but it just caught my eye.

"Thunderbird was once marketed in the United Kingdom as "The California Aperitif.". The 1950s radio jingle that promoted Thunderbird had a song that sang, "What's the word? / Thunderbird / How's it sold? / Good and cold / What's the jive? / Bird's alive / What's the price? / Thirty twice.""

Author's Response: "The California Aperitif"? That's hilarious! Thanks for letting me know! :)
Name: Nutmeg44 reviewed Epilogue on Oct 13, 2009 12:38 am
i love this story. the wine info is great, ive always had an interest in wine. and i love any D/G fic where gnny isnt simpering after draco. excellent work

Author's Response: Thank you very much!
Name: majji reviewed Epilogue on Nov 25, 2008 02:35 pm
I've seen the Veuve Clicquot champagne house in Reims! very nice choice for the champagne too. Although I am disappointed about the lack of mention of Ontario ice wines. :(.
Anyway, I loved your analogy, and the flow of your story. I also really enjoyed your Draco. You kept him in character rather nicely. Good job.

Author's Response: I'm glad you enjoyed the story! I'm sorry I didn't include your favorite--I drink much less sweet wine than dry, so dessert wines aren't really in the center of my wine radar. I have had one or two Ontario ice wines, though, and they were really good. Thanks for reading and for the review!
Name: silver rose reviewed I. Variety on Nov 10, 2008 01:07 pm
I've read this story a million times already and it still manages to make me giddy. thanks so much for it. I love the notes at the end of each chapter.

Author's Response:

Thank you! I'm glad that you enjoy it so much!

Name: The Quibbler Awards reviewed I. Variety on Aug 05, 2008 10:17 am
Congrats! Your story "In Vino Veritas" was nominated for Best Het and Best Fanon at The Quibbler Awards. Before your story can be considered a nominee, though, we need your permission. Please contact us on our site or email us!

The Quibbler Awards
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quibbler[at]this-paradise[dot]com
Name: Periodic-Brilliance reviewed Epilogue on Jun 19, 2008 11:03 am
Lovely story. It's always nice when Draco realises he's been a doofus.

P.S. What's your take on ice wine?

Author's Response:

Thank you! Yes, I love to see Draco come to terms with his own shortcomings!

Ice wine can be absolutely spectacularly good. I don't really drink dessert wines very often, just because I don't have that huge of a sweet tooth, but there's nothing that quite compares to ice wine, so I will indulge now and then!

Name: Amanda Mancini reviewed VII. The Finish on Jun 06, 2008 07:02 am
just read this one again. I think i do every 4 months. Did I say that at my last review? I love it and it's still one of my top 5.

Author's Response: Hello again! It's really nice to hear that you still like the story after so many readings! Thanks for letting me know!
Name: catnipH reviewed Epilogue on Jun 05, 2008 02:17 am
Well now that I'm finished I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the whole read. It was an intelligent story; well written with a good plot line and I liked how Draco grew and lost some of his prejudices throughout.

I was particularly impressed with Pansy's morals at not sleeping with attached men and I liked the fact that she didn't get all clingy over Draco like in a lot of stories.
I also loved the fact that we didn't find out until the end that Ginny was using Oliver to make Draco jealous - I thought that you kept that nugget of information well hidden from us readers and it worked well.

I have to say that my poor sister suffered when she was pregnant with her babe recently - at the time we were going to quite a few nice restaurants and she always looked longingly at the lovely wines.

I'm off now to find out if you have any more stories I can read. I'm hoping so...
:)

Author's Response: Thank you very much! I've written quite a few stories, so I hope you can find something else that you like. Thanks for the reviews!
Name: catnipH reviewed VI. Clarification on Jun 05, 2008 01:24 am
Hello - absolutely loving the story so far... and enjoying the wine lessons too - I adore wine but am not half as well educated as you!

Possibly someone's told you already - and if so sorry for repeating. But, we do have thunderbird in the UK; we used to anyway - my sister used to drink it when she was young but I'm 9 years younger than her and have yet to see a bottle for sale.

Also (as far as I'm aware from my social circle anyway!) we brits tend to say corked rather than corky...
Although I know both are acceptable - I just wondered if Draco may have said corked instead... (not that it bothers me much, I'm still enamored with the story. I just wanted to share the info. Now I've said corked and corky too much so they both look wrong!)

Anyway - I'm going to continue reading now!

Author's Response: Thanks for the information! Nobody has told me either of those things, so it's nice to know. If I had known of the British propensity for "corked" over "corky", I would definitely written it that way. And it's nice to know that we Americans aren't the only ones to sell cheap wine! Anyway, thanks again, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!
Name: Clorinda reviewed Epilogue on Apr 05, 2008 01:24 am
“It isn’t always a good idea to judge a wine by what’s on its label. Sometimes… sometimes you need to taste it first.”

Which proves that wine and DG DO go together.

Distinctly different, interesting, refreshing, and fast-paced enough, not at all bogged down by an author's over-zealousness for their own passion. I know zilch about tea-tasting, let alone wine, and you still didn't make me feel at sea. Nuggets of well-put information instead of OVER-LOAD, and I can perfectly picture Draco fitting into the carpet slippers and a terrycloth-robe of a connoisseur: goes very well with the image fanon (DG in particular) has built of him.

And of course, one thanks God that this story respects the fact that Draco's father wasn't a saint, but refrains from trotting out sob-stories or ideology-glorification or even patricide. And even as a slightly vacuous "society-woman," Narcissa had depth (as much as possible) and feeling, and wasn't an utter and complete snob (Chapter six: Clarification.) My point is that I absolutely adored and admired how you characterised the Infamous Malfoy Family.

However, the first jarring note in the flow of the story is your fondness (in addition to wine and DG?) for proper nouns and repudiation of pronouns. (Bah! Who needs 'em indeed?) But seriously, it does make the reading a funny, bumpy experience.

Not being able to remember a girl's name, but her association with grapes, definitely shows where Master Malfoy's priorities lie. Playboy definitely, but this gives even that a new twist. (I wonder if he doesn't dream of literally uncorking a bottle to have a girl flow out into his wineglass, but ookkaaay, getting incoherent here…)

Distinctly liked your description of Ginny, and finally there's a method of Floo travel that respects people's privacy! The fact that Ginny didn't explode like a volcano the second she saw him or even heard his "secret weapon" of a victory-assuring taunt, was rather telling. That despite her grubby clothes, she's still more mature than him, his wealth and his worldliness. Her retort is one for the History Books of Cutely Intelligent Comebacks.

And GASP! Draco *didn't* go ga-ga over her! He actually debunked her as cheap "plonk" the second he saw her instead of grudgingly falling into love-at-first-sight!! ::swoons::

::jerks awake before anyone can bring out smelling salts::

The Harvest Moon Gala and the St. Jerome Emiliani Orphanage for Young Witches and Wizards and Alethia Greengrass were a nice touch. It's refreshing to have fanfiction writers stick a toe out of the "lakshman rekha" of JKR's world.

The description of Ginny's wine-tasting technique and others' cigarette-finishing ones was brilliant! That Ginny walked away from him without a second glance underscores the point about their characteristics. In canon, Draco has always been portrayed as a petty sort of snotty bullying toerag, and its strange how DG fanon (glorifying Draco and giving him dimensions at the same time) barely deviates from the real thing. Using dancing as an excuse to ogle Ginny while pretending to "plot" really made me laugh; (snide as it sounds) Draco's comicality is a plus point in this story.

Claudia's poor luck at gambling was deliciously symbolic. And little Ginnys have wicked eyebrows it seems!

And of course, Ginny has to be a wine-taster.

Does Draco even live at home? Still, Theodore Nott's predicament was hilarious. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what's a Fwooper?

Also, call me racist/discriminatory/insert-appropriate-label-here, but Amber's concern about her "chi" made me grin. That's one Americanism down pat.

"Weasley? An expert on wine? And at his favorite restaurant, no less? That was unacceptable."

I could perfectly imagine chibi-Draco leaping up and down and breathing fire. Intensified, of course, when Ginny turned the tables on him. Their Meaningful Silent Look skills more than made up for their lack of conversation skills, and Amber's bad taste in wine was an excellent plot device.

"He figured that if he was going to be forced to drink something he didn’t want, it might well be cheap. Now if he could only say the same thing about Amber…"

Bang on. ::snickers evilly like a demented goblin:: By far, "First Crush" was my favourite chapter, not to mention the politics behind the titling.

Sometimes, however, it seems as if Draco does nothing but drink, taste and sleep with wine. (When the time comes that he's so taken with Ginny that he can't stand anyone less, you mention that he equates somewhat intelligent conversation with a discussion of wine.)

Pansy Parkinson's snideness was an excellent side-dish. Her characterisation was a nice change from the stereotype (sometimes a mindless slut, sometimes the intelligent psychotic ex-girlfriend, and — oddly enough — once a sex guru) and also from the impression you left the reader with in the beginning (that her snide asides served as spice to the conversation, but — implicitly — got very tedious very fast.)

Mez. Warrington's shoes sound cool!

"It was only then that Draco realized that they hadn’t asked if he wanted red or white wine. He would have preferred red, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue anymore, so for once in his life, he kept his mouth shut." — 't'was perfectly brilliant.

On a personal note, I wished the story had ended with "The Finish." The past-midnight conversation was hilarious: Draco getting tongue-tied and Ginny drawing all the wrong conclusions (especially about her resembling his mother.) To be expected that Ginny is unclassifiable, but that cliché is to be preferred to all others. In fact, you just taught me (aside from judging by covers and labels) that some clichés are actually quite nice…

The fact that Ginny *wasn't* having Oliver toot her tune for the express purpose of making Draco jealous (whose appearance at Hex she had divined) was certainly NOT a cliché.

The wines signifying and symbolising snippets of their life were really good, and the epilogue really wasn't that corny. Draco's love for wine seems to be turning into obsession, but at least, not a vice. Or rather, not enough to drink when Ginny can't. Her "We'll manage" comment was rather suspicious; to me, it seemed like she was (metaphorically) shaking her head sadly for his plight.

One discrepancy has stuck with me until the end, though: Ginny does live at Edgerton Arms, and the only reason Draco saw her in grubby clothes was because she disliked getting good robes dirty at work. But Ginny told him earlier that she returned to Britain and came down to London only because Chez Henri needed a sommelier, and when he saw her at Chez Henri, she was dressed elegantly and neatly.

Is there a jigsaw piece I've missed? Something obvious overlooked?

But over and above, I reiterate all that I've said: concise, well-paced, refreshing, and old clichés revisited and refurbished. The title was very apt.

Author's Response:

Wow. Thank you so much for the very detailed review! I'm glad that you enjoyed the story so much. I'll try to respond to your questions and concerns as thoughtfully as you laid them out.

First of all, yes, I feel strongly about using proper nouns the first time I refer to a character in a paragraph (I only have one story where I break this rule, but that's only because I don't use proper nouns at all as a matter of style in that one). I find that authors who tend to leave out proper nouns because they assume the reader knows who they are talking about tend to assume that the reader understands everything else they are thinking too. This isn't always true, of course, but essential details tend to be left out when the author isn't careful to keep the reader's perspective in mind. I try very hard not to fall into that trap.

Draco does do other things besides drink wine (like work!), but they are pretty boring in comparison, at least to him, and probably to the reader as well.

I thought about ending the story where you suggested, but decided it would be a bit too abrupt. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to show that Draco had the potential to become obsessed with something other than wine as well. :)

In answer to your last question, yes, there is something you missed, but it was only mentioned in passing, I think, so that's not overly surprising. When Draco runs into Ginny outside the Edgerton Arms, she had just returned from a day of working in the vineyards in France (helping the family that had taught her the business), not from a day of being a sommelier. She of course dresses appropriately for the job, whatever it is.

Once again, thank you very much for the wonderful review. I very much appreciate the time you took to write it!

Name: cannibalbox reviewed Epilogue on Feb 09, 2008 12:44 am
Thank you very very much for writing this story. Your enthusiasm for wine is almost infectious; but alas, myself nearing one and twenty I don't have much of a stomach for alcohol. But I'm sated with this story! Reading it at least made me experience some form of tasting, even if it's in the mind. I still thank you. I've never learned so much from a story (aside from historical and sci-fi novels) and enjoyed it, this did just the trick.

And I very much enjoyed Ginny's genius and Draco's epiphany. :D

Author's Response: Thank you! I'm glad that you enjoyed the story, even if you can't quite relate to the wine drinking yet. I feel like there's always room to learn something--why not in fan fic? Thanks for the review!
Name: Shaneanme reviewed I. Variety on Jan 17, 2008 02:40 am
I think you are a prolific writer and I really enjoyed reading about the various types of wine. However I'm someone who prefers wine that is not dry which goes to say I'm probably not in a position to presume to tell you how great your story is! I really enjoyed it!

Author's Response:

I'm glad that you enjoyed it, whatever kind of wine you like! Thanks for reading and for the review!

Name: Amanda Mancini reviewed III. First Crush on Nov 26, 2007 09:18 am
I'm an Asti Spoumante kind if girl - what would Draco say to that?

Author's Response: Hm. I would guess that early in the story, he would turn up his nose, but by the end, he would just shrug his shoulders and leave you to it. Thanks for reading!
Name: Amanda Mancini reviewed I. Variety on Nov 26, 2007 09:11 am
I'm rereading this GEM!!!! and adding it to my faves list. This fic is in my top 5 - and I've been reading DG Fanfdom since 2002.

Author's Response: I'm thrilled that you like the story so much. Thanks for commenting!
Name: Eleoopy reviewed Epilogue on Oct 28, 2007 11:55 am
I LOVE THIS story.  Thank you for all the tips & wine lessons in this story!!!!  Definitely write more!


Author's Response: I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was fun to put all the wine tips in--that's as big a hobby as D/G is! I will be writing more--look for a new story to begin soon. :)
Name: distel reviewed VII. The Finish on Oct 25, 2007 10:25 am
*claps* a wonderful and lovely story to end a peaceful evening. It was interesting and it makes me smile to see more people like wine ANd appreciate everything else about the topic.

Thank you :)

Author's Response:  Your're welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed the story! It's always nice to hear from other people who also like wine. :)
Name: tinamarie reviewed III. First Crush on Oct 18, 2007 12:55 pm
Not only do I love the story I especially love your knowledge of wines! I just recently started drinking wine and I love learning about wine as a whole.

Author's Response: I'm glad you enjoyed both parts! I hope you have as much fun with drinking wine as I do!
Name: J reviewed Epilogue on Jul 09, 2007 05:11 am
I would really enjoy dinner with Draco if it means getting that sort of wine! Tee hee, we regularly have tastings of 20 year old wines from our cellar and it is sooo much fun! it's worth keeping it to drink it later. Anyway, enough about my wine and more about your fic. Sorry, I got taken back to the last time we had an d'yquem; and Veuve kind of reminds me of Chanel no 5 of champagne. Anyway! That fic was so delightful, it's now on my fav list, and I know I'll come back to it. While it maye be fluff of sorts, you write really beautifully, and I particularly like your observations on things and people. And your characterisation of Ginny is very appealing. This fic was so much fun!

Author's Response: It sounds like your wine cellar is much more impressive than mine! Unfortunately, I have never had the chance to taste many of the wines I wrote about. Hopefully I will some day, though. I'm glad you enjoyed the story as well as the wine references. Thank you very much for reading and for the review!
Name: Natalie reviewed Epilogue on Jul 03, 2007 05:01 am
Wow, that was great! And I love how the conclusion of each chapter held wine tips and interesting facts. Being underage, I knew very little of it, but my grandfather and dad like to taste wine, and my uncle holds a small collection. I love how the story all fit together nicely and everything. I'm voting for you on the dotmoon.net awards. Great job once again!

Author's Response: Thank you very much! I'm particularly happy that you enjoyed the information about wine--when I wrote the story, I worried that people who aren't as into it as I am would find them boring. Thanks again for the review and also for the vote!
Name: beth reviewed IV. Fermentation on Jan 25, 2007 12:09 pm
oh my, did the guys in california pay you for that? haha. (silly joke)

Author's Response: Alas, no. I'm no richer now than I was before writing the story. Indeed, I may be poorer for all the wine I have bought. Thanks for the comment.
Name: Wowerz reviewed Epilogue on Jan 14, 2007 10:21 am
Wow, amazing. Raelly really good!

Author's Response: Thank you!
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