WHEN one first starts buying wine, particularly when building up a personal collection, one quickly learns that the two principal considerations - apart from price, of course - are names of desirable and favourite wines and vintage evaluations. Listing one's favourite wines is easier, compiled from one's drinking experience. Vintage evaluations are learnt from browsing wine pages on the Internet, and ratings from drinking sessions and discussions with fellow wine lovers.

That is today. But 30 years ago, there was no Internet. And there were few reasonably experienced wine drinkers, let alone wine lovers, in one's community - Singapore. There was only the Decanter magazine, thank goodness, and opportunely at the time in 1983, Robert Parker burst onto the scene with his Robert Parker Wine Advocate wine magazine. The latter, in particular, with its 100-point scoring of wine quality, was a godsend and avidly devoured.

Since then, one has got a little more knowledgeable, a little wiser and more critical about accepting printed evaluations and scoring as gospel truth. One learns to reach out to wider sources instead of only one or two sources. And you learn which source is the more neutral in terms of personal recommendations, and what the biases of individual sources are. And if you read French - which one does not, sadly - there are French wine magazines and Internet sources to access.