Everyone's Blogging

Blogging is getting more and more popular, more people are blogging everyday, and today I note that the Aldi wine buyer has started a wine blog on the Aldi website - it has to be said that from the two entried made so far it's not going to be a blog I'm going to add to my daily reading list - Aldi's wine are indeed exceptionally well priced - and he goes into some detail about what makes a wine more expensive - and that he tries to make every 50p count - but at the end of the day he's talking about £3 wines which aren't the most interesting in the world. If you are interested check out www.aldi.co.uk for the blog.

Wine Blog Wednesday

After my recent foray into Wine Blog Wednesday last week, the next event has been released - though to be fair I'm not sure exactly whether I'll be partaking or not. Wine Blog Wednesday 31 is a call for the blogging community to "think outside the bottle".

The host for March's event is perhaps unsuprising - boxwines.org, and the full theme is box wines & non-traditional packaging”. For the UK, this could prove something of a challenge, all the wine I've seen in a bix has been cheap and uninspiring wine, which frankly given my current lack of spondoolies means I'm unlikely to spend over £10 on something I'm not terribly keen to have. Having said that, should I walk into a wine shop and see a can or something else that looks interesting and isn't going to cost the earth then I'm game.

Way back in December 2005 I reported on the sparkling wine in a can from Coppola/Niebaum named after the film directors daughter Sophia - avaialable in a 4 pack I'd give that a try without a doubt - it's just a shame I can only find it in the US!

Labels on the site

As you may have noticed there are now just a few labels attached to posts to help you sort through past tasting notes etc. etc. This is probably going to take a little bit of time so please bear with me, in the meantime I'm also adding more and more sites to the links section as I not only discover more and more sites, but also as I revisit old sites which are now beginning to go through upgrades. One thing I have noticed in the last few days is the large number of people who right now are going about upgrading their blog interface - these are more than often the stallwarts of the wine blogging world who have not only been around for a while but have inspired many of us. Jamie Goode over at Wine Anorak is one who has just made the leap to blogger software.

Tip Jar

Setting up the new site is beginning to cost me hard cash, in fact to the point where I now don't have any money for wine! Eeek - how scary! So if you appreciate this site, and are looking forward to the new site, perhaps think about donating a few pence to the cause - remember I can't make a profit so no money will actually go in my pocket - but will go towards making the new site as good as it possibly can be. Just hit the donation button and put a few pence down - if you want to that is!

Inexpensive Wines

Ok, so it's all very well drinking wonderful wines that cost the earth, but for most of us mere mortals we simply don't have that amount of money to spend on wine all that often. So, either we cut back and drink one lovely bottle of wine every month or two, or we have to cut the bottle price somehow. The problem of course is that once you get a taste for something really decent - drinking that £5 chilean merlot reduced to £3 somehow doesn't exactly excite - in fact it's almost likely to make you give up the juice! What is there out there for less than £10 that's worth drinking? Over on the Superplonk forum they used to make a speciality of this, but sadly it's all gone quiet and we haven't had much to recommend for a long while - now we're not talking special offers here - we're talking everyday, full retail price - and I'm not expecting a bottle of Cheval Blanc for £7 to appear either (although that would be wonderful) so get your thinking caps on, your taste buds attuned and join me as I try and find wines that are worth drinking again and again for less that £10.

Wine Knowledge Game

Test your wine knowledge at this fun, but also quite testing game, challenging you on your knowledge of the 1855 classification, the appelations and classifications of Burgundy, grape varieties and producing regions - leave your scores as comments below.

Wine Game

Have fun!

Tim

2007 American Wine Blog Awards

The finalists in seven categories in the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards were announced today. The Awards, the first of their kind, honor the best in wine blogging. Public voting in the seven categories is now underway at FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog (http://www.fermentation.typepad.com). Voting will close on Friday, February 16.
The finalists in the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards include:

Best Single Subject Blog
LENNDEVOURS: http://www.lenndevours.com/
THE WINE COLLECTOR: http://www.vinfolio.com/thewinecollector
SHIP COMPLIANT BLOG: http://www.shipcompliantblog.com/blog/
RETHINK WINE BLOG: http://blog.inertiabev.com/

Best Winery Blog
STORMHOEK: http://www.stormhoek.com/
CIMA COLLINA CELLAR RAP: http://cimacollina.com/WordPress
DOVER CANYON WINERY BLOG: http://dovercanyon.typepad.com/dover_canyon/
PINOT BLOGGER: http://www.pinotblogger.com/

Best Wine Podcast or VideoBlog
NAPA VALLEY WINE RADIO: http://www.napavalleywineradio.com/
CELLAR RAT: http://www.cellarrat.org/
WINE LIBRARY TV: http://tv.winelibrary.com/
GRAPE RADIO: http://www.graperadio.com/

Best Wine Blog Graphics
VIVI'S WINE JOURNAL: http://www.vivisjournal.com/
LENNDEVOURS: http://www.lenndevours.com
THE GOOD GRAPE: http://www.goodgrape.com/
WINE WAVES: http://www.volunteer.blogs.com/winewaves/

Best Wine Reviewing Blog
WINE WAVES: http://volunteer.blogs.com/
QUAFFABILITY: http://quaffability.com
JAMIE GOODE'S WINE BLOG: http://wineanorak.com/blog/
VINOGRAPHY: http://www.vinography.com

Best Wine Blog Writing
THE POUR: http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/
WINE CAMP BLOG: http://winecamp.squarespace.com/
VINOGRAPHY: http://www.vinography.com
DR. VINO: http://drvino.blogspot.com/

Best Overall Wine Blog
THE GOOD GRAPE: http://www.goodgrape.com/
VINOGRAPHY: http://www.vinography.com
THE POUR: http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/
DR. VINO: http://drvino.blogspot.com/

The American Wine Blog Awards are conducted by Tom Wark, proprietor of “FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog”. Wark instituted the Awards to draw attention to the high caliber of content and ideas being produced on the more than 400 wine blogs that now exist on the Internet.

“Anyone who looks over the Awards finalists will discover there is enormous talent and dedication in the wine blogosphere,” noted Wark. “What we are seeing is a renaissance of the wine writing genre being spurred on by citizen wine writers and the blogging format.”

Another Wine writer takes a swipe at bloggers

Whilst reading the current (March 07) copy of Olive magazine (my wife's magazine subscription as opposed to my Decanter) I came across the wine column (how very surprising!). Headlined "Net Gains" Wine Nerds have always loved the Internet, and now they are busy setting up blogs to tell the world about their favorite wine.

Max Allen, starts by introducing the idea of wine websites, and the fact there are indeed spawns and spawns of wine related blogs out there, and admits that they do range from fascinatingly addictive to just plain awful (just, he says, like all other blogs out there). So far so perfectly fair. He then goes on to make generalisations - most blogs are either - what I drank last night or what a lark this would be I hope people send me some free wine. These, he says, are not the blogs he liked preferring blogs that give him an eye on another corner of the globe (has he never realised that everywhere is another corner of the globe to someone!) or "quirky" blogs!
He does recommend some good sites, and then goes on to remind us that most, general wineblogs are mundane - well I'm sorry Max - if you ever read any blogs anyway - which I somehow doubt - but most blogs aren't actually written for you to read anyway. You seem worried that anyone can do it - and immediately you're then telling us about Neal Martin and Jamie Goode - who are admittedly the two greatest bloggers out there in the UK scene - but I think you've given yourself away a bit - could it be that as a writer your concern is not that the writing is bad, or that it's just plain boring - let's face it - if they're bad then you have no worry about them because noone will read them - could it actually be that your worried that not being called Jancis yourself, not being well know that perhaps your services are under threat. After all if everyone can read what they like about wine online free of charge, why would anyone want to pay you to write something?

New Site Name

A few weeks back I revealed my plans to launch a new site as a sister site to this site - and I can now tell you that things are progressing. Up until yesterday I had fully intended to completely work on a site from scratch - however I am no web designer and it was taken a long time to comeplete and the finished product was not quite what I would have hoped for, so I'm now looking for an alternative way to work on it.
Sadly winepost.co.uk is already taken as a domain so I won't be able to use that for the new site - and so now comes the task of trying to think up a funky new name!
So far i've come up with "Vintasy" but please leave your ideas in the comments below this post. The person who comes up with the best title, will have names my new site, and will forever be able to lay claim to that, plus I will give them a 5% share in the site - that means if it ever generated a profit you would get 5% of an profit made.
You get the drift - give me some names, and if I ever make money, fame or wine out of it - you get your share!

WSET Exam Results

After 8 weeks of waiting to see whether I would pass the Advanced course, I can now reveal that I managed a distinction in both part of the paper (that'll be distinction overall then!) which was what I had hoped for, but better than expected knowing that I messed a couple of questions up along the way by allowing reason to take over from my gut instinct for answering a couple - still no need to worry now!
I celebrated with a friend by drinking 3 Bowmore whisky's - darkest, 12yo & 17yo - really quite acceptable!