Australian Wine Review Turns Three

Australian Wine Review Turns Three

I had a birthday last week. Or not me, strictly, but this blog did. For last week (approximately) this website/blog/wine site etc. turned three. Three years ago I decided that I needed somewhere better/more convenient to put my tasting notes than on random pieces of paper scattered around my house. Three years ago I chose blogger as a platform (which was the most convenient at the time. Now I have so much custom code that porting over to WordPress seems like a pain in the ass, even though this blog would be much sexier as a result) and decided that blogging was something I might play around with.

Skip forward three years, and my big challenge now is keeping up with the growing mound of tasting notes that need to be transferred from shitty notepad/napkin/random pieces of paper/back of parking ticket (that’s how I roll) onto blog. Contrast that to three years ago, when I would go out hunting down samples to taste, attending the opening of an envelope if it meant tasting a wine or two/finding wine and wine related things to write about. Now I can barely keep up with the flow of samples that come through the door (which is an exciting situation in itself, if a ridiculous first world problem if ever there was one) and there is endless things wine related to write about. I think I had more time to write about things back then though, so my tasting notes are probably crapper than they once were….

After all is said and done, and my (nonexistent) bloggers birthday cake is finished, I’ve got to say how much fun this whole blogging caper is. Fun, educational, informative, entertaining and just plain cathartic (in the best possible way). I really can’t begin to explain how many amazing opportunities, interesting people and shedloads of great vino that has come my way via this blog. Blogging, by nature, is often self indulgent shit, but it really is the comments and feedback that brings you back night after night. The awkward questions, the snide anonymous remarks, the stunning insights, the plain funny responses. All of it is like fuel, fuel to keep you punching out tasting notes at 3am after knocking off a bottle of wine, fuel to have you resizing iPhone images and attempting to interpret illegible musings (my handwriting is truly woeful) about some unpronounceable German Riesling that smells like baby sick but tastes amazing. Fuel to make it all worthwhile.

So it is you I’ve got to thank. Without you this site is nothing. Simple as that.

Oh and Happy Birthday!