Happy 17th birthday Australian Wine and Drinks Review

Just like that, this website is 17 years old.

Close followers will know the story, but I like repeating it so I don’t forget. Circa May 10th 2008, I started a version of Australian Wine and Drinks Review as a vehicle for my tasting notes. I had this stack of notebooks full of illegible scrawl that needed a digital home, and a blog seemed cool and interesting. Why not?

At that stage, I also desperately wanted to be a published wine writer, and so the idea of making a place where I could put my words out there seemed like a pathway to help make the dream happen.

Incidentally, it worked, as I finally got a published article in 2009, in a defunct wine magazine that we won’t talk about because they still owe me five figures.

Over the nearly two decades since, my tasting notes receptacle has gradually evolved into a beast of its own – a cathartic wine (and beer, spirits, etc) review channel driven purely by the whims of what I’ve been tasting and drinking.

Interestingly, I’d also now rather write on here than publish in another publication, because it’s much more fun. And writing for fun is what keeps me sitting up late at night, apparently still attacking the keyboard like that typing cat meme (according to Mrs Ozwinereview).

Speaking of my better half, a huge thanks goes to my long-suffering family for helping make this happen. In particular, for putting up with the wine in the loungeroom and my absences to taste things at dinner parties. Love you to the moon and back.

A massive nod of appreciation to everyone for helping make me want to keep going when life gets in the way, from winemakers to PR account managers and other good people in the industry. It’s especially important when the wine media world is almost dead, with those of us left juggling many different projects to make it all work.

I think the feedback piece is more important than anything. I love your emails, comments, messages, etc – they all make me feel like I’m not just typing into the wind. Even the times when people recognise me at tastings to accost me about some review when they realise I’m not just some sweary AI bot.

AI is worth a sidebar as well because it’s an existential threat that can’t be ignored. I’m really tired of blocking Chatgpt bots, let alone the wholesale lifting of content by a new AI platform every week. Oh yeah, AI promises plenty, but for publishers like me, it is not the future; it’s copyright theft.

In other words, there is no generative AI here, just my grumpy opinions all served up with curse words and grammatical missteps. I’m just another opinionated human being who has (perhaps stupidly) dedicated his life to wine/drinks, and will be celebrating with a refreshing ale at one of my favourite breweries (followed by a glass of delicious wine) in just a few hours’ time.

Cheers to another seventeen more years of Australian Wine and Drinks Review!