After-hours projects!
…I just love sinking my teeth into a creative, after-hours project when it’s focus is something that I’m passionate about.
Zoë, for the past year, has been asking me about a way to build an online community to share our reviews on wines around the world, as well as provide details about local wine-related events. I had originally suggested a few ways to get this going with software currently available, as well as online communities that provide similiar information… But, after reviewing what these other sites and solutions offered, we both agreed that they didn’t fit the needs of us and our friends.
So, after some initial planning, we’ve decided to go ahead with our own wine-related site! In the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a little of our spare time, and putting our heads together to create something really fun, unpretentious, and easy for our friends and friends of friends to share their thoughts on wine.
Once it’s ready for beta roll-out, I’ll share the domain (err, we actually have two that point to the same site) with you all! In the meantime, if you’d like to become a member to offer reviews, and/or participate in forum discussions on wine-related topics, let us know by either commenting here, or leaving me an email: info at this domain.
And, I’m curious… If you were looking for wine ideas, and reviews online, what kind of information would you find useful on a site like ours?
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I think some kind of rating scale would be good (and a rating scale that users can put in their rating), the general catagory, and the mood of the wine. Plus what might be good to eat with it. It also might be fun to put like wine tours on it, like if you’re visiting city X, these are some fun wineries to check out.
Rating scale is good as well as a subjective “zero point” (what wines the reviewer typically prefers) for that reviewer. It’s also good to know if the wine is widely available, Tan, and what it costs.
I tend to like sweet, young, light white wines, especially inexpensive Reislings and almost nobody reviews those, dammit.
Tastings! Who, what where, when, why and how.
Some sort of rating system or description system for the rest of us would be good. I like wine. I drink way too much of it. That said, I have no concept of how to actually describe wine and some sort of primer or easy rating system would be good for people like me! And, of course, our place will be open for tastings as required in about 2 more weeks when we should be fully moved in and setup
What a great idea! When Rach and I were socially active in Vancouver, we belonged to a group that had monthly ‘brown bag nights’. About 20 of us would get together and taste flights of concealed wines and critique. It might be interesting to hold similar functions and have results/feedback on your site.
On a separate note, here in Australia, there is a plethora of excellent, inexpensive wines on the market. The wine industry actually makes more wine than what can be consumed. Great for the drinkers… bad for the farmers…
Ratings are definitely something we will have, that was actually my prime reason for wanting to do the site. There are just too many wines out there and too many reviews written by people I don’t know and who drink wine that is wayyyy too expensive for me. I love hearing about my friends’ favorite wines but it always happens over dinner and i forget them before I get home
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By the way Utenzi, this link will send you to a fantastic list of rieslings http://www.gismondionwine.com/article.php?key=813. This is a wonderful website about wine and the guy is in Vancouver so very BC based, but at times I find the site overwhelming.
Sign me up!
Thanks, Zoe!
Read the books “Have A Glass” and “Had A Glass” by James & Hodgson – they’re local and have a really great approach to wine that’s much more accessible than Gismondi’s.
What I’d really like is a great wine sorting system. Include winery, grape(s), pairings, price, availability, any other metric you can think of. Then when I want a $12 reisling that goes well with Pad Thai available at my local BCLDB, it’ll bring up those results.
That’s the approach “Had a Glass” takes, though it’s in dead tree format and only focuses on wines
that was wines “less than $20″
Hey Jen! Thanks for the thoughts — I know Zoe and I both want to get to pairings, too, but that might come as a phase two project, as it’s quite an advanced process to group by food as well as the other factors.
I can’t wait to roll this out!!