The Wine Case at 100

As I was checking out my blog stats, this week, on the WordPress dashboard, a number caught my attention. A round number. 100, to be precise.

That’s the number of posts that have come online on The Wine Case blog since I put it online a little over a year ago – on July 10, 2007, to be precise. By an interesting coincidence, my French-language blog, À chacun sa bouteille, also reached the 100-post mark the same week, meaning I’ve posted 200 articles and notes on wine, in both languages, over the last year, at a steady clip of almost four a week . Since I have a full-time job and a family, it must mean I like doing this stuff pretty much.

Between all the tasting notes, news items, reports and reflections, I’ve had a great time discovering the online wine world, from the serious forums at the Open Wine Consortium to the fun of Twittering with fellow bloggers to the collective online tastings known as the Wine Blogging Wednesdays. And I’ll be glad to meet with some of the wine blogging community at the Wine Blogging Conference taking place in the Sonoma region in late October.

As I put up this 101st post, I’m feeling pretty good. Readership is growing at over 10% a month, on average, as dozens of visitors are turning into hundreds a week. Which means I’m not rambling on just to myself. Phew.

So cheers to everyone, on this fun little milestone. See you on the next post.

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Are you open? I’m open

Through discussions with Doug Cook, the creator of AbleGrape, the only search engine devoted to the world of wine (more on that great project later), I’ve come to know a fast-growing community of wine people called the OpenWine Consortium. It’s at the junction between industry forums, wine blogs and something like Facebook, with friends and groups and all.

Lots of good information rolling around the site, from links to the European Wine Blogger Conference 2008, to very interesting discussions of wine issues and wine terms, like “rustic“, an adjective that can be read as positive or negative, and which was very interestingly commented on by a number of OWC members. Me, I’ve always read it as a positive, and associated it to sangiovese wines, especially chianti.

Where is the consortium heading? Hard to tell, as the membership is growing so fast. The way it balances out between wineries, bloggers, wine-related companies and, well, everything else, has not reached maturity yet. Only time will tell if it’s like a good wine, and will get better with age.