Thanks to all of you who tuned in and/or sent questions for our The Punch Down Episode Three interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. We kicked off a tad late, but it was well worth the wait.

The replay of the live broadcast of our interview with GV is below – if you missed it, you’re in for a treat, as Gary (who connected via telephone) was in typically fine form, pulling no punches with his candid answers.

How does Gary views the wine world’s forays into social media? What does he think the next big thing will be in wine and tech? Does Gary feel as though he abandoned his popular show’s followers when it comes to vino? Who’s getting it right on-line in the wine world? Questions answered in the ensuing vid!

Special thanks to Gary, who once again shows why he’s a passionate and intellectual force with which to be reckoned, as well as one of the most candid wine personalities ever to pull cork from neck.

The Punch Down Episode Three with Gary Vaynerchuk

Cheers!

As 2012 draws to a close, we continue the overlooked-due-to-hangover tradition of wrapping up the most popular 1WD articles of the year.

This list serves two purposes: a chance to highlight a “best of” from the 1WD content over the past year, and a nod to the engagement of folks like YOU, which makes a site like this worth revisiting. Also, it allows me to take a sort break from creating new content here (ok, three purposes!), which you might not like but I’d argue is required (well-deserved is debatable).

We’re sticking with ten once again this year, which sadly is more victories than my Steelers were able to conjure up this season.

Also, the shift away from comments and towards social sharing continued this year, and so I’ve decided to highlight the 1WD posts that you deemed most worth sharing with others throughout the past year. I’ve a done a (very) rough calculation of that across Twitter, the Book of Face, and the unwanted step child of social networks, Google+. The result below (after the jump) is, I think, pretty much in order of ascending social sharedness, but is not necessarily indicative of the most-commented posts (the focus of previous year-end 1WD wrap-ups) nor the most viewed (those numbers would pale in comparison to my Playboy.com gig anyway, which is much, much, much more a reflection of the insane amount of people visiting the PB site than it is a statement on my writing abilities).

Anyway… on with the show!…

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A vintage Sekt, a northern-Italian inspired Napa white blend, a Vintage Port from a sleeper of a producer in a not-so-sleeper of a year, and a single vineyard, old vine Chilean Malbec. All have taken the #1 spot in previous “vintages” of the 1WD Most Interesting Wines of the Year list. Believe it or not, the MIW list is now in its fifth consecutive incarnation, and it sure as hell ain’t getting’ any easier to produce each year!

Both the number and quality of wines that I sample increases exponentially each year, and so the competition (such as it is) for those that stand out as somehow being the most special in some way/shape/form increases dramatically as well.

Having said that, there’s a crap-ton of very good, but not very memorable wines out there… and I tasted a LOT of those to get to the ones on this top ten list.

Having said that, I feel somehow emotionally cheated with the list I’m presenting to you today… because so many excellent wines that I tasted in 2012 are missing… wines that could have been on here if it were a top 25 or top 50 list.

This list, as long-time 1WD readers already know, is not a “best of” or “highest rating” or “circle jerk” comparison (no mater what the PR folks do with it!). It’s intended to be a list of wines that stood out, to me, as being particularly interesting, high quality and full of complexity; an attempt to shine an additional spotlight on vino that I found to be among the most compelling drinking experiences I had this year.

A few more moments of preamble: these are not wines released in 2012 (though I try to favor recent releases, so that you have a chance of actually trying them), they are wines that I tasted in 2012.  Not all the wines I tasted in 2012 qualified – the wines have to be at least somewhat available (also so that you have a shot at trying them). Things got expensive again this year; not sure what that says about me, or the wine biz in general, but not all of the vino on this list is stratospherically priced (though a few are – sorry, I gotta call this stuff as I see/taste it!).

I invite you to take a gander at previous vintages of the Top 10, to see how things have evolved over the last five years: 2011, 2010, 2009 & 2008. Reactions, exclamations, bitching/moaning, exaltations, and the like are all, of course, welcome. But most of all, I hope you enjoy the walk down 1WD memory lane.

Oh, yeah – and this year, at one spot in the list we have a tie, so technically there are eleven wines in the list (go ahead… flame me up for it… you know you wanna…).

Enjoy!…

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About every other week, some friend or 1WD reader emails or tweets me a link to Matt Kramer’s “Drinking Out Loud” blog on WineSpectator.com. And about every other week, I have the same reaction after reading it: Kramer writes well, but his conclusions sometimes leave holes large enough that you could drive a steel tank full of Yellowtail through them.

Usually I simply shrug and ignore those conclusions, but Kramer’s piece (titled “Dubious Wine Achievements of Our Time: How smart wine people became boneheads”) published last week struck enough of a nerve that, Shatner style,  I just… couldn’t… let… GO!

It wasn’t Kramer’s near-total dismissal of both Bordeaux (maybe he should have called it “Bored-oh?”) as a region (points with which I largely agree, by the way) and Russian River Valley Pinot Noir (points with which I largely disagree) that set me into a fit of head-scratching bewilderment, but his assertion that fine wine recommendations cannot successfully be crowd-sourced.

That latter conclusion flies so forcefully smack-dab into the face of reality that I can only categorize it as head-in-the-sand posturing. Sounds harsh, I suppose, but I see no reason to let something slide when it’s so far off the mark from reality.

Let’s break this one down, shall we?

First, by looking at what Kramer actually wrote, and then at the (potentially invalid) assumptions upon which those statements were based. C’mon, it probably beasts actually working over the next few minutes, doesn’t it?…

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