As many 1WineDude readers know, my grandmother passed away this week at the age of 96, having suffered from Alzheimer’s for the past few years (you can read more on that and wine’s possible connection with dementia).  Posting here at the blog is taking a backseat to family matters for the next few days.

Today is just a very quick blurb to let you know that I’ve been working with the folks at MyWinesDirect.com to set  up discounts on their wine selections for 1WineDude readers.  From now through the end of September, new MyWinesDirect.com customers can use the code winedude to save $10 on their order. 

For more info. on MyWinesDirect.com, check out their blog, Through The Wine Glass, and follow them on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mywinesdirect.

Cheers!

(images: MyWinesDirect.com)

Frequent 1WineDude.com readers may have noticed a sharp-looking widget over in the sidebar titled “3 Wine Picks.”  This little bugger comes courtesy of winecliQ, the brainchild of AmericanWinery.com, which I helped to test during their private beta.

winecliQ has now moved out into public beta, which means that you can jump into the winecliQ fun if you’re so inclined.  The idea behind the program can be summed up (in the words of AmericanWinery.com) as “Drink Wine, Get Paid.”  A summary / overview from the winecliQ website:

Select your favorite wines at AmericanWinery.com. Add ‘em to your winecliQ. Promote your picks through email, Facebook, your blog, website, etc.

People who dig your style buy the wines you recommend direct from the wineries through a secure checkout.

Wineries handle shipping and customer service.

You get cash just for talking about the wines you like.

Now your wine “hobby” can pay for itself!

There are new FTC regulations that could end up throwing a wet blanket on the winecliQ party, but as far as I’m aware there’s nothing stopping you from joining and possibly profiting from it in the short term if you have a blog or website.  In addition to the sidebar widget, you can also get a customized landing page for your wine picks, and an “individget” that can be used to highlight individual wine picks (if they’re available for sale on AmericanWinery.com, that is).

There’s also been a Ning.com social network set up for winecliQ users at social.winecliq.com.  Can’t say I’m making a mint from this, but I do like the idea of supporting American wineries that I think are making good juice, and possibly cashing in on that… someday…

Anyway – worth checking out especially if you’re blogging about U.S. wine.

Cheers!

(images: winecliQ.com)

Now this is interesting. Well, interesting to me, anyway:

Venerable Internet tech. news site TechCrunch recently profiled Snooth.com (I’m an affiiate, so it caught my eye), detailing its growing popularity, and its impressive ability to secure angel funding during a very dank, dark, and dastardly economic climate. Getting featured on TechCrunch is newsworthy enough in and of itself, and the whole event garnered the attention of Kaz & Randy at WineBizRadio.com. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting (I say “chat” because he’s British) with Snooth.com founder Philip James on a few occasions, and he is a generally approachable and nice fellow, so Snooth’s success has been fulfilling to witness from a distance.

Apparently, according to TechCrunch and Snooth.com itself, Snooth.com is now the largest and fastest growing (in terms of website visits) wine community website. SNooth is now even bigger than Wine.com, which lacks the social media aspects of Snooth, and is still battling perception issues from over a year ago when they arguably put their own interests well above those of wine consumers and retailers.

What I found most interesting about the recent Snooth.com lovefest was not Snooth’s success, but how the website has been classified.

TechCrunch called it “a social wine review site.”

While this is certainly true, it’s not the complete picture.

Folks, let’s be clear: Snooth is in the business of selling wine. I know that it says on their home page that they don’t sell wine. And they don’t – not directly. But the fact is that they are in the business of getting wine into your hands, through retailers whose selections are featured in their search results.

And they do it well enough – and integrate it so well with the best aspects of social wine networking (sharing reviews and recommendations) – that they are seeing huge success during a time when being relevant on the Internet at all means being involved in social networking.

Snooth.com is not the Future of Internet wine sales – it’s the Present. If you want to sell wine on-line (despite the headache introduced by arcane and unconstitutional state-run alcohol distribution monopolies getting in your way), then you’d better well understand the model that Snooth.com is quietly (well, not so quietly now I suppose) perfecting.

The King (wine.com) is dead. Long live the King (Snooth.com)!

Cheers!
(images: snooth.com)

A recent article by Catherine Rampell of the New York Times really caught my attention. In it, Catherine explores the recent wine buying trend in “trading down” – buying less expensive wines rather than splurging on the really pricey stuff (read the full article).

One of the interesting things she found is that wine retailers are almost making up for the reduction in premium wine purchases with an increased sales volume for the cheaper stuff.

But that’s not what I wanted to discuss here.

What I found most interesting is how some people are drinking the decreased volume of really good stuff that they are buying. From the article:

“The people who have been splurging have been doing it surreptitiously,” said Jesse Salazar, the wine director at Union Square Wines in Manhattan. “There’s the secret pour and the pour for the guests at large,” he said. “I was at a Christmas party recently where there was a substantial amount of wine being purchased. But there was a party case, and then there was the host case back in the kitchen. The host was drinking Bordeaux; the guests were drinking Chianti.”

The Surreptitious Pour.

I love it!

What I’m curious about is if YOU would do this - would you hide the really good stuff at a party for you and a select few friends?

Because, I sure know that I’d be tempted to do that…

Cheers!
(images: chowdernation.com – modified)