It’s almost 2010, and you know what that means.

It means we need to get in at least one cheesy end-of-year-summary post!

What I decided to do was to completely forgo my personal favorite 1WineDude.com articles of the past year, and instead present the articles form 2009 that garnered the most reaction by YOU, the readers, since you’re what makes the 1WineDude.com wheel go ‘round.  The logical way was to pull together the most-commented posts from 2009, which I present below for your recap-ing pleasure.

As for the most-viewed posts, I figured I didn’t have a great way to measure that for the full year, having moved over to a new blogging platform and a new analytics platform in 2009. And more importantly, I didn’t think that measure would be as interesting as seeing which articles you actually felt were worth the contribution of your opinions – now that measure seemed like fun to me.

What did I learn from pulling this list together?

You people seem to love controversy!

9 out of the top 10 most commented posts of 2009 cover controversial topics – from blogger-bashing by wine media big-wigs, to hot topics in the wine-writing/blogging, wine consumption, and wine appreciation, you folks like to state your opinions… and I love ya for it!…

Only 1 of the top 10 (a recent post asking directly for your input) had to do with a relatively tame (but fun!) topic.  The rest were all concerned with more controversial topics.  You might be thinking “well… duh… of course an incendiary topic is going to get more comments” but I don’t really set out to intentionally drop mega-comment-bombs on 1WineDude.com, and I’m often (very) surprised at the number and quality of opinions expressed in response to the posts here.

In other words, I just enjoy the discourse because 1WineDude.com readers are damn smart, funny, and knowledgeable people.

Will I be posting about more controversial topics in 2010 as a result of this mini-analysis?  Probably not.

I like the current 1WineDude.com formula, it seems to be working, and I’m having too much fun to shift gears now.  Plus, I really don’t need to piss any more people off than I normally do in the course of a year.

The Top 10 Most Commented 1WineDude.com Articles of 2009

10) 1WineDude in the L.A. Times (More on Wine Competition Controversy)

9) Anthony dias Blue Goes on the Attack Against Wine Bloggers

8) The $500 Wine Question

7) Who Do You Love? (Are Wine Writers Writing for You, or for Each Other?)

6) Will Work for Wine (Alice Feiring & Who Really Killed Wine Writing)

5) 1WineDude TV Episode 8: Masters of the Wine Universe

4) Of Millennial Mistakes and Wine Blogging Blunders

3) Wine Competitions vs. Really Bad Science (or “The Journal of Wine Economics Drops the Cork. Again”)

2) Guess What? You’re White! – American Winemaking’s Diversity Crisis

1) Notorious (Robert Parker is Chasing Shadows) – over 100 comments… yowza!

Here’s to another year of crazy-good dialog together!

Cheers!

Other stuff you might dig:

• Marlborough’s 2009 Vintage, The Artists’ Lounge, and a Chance to Win a Kiwi Vacation
• And The Big Winner of 2009 Was… YOU!
• The 1WineDude.com Top 10 Most Interesting Wines of 2009
• Wine.com Top 100 of 2009 and the Not-So-Changing Tide of Wine Sales
• Why Rating Wine Is Bad Science