When Hubby and I backed out of this year’s Wine Bloggers Conference due to a work conflict on my part, we discussed closing the wine blog. We hadn’t updated it regularly in a while, and we had both burned out on social media. I was (and still am) limiting Facebook to what’s necessary for my book stuff, and he’s gotten annoyed with Twitter. It’s almost impossible to have an effective blog without being involved on social media, so we thought about giving it up.
But I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it. It seemed that once we had decided to step away from wine blogging, the ideas started to flow again, at least for me. And then when we stopped by one of our regular North Georgia wineries for a tasting, we happened to be standing next to a couple of new wine drinkers. They had lots of really good questions – when do you chill wine? Where should they go if they like ___? What does it mean when a wine is corked? Why do they use such large glasses for wine tasting when you only get a small pour?
Hubby and I answered the questions we could, and I remembered how much fun learning about wine can be. And then it hit me – they’re our audience. When I started the Random Oenophile blog back in 2008, it was for people like us who were just getting into wine and who needed to know the basics and the other fun stuff. Somewhere along the way, we lost focus and fell into the tasting note trap.
I’m so grateful to have been reintroduced to the people who need a blog like ours, which will get back to covering the basics and detailing our wine adventures. I want to tackle the big questions, specifically wine and food pairing, as well as hit the basic knowledge, through my favorite medium – stories. I’m an author, after all, so I think in stories.
Essentially, I want to share what we’ve learned in almost a decade and a half of wine tasting and food pairing and learning about this strange fermented juice we all love. I’ll also talk about other stuff I like – food, experiences, and hopefully wine industry professionals, if they’ll let me interview them.
So thank you for visiting the Random Oenophile. I hope you learn something fun and interesting while you’re here, and if what we say prompts you to try something new, that’s even better.
What topics would you like me to talk about? Or, what would be most useful for you to learn about? Please leave me a comment – I’d love to know!