HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Original Content Sites

Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wines publishes a newsletter and operates this site that includes many consumer-oriented, well-written articles discussing wine types, as well as basic information. The Geography, Grape & Wine Types and Language sections are particularly good.

Eric Anderson's Grape-Nutz is well-organized and arranged in an attractive design; many interesting or unique features include: personal tasting notes, Eric's travelog of visits to California wineries, history and tribulations of his growing cellar, and detailed instructions for removing and saving labels.

Internet Guide to Wine Once you click past his plonk-ugly home page, Bradford Brown offers much well-organized wine information and many thoughful observations. (Although some information is incomplete and out-dated, the site has shown improvement.)

Nat Decants FREE Wine Newsletter brings the prolific and award-winning writings of Natalie MacLean. Each of her more than 75 articles here has complete information on the topic, as well as her well-though-out perceptions and advice. She also offers a free e-letter and lists monthly wine recommendations (although there was quite a bit of controversy in early 2013 about how independent and reliable those endorsements are).

Robin Garr's Wine Lovers' Page is one of the oldest and most popular wine sites on the Web. It includes a "Quick Course," FAQs, a Wine Pronouncing Glossary, Grape Glossary, Tasting Forms, Wine Bookshelf, Discussion Group, Vintage Charts, links to retailers, etc. Some features are authored by Garr and some are postings from discussion groups, other authors, etc. The "30 Second Wine Advisor" is a daily e-mail subscription service that includes a wine tip and recommendation.

Sue Courtney's Wine of the Week site is loaded with information with a focus on the New Zealand wine scene. Although not as modern and "slick" in appearance as other wine sites, it includes many "... of the Week" features, such as Publication, Personality, Link, etc., as well as regular columns by Peter May and Rhys Mathias.

Tom Cannavan's Wine Pages include tasting notes, a six-lesson wine course with several quizzes (challenging & way fun!), travel tips on various wine destinations, restaurant reviews for England and Scotland, food & wine matching tips, site visitors' personal wine recommendations, etc. The author is a wine columnist who also teaches wine appreciation courses at the University of Glasgow. Well-organized, feature-packed, browser-friendly site.

Wine Events Calendar - the site expanded from its original simple calendar format to include wine-related news and features articles in many categories. This particularly attractive, well-organized and easily-navigated site is the project of Earl Singer, a founding partner of the Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine newsletter and handbooks. Although there is a sprinkling of future postings, it now appears the site was expected to "coast" after mid-2010 ... ??

---

RECOMMENDED Original Content Sites

atime4wine.com Winelovers Nan and Michael Yielding share their tasting notes from their visits to various West Coast wineries with tips, links, etc.

Billy's Best Bottles Canadian Billy Munnelly's wine information, education and recommendation site.

BK Wine - Britt Karlsson conducts wine classes and tastings and offers tours of France in Danish, Swedish and English; her site offers hundreds of photos of wineries and wine people, primarily in Europe, along with a Glossary of Gastronomy and a monthly newsletter by FREE e-mail subscription.

Burghound.com Allen Meadows, a Burgundy fanatic, shares his obsession.

Cellar Notes Dan Miller's site leans toward Bordeaux.

Gang of Pour Entertaining traveBlog of California winery visits by a group of enthusiastic friends.

In Vino Veritas Boston-based writier-educator Jonathon Alsop's site

Into Wine brief articles with many accompanying images, charts

Kosher Wine Guy is Tom Kirwan's great little idea for a specialty wine site.

Les Kincaid Lifestyles, an "insider journey through the worlds of food, wine, and golf," from this Las Vegas chef, educator, columnist, critic and syndicated radio personality. The editing, design and feel of the site darts around a bit, but don't let this throw you: the articles and advice are generally user-friendly.

Leslie Sbrocco, former New York Times columnist, now wine personality...

Mark Squires' E-zine on Wine has original articles and tasting notes, generally from a good perspective and offering sound advice, by a wine-impassioned Philadelphia attorney.

Patty's Pinot Closet Dedicated to the passionate appreciation of Pinot Noir

Port Wine Appreciation Pages

Oenologic Thor Iverson's wine articles

Suite 101: California Wine Editor Alan Boehmer offers tasting notes, articles, and links of wine interest.

VineSugar Ryan O'Donnell has a good design, navigation, and his well-organized content is very straightforward.

Wine Anorak Jaime Goode's site has many excellent articles and photos; although the site's design has become very cluttered.

Wine Information Site - Originating from the Netherlands, this site contains much information about European wines, offered in Dutch, English, French or German language versions.

Wine People - winelover Arthur P. Johnson's site features many interviews with California winemakers and owners, general articles and tasting notes (although no apparent updates since June, 2006).

Wine Squire provides a myriad of articles, guides and links for consumers and industry in general and also specific to the Seattle area with brand, store, employment and distributor directories (although this is one of the most cluttered and disorganized sites anywhere)

WineSurf offers Italian viewpoints on all things related to wine and food

Yak Shaya's Wine Pages - very thorough tasting notes and travel journal of a devoted Burgundy enthusiast from Israel

---

JUDGE FOR YOURSELF Original Content Sites

The Compleat Winegeek

VinoVixenz - compendium of wine info, shopping cart, links, etc.

Wine Answers - is rather like the "Cliff Notes" of wine sites; great if you seek short answers without much explanation (Produced by the Wine Market Council, the site interface is attractive and slick, but much of the info is noncommittal and seems defensive, as if they don't want to reveal the complete story).

Wine Country Divas are a couple of wined-up wild women who share their methods and venues for enjoying wine, food, lodging and entertainment. Writing, design, and navigation are above average; content is 90% party, 10% wine, but potential is promising.

Wine Education Site - one of the oldest wine sites on the web (although much content remains simplistic in spite of the the much-improved user-interface).

Winostuff - enthusiastic but, as the title suggests, not too serious (and not too respectful of copyrighted material, either)

---