Wine Blog Number 301

With the posting of last week’s blog, we proudly announced that it was our 300th wine blog article. It hardly seems possible that I have been writing the Tiedemann On Wines blog since January of 2013. When I launched this blog “way back then,” my intent was to use the blog as a method of providing knowledge, information and clarity on wine and items associated with it. My hope was, and still is, that I would assist readers in growing their wine knowledge and understanding wine better. The side benefit was, and still is, that I am educating myself at the very same time by performing all of the research on the topics I am writing about. To this day I am motivated by the same reasoning.

Originally I began by posting a blog article every other week. But by October of 2013 I was writing an article every single week and releasing the blog to my subscribers on Thursday mornings.

To write a blog on a weekly basis you have to make a huge commitment as it does take a lot of time. Depending on the topic I am writing about, it can take anywhere from two to eight hours. Generally, I commit my Sunday afternoons to writing the blog. Overall, there is a fairly good-sized commitment of resources to get the blog article posted.

Being an old fashion type of guy (I am technically-challenged) I usually write the article out in long-hand on a yellow legal pad. When I am done, I hand the copy off to my able-bodied assistant, Courtney Catanzarite, to type up and do the first proofreading job. Once she is done, she emails the draft back to me for my round of editing.

Carl hoped that his blog would assist readers in growing their wine knowledge and understanding wine better.

When I finish my editing, I send the draft to our editor, Melissa Hiner. Melissa straightens out all of my errors in grammar, spelling, etc. and she makes me look like a really good writer! Melissa is also responsible for all of the “technical stuff” such as formatting the layout of the blog and picking out photos for the Tiedemann On Wines website. Finally Melissa sets up the weekly emails that go out to all of our subscribers. Without the help of these two ladies this blog would never get out to all of you. So “Thank You” to you both for your commitment to our wine blog.

As you might imagine, some weeks it is challenging to come up with a topic to write about. Because of this I am constantly on the search for topics. Luckily I have managed to build up a fairly large backlog of future topics due to all my research.

When I decided to write this celebratory article on my 300th blog postings, I knew I needed to report on something more informative than just the fact that I have reached this milestone in my blog-writing career. After a little thought I decided it would be interesting to report on the most popular articles out of the 300 articles.

I asked Melissa to do some research and she came up with the Top 8 Most Popular Blogs. Here they are:

• Wine Temperatures: Get the Highs and Lows – February 14, 2013
• Drinking Versus Tasting Wines – March 3, 2016
• Costco and Wine Sales – August 25, 2016
• The Decanting Dilemma – May 21, 2013
• Wine Collections: 6 Tips – May 24, 2017
• 6 Tips for Buying Wine from a Store – July 7, 2016
• Should you Decant White Wine – November 15, 2017
• Wine Lists: Striking Fear into Mankind Part 1 – June 18, 2013

These articles had the most page views (tracking through Google Analytics) and they often had the most written comments by readers. Of course, I like some better than others, but my favorites are the ones that educate and give you information to use when you are done reading my blog. Interesting fact: the blog on Costco’s Wine Sales has had well over 5,000 page views (so far!)

Thank you all for your continued support and I fully intend to continue to write the blog and hope I can write a similar article when I reach posting number 601.

As always I appreciate your support of our wine blog and encourage you to share it with family and friends. If you are reading this blog for the first time please consider subscribing while you are on the website. This way you’ll get our reviews and articles in your email. If you care to share your comments on this blog posting or other topics please do so in the comments section below.

Until next week,
Cheers

Calendar of Events

• August 29 – International Cabernet Day
• September 20 – International Grenache Day
• November 7 – International Merlot Day
• November 14 – International Tempranillo Day
• November 20 – International Zinfandel Day
• December 4 – Cabernet Franc Day
• December 20 – National Sangria Day
• December 31 – National Champagne Day