January 26, 2011

BerserkerDay 2011

January 27 is BerserkerDay 2011. That's the second anniversary of the founding of Wine Berserkers, which has quickly emerged as one of the world's leading places for wine discussion online and likely the top site located in the US.

I wrote about the site a year ago as my wine story of the year in 2009, when Todd French finally had had enough of the overbearing editorial policies of a well-known and formerly public wine discussion site hosted by the Wine Advocate newsletter. After certain rabble-rousers, or truth-sayers depending on your perspective, were vilified with the term "berserkers" by one infamous forum moderator, the idea of a new discussion site revealed itself. One rooted in truly open discussion of wine and other topics, more open to industry participation and without the shadow of the world's leading wine review newsletter hanging over it. Let's just say criticism of the newsletter wasn't tolerated well in the old order. Wine Berserkers changed that.

In two years, the site has naturally moderated from an anti-Wine Advocate site to something of its own skin, and there's been innovative. One of the more novel things to emerge has been Berserker Day, where the site anniversary is celebrated all day long with special offers for registered forum participants from many wine producers and other industry members who are also participants, including brewers and wine specialty retailers. The idea is to generate traffic for the site, but also to provide connections between the industry wine geeks and regular old geeks who all come to Berserkers as equals in geekery. It makes special sense because several of the industry types, such as myself, as only in the wine business because we were geeks who got to know others through the wine internet and gradually, or suddenly, fell into the business. For so long, that divide has been danced around by various discussion sites, with some successful bridging on sites like the West Coast Wine Network. But Wine Berserkers has taken the industry/wine lover connection to new levels, so that more producers seem to participate than any other site I know, in a way that connects the wine community more completely than I've ever seen before.

All that said, if you register for Wine Berserkers (it's free), you can take advantage of the silly deals many producers offer on Berserker Day. Vincent Wine Company is participating, of course. And though I won't spoil the surprise, we're offering two different packages, both the best deals we've ever offered with one package offering an archive bottle that is simply unavailable to you any other way. Not sure when during the day the Vincent offer will go live, or how long it will last. So do what I'm going to do. Log in and check in throughout the day. Should be real good.

Remember, you must register for the site to see and participate in the BerserkerDay deals. Hope to see you there.

2 comments:

Robert Parker said...

Does Todd pay you for this stuff?

Vincent Fritzsche said...

No, he doesn't. I do get an all expenses paid trip on his boat on the Murray River though. And it's ethically ok because I'm just a contractor, no worries mate.