Wine Can Be More Than Just A Hobby

A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. "Much obliged," said he, pushing the plate aside, "I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills." ~Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Wine, the alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of grape juice, can be so much more than a good time and subsequent headache. Whether you are a wine afficionado or just looking for a change of pace, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio may prove to be more than just items of a wine list.

Gone are the days of the wine profession being limited to occupations such as oenologists, vinters, and sommeliers. Nowadays, the Internet provides a host of ways to capitalize on this age old beverage. The opportunities online are endless, ranging from multi million dollar ventures to beginning a simple blog or administering a forum. You must decide how much time and money you are planning to invest in this venture.

Opportunities online where you can put wine to work for you include a Wine News and Information Portal, Auction Site, Accessories, Price Comparison, Service Offering, and Blog. There are undoubtedly more options than those just listed, so put on your thinking cap and get to work!

Snooth.com

Snooth, launched in the United States last year, is a social wine recommendation and price comparison site which aims to be the world's largest wine site. In the same way that music sites like Last.fm help you discover new music, Snooth recommends wine to users based on the bottles that users with similar tastes enjoy. Snooth has a visually appealing and intuitive interface. Users can start their search for a wine via a simple search box, entering wine make, type of grape, and so on.

The site currently has around 300,000 unique users per month, built up from around 100,000 at the beginning of the year. Their monthly growth rate is about 25% and they hope to reach 600,000 users by the end of 2008, and 1.25 million by 2009.

Snooth makes money through their affiliate deals with many of the merchants and wineries that display their stock on the site. So far, the site has had two rounds of funding. They raised one million in angel funding last year and had an earlier round of $300,000, and are currently seeking a Series A round of funding to help them expand further.

Wine comparison sites similar to Snooth include Wine-Searcher.com and WineZap.com.

Pickyourwine.com

Allen Ingram saw the writing on the wino wall and will soon launch Pickyourwine.com. Pickyourwine.com is a service for wine lovers of all levels of experience from beginner to enthusiast! Essentially, surfers are requested to complete a simple questionnaire (backed by complex backend database software) to help determine what wines that user might enjoy drinking. Once the questionnaire is complete, the user gets their own UTP or Unique Tasting Profile, which then matches against two databases; one giving them wines that match their profile, and the second to locate stores in their area that sell those wines. The purpose of the site is to empower consumers to find wines based on their own profile and not some stranger who tastes wines for a living and has no idea what we enjoy drinking!

Also in the site are food and wine pairing suggestions (also matching user profiles) and a mobile version for picking wines when you're on the road, in a restaurant or wine shop. The site will be starting late Fall, early Winter 2008.

Vinography.com

If you are looking to launch a somewhat more humble site than the previous two endeavors, you can easily set up a blog and talk about anything and everything related to wine, such as great years, what wine goes best with what food, etc. And, it's very possible that you can make some extra spending money by affiliating with wine stores.

However, sometimes a hobby can morph into a full time job. Vinography (www.vinography.com) is a wine blog that began on January 15th, 2004 as a personal project for founder and editor Alder Yarrow. Now, the site is a respected source for non-mainstream wine writing, and one of the most influential wine blogs on the Internet. Featuring wine and sake reviews, restaurant reviews, editorials, book reviews, wine news, and wine event coverage, Vinography publishes new content daily to a global readership. The site's contributors work hard to create an alternative to the traditional sources and styles of wine journalism, partially through its emphasis on the stories, the people, and the passion behind wine, all told from a decidedly down-to-earth perspective.

So, sit back, have a glass of wine and get to work!