Wine Tributaries
by Tim Hayes & John Koetzner

     For those who have not tried putting the word wine into a search engine, the results are staggering. Yahoo delivered 117 categories, 3,974 sites and 504 wineries. Over at Alta Vista the sense of organization is not quite as clear and the number of hits was even more outrageous, a total of 922,643 pages somehow connected to wine. However, quick scrutiny showed us that one hit, “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon and War, had little to do with our local wine economy, although we do like the song.

     A third search engine, Hot Bot delivered 653,330 matches for our search on wine. That too was staggering, but an initial look at some of the sites showed it was more closely related to the wine industry. The very first site, a commercial one, is Wines.com (located at http://www.wines.com) and it has links to virtual vineyards where Gary Farrell Wines, Limerick Lane Cellars, and Murphy-Goode Wines have pages. It also has a bulletin board, a virtual tasting room, a searchable database on wine topics, and it hosts several wine critics, including Jerry Mead and Millie Howie. It’s good for wine beginners and connoisseurs alike.

     After doing a number of searches, we decided to share a few spots that we feel will help you find wine information that includes wine education, wine organizations, and commercial wine sites. A good starting place is Sonoma County Wine Library’s page (http://www.sonoma.lib.ca.us/wine.html) which Bo Simons has arranged so that visitors can find links to wine education such as the UC Davis site (http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/) and it has links to oral histories, the library collection, wine writing (Hugh Johnson’s All About Wine, The Wine Spectator, and Millie Howie’s Wine Words.

     The Wine Library even has a link for events such as the Sonoma Odyssey Bayou Boogie which is taking place on June12 at Saralee’s Vineyard with the Michael Barclay Blues Band. The Wine Library Associates are hosting the fete, and this is just another way that the information highway is letting more and more people find out about Sonoma County and its wine events.

     For a more extensive calendar of events, there is a link to the Wine Institute (http://www.wineinstitute.org/), an organization which includes information regarding research, laws, statistics, wine events, and wine news.

      Not only does the Wine Institute’s calendar remind us that the Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food is coming up July 14-17, but it has links to many other wine-related events from all over the world. You can find out about a wine expo in China just as easily as you can about events in our little wine paradise.

     The Wine Institute also has links to other Sonoma County wine organizations such as the Russian River Wine Road (http://www.wineroad.com/) which includes maps of the different appellations around the county and links to information about individual wineries. Other organizations that it links to locally are the Alexander Valley Winegrowers (http://www.alexandervalley.org/), Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley (http://www.wdcv.com/home.html), Sonoma County Wineries Association (http://www.sonomawine.com/), and the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association (http://www.sonomawine.com/).

     On the commercial sites, which are often links from some of the wine organizations and vice versa, one can actually bid for wine at virtual wine auctions and make connections to wine clubs and other types of wine commerce. They often will include wine history and winery profiles too.

     One of the better commercial sites run locally is WineToday.com (http://www.winetoday.com/index.html) which was started as an offshoot of the Press Democrat’s wine pages. It includes reviewers from the New York Times as well as local Press Democrat reporters and numerous links to wineries and their information. While it does not sell wine, it does review wines and carries winery links that help consumers make contact with wineries for wines they may want to purchase. They also have some nifty contests, a bulletin board, chat room, and an events calendar. The site also includes some of those annoying animated banner ads too.

     However, WineToday.com may have a major competitor in the wings on a site that is actually up but under construction. It is called WineShopper.com (http://www.wineshopper.com/) and it is planning to become the Amazon.com of wines. It too will include reviews and a variety of features. According to information on the site, it will be working with wholesalers, retailers, and wineries to deliver wine legally in all fifty states. This will be one site to watch as it pulls the winery networks together and gives consumers a new option for purchasing wine. 

        Another way to find wine Internet possibilities is to take a peek at the Internet Yellow Pages which includes five pages of listings. However, we found that for all that net surfing and all the virtual tasting rooms, nothing beats a visit to a real wine event or winery. After all, wine is one of the things that makes being part of wine country so special.  Yet, the surf’s up on the Internet for the wine business and it is easy to catch a wave. In fact, it is much easier than in Hawaii. (Tim can be reached at tim2hayes@aol.com and John can be reached at jkoetzner1@aol.com.)

© 1999 by Tim Hayes & John Koetzner. All Rights Reserved. Wine Tributaries is hosted by Wines on the Internet.