I was about to launch into a witty opening paragraph explaining that if you like your light and elegant wines you should really look away now, but it struck me that this would do this wine something of a disservice. Yes, it’s a bit of a brute but it’s not a big wine just for the sake of being a big wine. This is a fun Aussie wine which is not trying to hide any of its charms.

A little background is probably needed here. I’ve long loved the wines of Some Young Punks winery in Australia. Their labels appeal to my inner child and also to my dislike of boring old fashioned wine labels. I know a wine label isn’t the main thing people look for when choosing a wine, but I bet it makes a big difference to some. The main reason I first tried the Some Young Punks “Monsters, Monsters Attack” Riesling in The Sampler was because the neon green Monster on the label was almost glowing in the enomatic machine. It caught my eye which in my view is an important job for a wine label.

The wines themselves are also excellent. This one in particular has some rather good pedigree behind it given the grapes for this wine come from the Adelina vineyard in Clare Valley. This vineyard adjoins the famous Wendouree vineyard on two sides (home to some of Australia’s most boutique and highly respected wines) and it’s actually a former Wendouree vineyard itself.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that the wine itself oozes class. The flavours are very concentrated and it’s a deep and brooding purple inky colour. It smells like blackberry gateaux which is certainly a good thing in my book. The finish is very long. Seriously, these full on black fruit flavours will be with me into next week…..

The introduction of the 15% Mataro certainly seems to have added a little structure whilst the Shiraz is allowed to run free and provide decadent black fruit notes. This is drinking really well now but I’d love to try another bottle of this in a few years time too just to see how it develops. I suspect it’d age gracefully for a good while yet.

So there you go. A wine which is classy yet menacing. I’d be thrilled if someone said the same about me….

Do you feel like you’re stuck in a bit of a rut when it comes to Spanish red wine? Do you favour Rioja but occasionally wonder whether you should try something like a Ribera Del Duero before swiftly buying even more Rioja? Well fear not, because this could be just the thing you’ve been looking for….

Firstly, you will need to leave the region of Rioja. In fact, you’ll need to get off the mainland all together because this highly interesting wines comes from Mallorca of all places.

Secondly, this wine has a serious pedigree. Macia Batle is one of Mallorca’s most respected producers and the wine was given an honourable mention in the list of the most influential wines of the Year in El Mundo newspaper recently. When you consider the sheer number of Spanish wines this is a bit of a coup.

Anyway, on to the wine itself. This is a blend of Manto Negro, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Merlot with the Manto Negro contributing 55%. You get an immediate hint as to the complexity of this wine when you take an initial sniff. There’s a lovely whiff of the new French oak which the wine was aged in together with notes of cardamom and spice.

After a few glugs of this wine it continues to impress. It has a dark and brooding character with deep concentrated cherry and dark berry flavours and a subtle line of oak running through the wine. The finish lasts forever! There’s also a nice element of acidity to the wine too meaning it’d go nicely with a hearty red meat dish.

I’m a big fan of this wine and to be honest I sometimes struggle to love Spanish reds. If I were you I’d buy a couple of these, some to consume now and some to hang on to as I get the impression this will age very well indeed.

Find Wine have cleverly snaffled quite a few bottles of this but I genuinely don’t think they’ll hang around for long!

We have unleashed our critic on one of my favourite wines we have ever sold!

I make no secret of my love for Australian Shiraz, but like many people I’ve become increasingly keen on examples which shy away from the massive fruitbomb typed wines that previously have defined this wine.

Happily this has been replicated by a number of Australian winemakers, including those from South Australia, previously Fruitbomb Alley, showing the same preference…..

The Hunter Valley has never in my view embraced wines of a massively over extracted style, preferring to keep things slightly more Rhone-like. I find myself buying more and more wines of this style which has also seen me becoming increasingly keen on Syrah from Hawkes Bay amongst other New Zealand regions.

I was aware of the love for Finch’s Line at Find Wine when chatting to Mike Howes, and once he offered to send one I didn’t even try to play cool. I insisted he send it immediately which Mike thankfully did. Mike also sent a link to Jamie Goode’s blog where Jamie was effusive in his praise for Finch’s Line Shiraz (see http://www.wineanorak.com/australia/finchsline).

This wine is one which made an enormously positive early impression. My initial thought was of how pure the wine is, it’s just so clean and crisp. The purity of fruit, mainly blackberry and plum, wash over you leaving you keen for more and ensuring that the bottle seems very small indeed. It reminded me a lot of the top end Syrah coming out of Hawkes Bay.

To add to this awesome wine, just as I took my first sip a power cut hit, leaving us to drink the bottle in candle light. You couldn’t wish for a better setting to try a wine like this!

I’m not one for exaggeration, but this is one of the best wines I’ve had this year. I urge you to try it for yourself (though please, don’t buy it all….)

We have been selling wine online for a while now, well two years actually and there is a question I seem to always ask myself. Where to find new customers?

Now obviously we have managed to find some customers, in fact you are probably the ones actually reading this blog…if you are, thank you, carry on buying wine please! You are the people that have helped build this company, our loyal followers but how to find more of you? (maybe you should tell your friends!)

Companies such as Naked Wine have proved that building a large database of customers is easy if you partner with enough companies and organisations and give away massive vouchers to draw them into the first purchase. The latest I have heard about is that if you are a member of DenPlan you get a £40 voucher for Naked. Soon it will be difficult to buy or sign up to anything without being given a voucher for Naked Wine. I can’t criticise them, it makes a lot of sense and it demonstrates how to very quickly grow a wine business, the only issue is what it costs them to give such large introductory offers. Unfortunately the wine trade is plagued with miserably low margins, therefore given away that much money to find a new customer is tough, if not impossible. Plus I wander how many of those customers then repeat without the incentive of a large discount? They probably did when they thought Naked was a very cool, unknown online merchant seeking out fantastic unheard of wines. However now that it is hard to buy a newspaper without being given a discount at Naked, their little club of Angels does not seem quite so exciting.

So that is the massive introductory offer method out- plus unfortunately we don’t have the cash to back up such a campaign, otherwise it is more likely I would be paying someone to write this blog for me!

So what else to try? Social media? A colossal buzz when I entered the wine trade, bloggers were emerging as worthwhile critics, Twitter was their vehicle to promote their activities and to tell the rest of the world which tasting they had blessed with their presence that day. But who is reading these blogs and Tweets? Look through Twitter and you will find that most communication is limited to discussing stuff with each other, not members of the public hanging on their every word waiting to be told what wine to buy next. Before I go on, I must say that actually there are a handful of bloggers who have been a huge help to Find Wine and before you through your iphone at your mac book and refuse to read on, please do…I am building up to make a relevant point!

So, what about the traditional media? Famous wine journalists with fancy national paper columns, surely read by hundreds of thousands of people desperate to know what to drink. You see them at tasting, sweeping through the room, furiously making notes on hundreds of wines, their highly honed taste buds analysing every last flavour within the wine. Companies spend fortunes on sending their products to these people, probably even more taking them out for dinner but what for? We have had specific wines written up in every top column in the country and never once have we noticeably sold a bottle on the back of it. So what’s the point of playing the game, other than to keep Tim Atkins thirst quenched?

So, you see my predicament. Sure given endless funds I would take over Victoria train station, have lot’s of people dressed as grapes appear from nowhere, do a dance to commuters and give them all a glass of wine, film everything and play the footage during the adverts of Downton Abbey. But in the real world what should I do?

I think the secret is to do all of the above (except perhaps the train station stunt!). No one of these activities will find new customers but a sensible combination of them all and you will be reaching the people you want, the ones that really care, plus a few others that don’t really care but will spend some money on the way through!

Imagine this- You are someone who isn’t that fussed about wine, you wouldn’t normally spend time reading about it but are interested enough to take note of good advice. You buy some clothing from your favourite mail order store as a treat and as a thank you they offer you a (sensible) discount off some wine from a company they know you will like. Perhaps you don’t take up the offer right away. Then you are playing around on Twitter, finding out what Phillip  Schofield had for breakfast and a random wine blogger you happened to follow recently, mentions a great wine they have just tried from the same company, you take note and remember to look at their website sometime. Then over your bacon and eggs on Sunday morning you are reading the Daily Mail, Live magazine and Olly Smith has managed to tear himself away from his comb and gel and has produced a column about the latest, coolest sauvignon and that same company crops up. You give it a go, you love the wine and the service and then you tell your friends and they forget until again they see this same name crop up here and there and it starts again.

It may not explode instantly into massive sales and a threat to Tesco but slowly but surely a a loyal customer base will grow and in the long run that will give the brand real value!

We need to get back on track with this plan, we have been neglecting certain elements and it is amazing how quickly things slow down. Who knows you maybe checking out a wine website, read a blog on it and think, they sound like lovely people, I think I will give them money!

We have been quite quiet at Find Wine for a few months. If truth be told we have been spending a great deal of time in a volcano plotting world domination…although more information about that in the coming few weeks! Also I promise to get back in the habit of writing this blog!! Honest!

However fortunately our trusted and esteemed in house wine critic has been beavering away tasting wines on your behalf . I don’t know how he does it. He has found something he rather likes! Here is what he has to say…

Well what a little ripsnorter of a wine this is. This is everything I love from a good Spanish red, mainly subtle oak and bright and vibrant fruit notes (in this case cherry and plum). With a slight hint of cardamom on the nose this is all very pleasant.

There’s a real freshness to this wine which, given it’s a 2005, is quite impressive. Frankly the first glass vanished and if it hadn’t been a Monday night I’d have topped up a second pronto. This is a refreshing red with a good streak of acidity.

I drank this wine in total ignorance of the price for which it sells on Find Wine. When I later looked and found out it was only £7.99 I was beyond pleasantly surprised. What a bargainous wine this is. I suggest you top up. This is a perfect “not sure if we’re now in summer or autumn” wine…..

We at www.FindWine.co.uk we are very excited today because we have 3 wines in the top 100 wines of the year at The London International Wine Fair next week!

In order to celebrate this fact we are giving you 10% off these wines for one week only!

However there is one little bit of bad news, one wine was so good that we have run out of it! Hamm Riesling is no more (for the time being) but we have plenty of the other two, so get stuck in!

Nostros Pinot Noir, Chile, £6.99

Two Hands Shiraz, Australia £15

Also, I have (Mike Howes) have been named by Harpers Wine and Spirits in their London International Wine Fair Edition as one of 12 opinion formers in the wine industry… as a reward they have printed a really awful photo of me on their front cover!

So success all round in the world of Find Wine today! Celebrate with us and buy some wine!

Although we have talked about it before, we thought we should put The Curmudgeon in the hands of our wine critic! This is what he thought of our current favourite wine…

I’m never sure if the English can get away with using the word “strewth” yet I found myself on the verge of involuntarily uttering it when I took my first sip of this wine.

This is a big, bold wine with powerful flavours of blackberry and a slight hint of coffee towards the end with a lovely spicy nose. At 14.5% abv it’s a bit of a beast, yet there’s none of the sense of alcohol burn which you get with some wines of this strength. Clearly whoever the mystery winemaker behind this wine is knows his way round a vineyard!

If you’re interested in finding out who the winemaker is there are some cryptic clues on the page for this wine which you can view here (http://www.findwine.co.uk/blog/2011/03/30/the-curmudgeon/) Anyone with a basic grasp of Google should be able to crack the code. If you can’t then just sit back and have another glass of The Curmudgeon.Ignorance is bliss after all!…..

I’ve always enjoyed bold Aussie Shiraz, even though as a wine style it is now fighting a battle against the more restrained Syrah style wines which seems to be coming back into fashion. If you’re in the mood for something playful and voluptuous you’d do well to find it for cheaper than this! Strewth!……

About a year ago we got very excited when we got our hands on Cartagena Pinot Noir from Casa Marin in Chile. For me it was a revolution in New World Pinot Noir and what was even more fascinating was the tiny sub region of the San Antonio that has formed around this incredible vineyard called Lo Abarca.

As luck would have it I met Maria Luz Marin, the mastermind behind the wine the other day and she has very kindly provided us with little more information on Casa Marin and the Lo Abarca and some fantastic photos. This is what they say…

“Viña Casa Marín is a family owned estate vineyard and winery located in the town of Lo Abarca, in the San Antonio Valley, Chile’s newest wine region of discovery. Described as “the most radical vineyard site in the country” in a recent article by Wine & Spirits Magazine, our estate is surrounded by Chile’s coastal mountain range as we are situated only 4 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean. These steep hills, with a unique climatic exposure and a wide variety of soils, give birth to a terroir only recently discovered for the viticulture of ultra premium fine wines: Sauvignon Blanc; Sauvignon Gris; Riesling; Gewurztraminer; Pinot Noir and Syrah.

The Valley: The San Antonio Valley appellation is particularly influenced by marine climatic conditions, creating cooler temperatures which distinguish it from other appellations in Chile. This results in longer grape ripening periods, making it an ideal location for our wines to display unique characteristics

Wine Making Philosophy: Passion, resilience, endurance and entrepreneurship are all part of María Luz Marin’s personal and professional philosophy, which transcends into her winemaking. “We specialize in crafting wines that are different, unique and unrepeatable, maximizing to the fullest the potential from Lo Abarca, a truly specific terroir where icon ultra premium wines are born. These wines mature very well in the bottle and can be kept for years thanks to their appropriate structure and acidity for in-bottle evolution. As these wines can be opened immediately, in a short while or in a long while, they are right for collecting”.

You can buy their fabulous Sauvignon from us and also, for a short time, their sensational Pinot Noir.

My mother used to consistently buy vast amount of bananas from the supermarket. This had nothing to do with our family having an obsession with the banana, nor have we ever had a pet chimp. The only reason we always seemed to have mountains of browning fruit was because for whatever reason bananas were often on special offer in our local supermarket and therefore the only sensible thing to do is buy 5 bunches because they cost the same as 3, irrelevant of the fact that we only actually required 1.

Clearly price is highly important when buying anything but how often have you purchased something purely because it was reduced? I see complete sense in buying things you need/want in a sale but being persuaded to buy something you have no desire for based entirely on a reduction is surely madness! Especially if the product is wine and you have no idea of what it might taste like.

Clearly this is an issue in the wine world. Many UK consumers find buying wine a confusing and stressful process because for most, unless you have actually tried the wine you will be fairly clueless about what the liquid inside the bottle will taste like. Therefore there is no wander many consumers will choose something that has 50% off because they suddenly feel that they are presented with something twice as good for their budget irrelevant of whether it is something they will actually enjoy drinking and with no sense of it actually being good value even with the reduction.

I am not suggesting that everyone should spend a fortune on wine, in fact I am a great believer in drinking what you enjoy no matter what it is. What I do not agree with is that wine prices become a race to the bottom.

From a small retailers point of view, I don’t want to have provide special offers on all of my products before anyone will show interest in buying them. Now, my typical customer is not a 3 for £10 supermarket customer however there are few wine drinkers who won’t be drawn in by some sort of good deal and once someone has paid half price for something it makes it very difficult to make them pay the full price again. A problem that I fear the New Zealand Wine industry will feel over the coming years.

Therefore for an online startup business the big question becomes, how can we make ourselves attractive to the market without instantly devaluing our offering. Luckily we are in a position whereby we are small enough to to be innovative and change direction quickly. However acquiring new customers without offering some sort of financial incentive is tough as unfortunately it has become the norm.

The more observant will have realised we do have a “Special Offers” section on this website and we do promote it from time to time but I believe selling off some remaining stock by discounting it is very different from selling your entire company based on discounting it.

This is currently a very big topic in the wine industry and I am sure I will return to it often.