How to find a rare wine on line

If you are like me you occasionally want to get a really unusual and hard to find wine. So, what do you do besides call your local favorate store and ask them to get it for you? Well, you can actually go on line and do a seach at wine-searcher.com. Did you know that one of the world's most popular wine websites is based in New Zealand? . It's a site called www.wine-searcher.com, and it's loved by wine buyers throughout the world but particularly by collectors in the USA and the UK. But it may surprise many people that it is a New Zealand operation.

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It is free for a store to list on the website and users can dial up www.winesearcher.com and look up for free where they can buy a certain wine. So how does www.wine-searcher.com make money?

They make their money from users who buy the 'Pro Version', at US$29.95. This version provides much more information and more 'hits' and pricing information for a searched wine. There are many other 'Pro Version' features including 'alerts' if a sought after wine suddenly becomes available. Retailers can also advertise.

It's obviously working because www.wine-searcher.com has over 10,000 subscribers. The site attracts over half a million visitors each month with over 55 million page views each year. Revenue for 2007 is expected to exceed $2million.

"We are a profitable, debt fee company with positive cash flow from our operations," says Martin. Independent statistics show that www.wine-searcher.com is well ahead of competing sites, www.winezap.com and www.cellartracker.com.

Sixty percent of the users are from the USA. The UK, with almost 14% of users, is in second place. New Zealand users don't even figure in the Top Ten user countries.

"We'd like to increase our New Zealand usage considerably," says Martin Brown the founder. "The world knows about us but many kiwis don't".

Dial up www.wine-searcher.com, type in your favourite wine into 'Wine Name', add a vintage if you wish, and see what results you get.

(Incidentally, the most searched for wine is Chateau Margaux.)

Finally, I got this cute one below by email last week and wanted to pass it on to readers in my age group (64+!!!) Seems very appropriate these days!!!!!!

More soon; Dr Jim

New Wine for Seniors
California vintners in the Napa Valley area, which primarily produce Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio wines, have developed a new hybrid grape that acts as an anti-diuretic.
It is expected to reduce the number of trips older people have to make to the bathroom during the night.

The new wine will be marketed as

Pi No More

(I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE)