As of Friday 29th January at 5pm, we have 13 people taking part in our Twitter Blind Wine Tasting, but it’s not too late for you to join in this Sunday (January 31st at 8pm) if you live in Cork, as our Bandon store is open until 6pm on Saturday evening. Feel free to pop in and collect your secret bottle from there.
Following on from the success - oh, well ok, the sheer good craic - of the Twitter Event Blind Tasting (twebt) experiment by Brian Clayton and Kevin Crowley back in November, we were honoured and delighted to be asked to pick and supply the second bottle to go into cyber-tasting!
The event is open to anyone and everyone who enjoys a glass of the old elixir, and having a bit of interaction and fun over the web while they’re at it. All you need is a Twitter account and a glass, and we’ve put together a special price to ensure you can participate from anywhere in country for less than €20.
The time for the synchronised tasting is Sunday 31st January at 8.00pm. All you have to do is follow Brian (@brianclayton), Kevin (@kevatfennsquay), and/or ourselves (@curiouswines), and use the tag #twebt in all your tweets. We’ll also post a revised listing of everyone registered by next Friday (29th) so you can follow everyone on the night.
Bottles will be wrapped discretely to hide the labels. The only rule is one of honour - you don’t look at the label until everyone’s tasted and compared notes. Other than that, it’s a free-for-all. Have a swirl, get your nose in, have a glug, tell the world.
I’ve selected the bottle myself and have put together a special price including delivery anywhere in the country, for just €19. You can also call into the warehouse here in Bandon and collect it over the counter for €14.
Last orders online Thursday 28th January, 1.00pm, or collect from the warehouse up to Saturday 30th, 6.00pm. Thanks a million to Brian and Kevin for organising and the kind invitation.
Following on from our making the shortlist for Best Ecommerce Site and Most Beautiful Website at the Irish Web Awards this coming weekend, our Twitter feed was peppered with lovely little love notes:
@Grayzie: Well deserved nominations. If you don’t win, those peeps need their heads checked!
@davidmcavinue: You must be running out of space on the mantlepiece. Well done!
@brianclayton: Congratulations on the well deserved nominations there gents!
So we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for a gong and a reason to pop open a bottle of bubbly on Saturday night- thanks for the good wishes! Speaking of wishes, there’s nothing to warm a wine seller’s heart like the sound of happy customers who’s only regret is that they didn’t buy more:
Had a lovely evening in with The Last Stand. Only sorry I got 2 bottles and not the full box.
And other nice things to read from more lovely customers:
@Omaniblog: Curious Wines are great to deal with. I can swap the one bottle I didn’t enjoy for another - and they have so many good ones at greatprices.
@grapes_of_sloth: I started off with your Spatlese Pinot Blanc 2005 - beautiful.
We’re proud collectors of every tweet from every fan we ever get on Twitter, but quite honestly we’d be completely happy if all of those tweets consisted of Maurice O’Mahony’s “Yummmmmmmmmmr” praise. (He’s waxing eloquent about our rich Betton, but we’d like to think it applies to all our wines.)
To add to our ego-puffing press clippings, Curious got a mention in the Drinks News column in July issue of Easy Food, Ireland’s leading food magazine. We also got a nice mention in Silicon Republic, in an article about the impact Microsoft’s Bing search engine is having on Irish business. (In our case, none.)
Right in line with our recent wedding series, Brian Clayton is pitting us (or at least our wine) against our local friendly competitors at Bubble Brothers. He’s got stacks of booze from both of us and is calling in friends, family, neighbours and strangers off the street to help him pick the best wedding wine for his sister’s wedding. Luckily there is no vintner’s equivalent to throwing down the gauntlet!
And sticking with the wedding theme (we swear we did not plan this), two of our favourite Dievolino bottles fell victim to the tempting charms of luscious, hand-made gnocchi over at The Daily Spud:
The white, Dievole Dievolino Bianco Malvasia, was a very pleasant little number, smooth and with a little citrusy tang, which went down a treat with the gnocchi and made for a very happy first date. The red, Dievole Dievolino Rosso Sangiovese, with its healthy tannin hit, was a cracker which warmed up beautifully and for which all present declared immediate and undying love.
That’s the sort of love story we like to read about!
Yes we are slackers, but we do genuinely love our ardent Curious fans and so Monthly Love is back with a bang. (Our apologies for being tardy the last few months - we were waylaid by a warehouse full of wine.)
The New Zealand wine tasting event went down a treat with the punters; Robert Francis Wine has a full set of tasting notes and ManicMammy offered up (not turned up!) her nose as well. Brian Clayton shared his thoughts as a first-time eventer, although the title Wine Tastings are Fun! is pretty much all we needed to hear to make our hearts overfloweth:
All in all, it was a smashing night. I met a number of Irish wine names, everyone was very friendly and in great form. I was stunned by some of the revelations, mainly to do with how different in character a different ‘breed’ of a familiar grape can be. If you get any chance at all to attend a wine tasting, grasp it with both hands.
Our July and August sale on French wines was inspired by long-time fan Roseanne Smith [t], who let us know she was “Trying to recreate last year’s French jaunt in Ireland!” with a case of our fabulous French wines. Katherine O’Neil [t] chimed in to add “with Curious Wines, you can almost imagine yourself in the south of France. Happy days!” and so the 10% off sale was born. Thanks, ladies!
The ladies at Dine and Wine also plunged their thirsty little mits into a box of our goodies and came up smiling:
I had 3 wines from the delivery and I am pleasantly surprised. None of the wines in the box are over €10 which makes it a giggle to buy even when not on offer.
So there you go - spreading France, happiness and even giggles makes a good month for Curious!
Since starting Curious Wines, we’ve had so much fun being a part of the ‘blogosphere’. The Wine Blog has received tremendous feedback from all corners of the blogging community, even from those who would admit that wine wasn’t their gig! Twitter has also been a blast, giving us plenty of laughs and allowing us to make loads of friends along the way.
It’s only right that Facebook should now be graced with the presence of Ireland’s mixed case wine specialist. It’s where all the Twitters (and just about everyone else on the planet) go on their lunch break, so join us and become a fan, scribble on our wall and have yet another excuse to surf the web during working hours.
In keeping with the theme for the month, February was a virtual love-in for Curious Wines! We’ll be playing Stairway to Heaven on endless repeat and passing out the joss sticks any minute now.
Wine reviewer Blake Creedon made our month (and possibly our year) when Curious Wines got full fun of his weekly column, Grapevine, in the Irish Examiner. His glowing write up started out:
Ireland’s latest online retailer, Curious Wines, has certainly gotten off to a flying start. Launched late last year, from day one their online presence has been an easy-to-use, friendly and comprehensive site… It would surprise you how many big, rich, high-profile sites get it all wrong…
…and just got better from there. We’ve got a PDF of the article and we’re showing it around like baby pictures, we’re so proud.
To our great delight, we also took home a great big gong at the Digital Media Awards, winning our category for Best Commercial Website in Ireland. (You better believe the champagne corks popped that night!) We were also chuffed to bits to find this very blog shortlisted for Best Business Blog at the Irish Blog Awards - an enormous compliment considering we’ve only been blogging since the end of November. We lost out to the very worthy Blacknight blog, and had a fabulous evening at the Awards anyway.
Cracking value at only €9.99 and beats the pants off anything from your local supermarket.
Thanks, Lar! (Also, we dig your funky theme music.)
We also had our very first in-store review; wine lover Brian Clayton came to the warehouse, took photos, shopped his socks off and wrote a rave review. He travelled down with his dad and his uncle looking for an alternative to their regular buying jaunts to the continent, and declared the Curious Wines Experience to be:
…just like shopping in France - bar the temperature!
Our Twitter cup overfloweth’d with kind customer comments last month, too:
ManicMammy: Lovin’ the Babe. Popped into y’all @curiouswines earlier so all stocked up again. Happy days!
keithnolan: Have you tried @curiouswines yet? Highly recommended - I’m saving for my third case from them.
davidrconway: Just got off the phone from home. Those nice chaps @curiouswines delivered the goods in jig time again. Gonna be a good weekend chez moi.
elfinamsterdam: @CuriousWines my mum was extolling your company’s virtues to my wine snob uncle who shops with your competitors. Expect a visit soon!
To be perfectly honest, while we’ll never turn down an award and we’re thrilled to bits with February’s successes, it’s this kind of world of mouth and compliments from customers that mean the most. And lets face it - you can have all the awards in the world, but without fabulous customers, there’s no Curious Wines!
2009 has already been chock full of delight for Curious Wines - we kicked off with a bang when we found out we’ve been short listed for a Digital Media Award in the Best Commercial Website category. We’re super-excited and looking forward to the awards night on 13 February to see if we’ll be cracking open champagne.
Lar Veale at the wonderful SourGrapes.ie is pairing wines with the Irish Blog Awards Foodie Nominees; we’re delighted to be on that list, and even more delighted he summed up Curious thusly:
With a clear customer focus, a great selection of wines and web savvy, Curious will not just survive, but thrive in ‘09.
We’ll drink to that!
Roseanne Smith discovered that unpacking glorious cases of wine is fun for the whole family, and shared evidence of this with us:
Curiosity did not kill this cat - we promise he was wearing a lampshade well before the wine was delivered. (Either that, or this is a cat who really knows how to party.) There’s also great video of her kids jumping up and down on the packing bubble wrap; apparently they later turned the box into a space ship!
Meanwhile, back on Twitter, Curious Wines have been going down a treat with the drinking public:
Smallsips:Barossa Babe has seduced me and touches me in places that other wines don’t get to.
Davidrconway: Happily working through the new world mixed case. Eyeing up old world reds for next payday.
Paul Sutton: Getting my head around the boost graph library and sipping a nice glass of The Lizard merlot thanks to Curious Wines.
If we’re a little late with this month’s Monthly Love, it’s because we’re staggering under the sheer weight of all the fabulous things said about Curious Wines as 2008 closed out.
December kicked off with a hell of a bang when Blake Creedon, one of the top wine writers in Ireland and an Irish Examiner columnist, gave us top billing on his list of recommended online wine retailers:
…exemplary, comprehensively searchable and informative website and their prices seem relatively keen. But for me, the most important aspect of this new business is the choice they offer.
Frank Hannigan also very kindly gave us our very first recommendation on LinkedIn:
The wine is staggering value at every price point. I will never buy rubbish wine again from Tesco or Supervalue or their ilk. I would have to be mad as a brush to do so when you can access the range of stunning wines available from Mike at the same price.
Our Bandon neighbour Catherine O’Neill is steadily drinking her way through our stock, and started with a great review of Long Neck Sauvignon Blanc. Meanwhile, over at Louder Voice, there are already 15 reviews of wines from our warehouse, being drunk for everything from book club meetings to video reviews.
The Twitter love-fest carries on with gratifying feedback from our dedicated wine loving customers:
Keith Nolan: Just received my second case from @curiouswines - ordered less than 24 hours ago. Cheers guys!
Elf in Amsterdam: Cannot say how amazed I am at the 24hr turn around on the Christmas Case of wine I bought from @CuriousWines
Conor O’Neill: Just back from a fantastic @curiouswines launch party in Bandon. Hadn’t realised how much really good value wine they have. Stocked up!
Finally, we’re delighted that customers have continued adding wine reviews to our product pages, with 5 stars from Lar Veale at Sourgrapes.ie for Woodstock “The Stocks” Shiraz, and the 5 stars for a Last Stand Shiraz that helped soothe a broken heart!
November’s been a smashing month at Curious. Since we’ve taken the site out of soft launch and into the big, bad public marketplace, we’ve had amazing feedback from such a wide range of people.
We’re having a great time on Twitter, making friends with wine lovers around the globe and having excellent exchanges about everyone’s favourite Friday night wine. The immediacy of the feedback is so encouraging:
Brian Quinn: Very impressed with CuriousWines.ie. Got a lovely case of mixed red at a great price. Recommend following @curiouswines for discount codes.
Keith Nolan: Placed my order with @curiouswines - nice site! The competition is 5 mins away but Curious is far better value.
Keith Nolan: Top marks to @curiouswines! Enjoying a glass of a fine merlot from them. Delivery was left locked in a secure place when I got home - go buy!
We’ve also been feeling the blog love. Our Bandon neighbour Conor O’Neil knocked our socks off with this great review:
I think it’s probably the best looking and most effective wine web-site in the country and puts the major chains to shame. The wine value is also fantastic.
You really couldn’t ask for a more glowing debute than that. We’re sending each of these fans a special coupon to say thanks, because it’s either that or sit here and blub like a pair of big girls’ blouses.
We also particularly appreciate the warm welcome from our independent wine selling neighbours Bubble Brothers, who came along to our inaugural wine tasting night and graciously quipped us “bright new nails in the coffin of incurious wine consumption.”
We’re also seeing our first customer reviews come through on the site, with excellent ratings for the fruitful Tussock Sauvignon Blanc 2007, supple Lizard Merlot 2006 and the “star find” El Tesoro Monastrell Shiraz 2006 - a 10 star bargain at only €8.49. You can read customer reviews below every wine at Curious, and if they’re lonely and unloved, feel free to add your own review. (There’s no annoying registration required or anything.)
