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 you’re keen on crowd sourcing your wine, check out Barossa Babe, the New World Mixed Case, and the plummy Lizard Merlot.

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.

Speaking of video reviews, Frank O’Brien at Robert Francis Wine kicked off a six part video review series covering half a dozen of our wines with this review of Domaine du Chateau d’Eau Pinot Noir 2007:

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.)