What was your wine board path to Wine Berserkers

Interested in seeing how we all got here.

My first wine board was the old AOL board. Not a real names board, which is unfortunate because I do not know who people were there. But, the breakout star of that board was a guy who seemed to taste a whole lot more and better Burgundies than anyone else. What a revelation. His name was Burghound.

After a while I experimented with other boards (and we stopped having AOL). My first one was Robin Garr’s wine page. Liked it, not sure why I stopped posting there, but frankly I just found Mark Squires board and liked it better. Found some really good Burgundy people there. Went to my first offline as a result of that board. All of this was before it was taken over by Parker.

Spent a bit of time over time at Tom Cannavan’s Wine-pages, a British wine board. It was interesting to get a different perspective from a bunch of knowledgable British and other European wine lovers and met some of them over time. Nice people. But, there was a vocal minority of people on that board who were snobs that looked down on Americans and over time I just got tired of that and went there less and less and now have not been there for years.

Squires eventually was taken over by Parker. Board frankly got too big and too angry. Too many new people who wanted to show that they knew more about wine than Parker did. So, it became too much about showing off and one had to get away from certain threads to actually talk about wine. Still, there was a really good Burgundy core there.

When that board was shut off from most of the world, I migrated here - had been here a bunch anyway. Pre-Parker shut-off, this board was a bit too California in orientation for me. But, over time, a lot of the interesting Burgundy, etc., people from Squires/Parker migrated here, so I am happy again. Over time, I think there has been less and less discussion of Parker (good and bad) here, which is good. There are actually a number of really good Bordeaux threads these days that have rekindled my interest in Bordeaux - for a long time it seemed like wine threads on Bordeaux were mostly about how Parker would or did rate a wine, when in the futures process he should rate a wine and how one’s “portfolio” of Bordeaux was appreciating. Now, thanks to people like Panos Kakaviatos, Robert Alfert, Mark Golodetz and others there seems to be a strange trend brewing that Bordeaux is actually a wine people drink and not a financial asset. Very refreshing.

I dove right into the fire. I was following FMIII on Cellartracker and one day he posted a note with a reference to WineBerserkers. Before that I had spent a little time in the Snooth forums but nowhere else.

  1. Some California board, name escapes me, maybe run by Mark Harrington?
  2. Spectator
  3. Squires, then Squires/Parker
  4. WB

None. WB is my first.

I’m probably still a relative newbie to many that are here – but a few years ago I was researching the Rudy case, right around the time I had become serious about learning more about wine. The thread popped up in a Google search, and after diving down the rabbit hole, I have yet to emerge! So Berserkers is my first! [cheers.gif]

DSP per instructions from Bob and Mark, for mocking JSM for their own words.

I started on the old Prodigy board where RMP was the Prodigy expert resource. Kind of followed that to Squires’ board, but due to divorce-related personal restructuring cut way back on wine buying, and hence researching, and eventually forgot my PW. I did not go to eBob for a long time, preferring the paper, but eventually did and then, It was a real bitch to eventually reset it. The blog there was no longer what it once was, and started looking around and , voila!, stumbled into WB.

Probably the first for me was the alt.food.wine newsgroup, followed by Brad Harrington’s West Coast Wine Net forum. Also spent a little time on VinoCellar but never found it very interesting to me. Then Squires/eBob, which led to Berserkers when the paywall went up.

Wine Spectator
Squires (until I was banned)
VinoCellar
WinoDepot
WineXiles
WineBerserkers


It’s been mostly a fun and informative ride.

The Wine Spectator board.

Squires
Wine pages
Here

Squires/Parker

Tried to sell Spectator some bulletin board software when they came on the internet. They turned us down and bought something else. I checked them out a few times but didn’t hang around.

Then Squires.

Then some gardening sites.

When Mark shut everyone down, since everyone I knew was here, I came over here. Paid for a year over there too, but it pretty much was a ghost town.

Wine Spectator was my first, wasn’t a big fan of it, but I checked in from time to time. Someone there referenced EBob/Squires and I went there to check it out, and was a big fan…not always a fan of the moderation, but the conversations and number of ITB folks was awesome. Then as with most, it went dark and I moved here. I briefly played around with the CellarTracker forum, but decided one was enough.

I’ve been monogamous for several years now. [cheers.gif]

WCWN
Robin Garr’s Board
Wine Disorder (have forgotten what it was previously called)
The Squires board pre-Parker & post
Wino Depo (short lived)

The AUS wine forum or whatever it was called
Wine pages in the U.K.
Never much liked the WS or the WC sites

AltFoodWine
Wine Spectator
WLDG- Robin Garr Board (was really great for quite a while)
WCWN? - Brad Harrington (same time as above)
Squires Board
Parkour Board
Berserkers

All pretty similar at a high level (wine fiends) but each has its own special flavor.

alt.food.wine
Robin Garr.
Then Garr and Wine Therapy (turned into Wine Disorder)
Then Squires and Wine Therapy or Disorder.
Now here and Wine Disorder. I didn’t get here by Squires/Parker closing down by by a post on Wine Disorder alerting me to its existence, though.

The same route detailed by some others here:

WCWN
Spectator (lurked only)
Squires
Here!!

I moved over after the Chowhound implosion. What was an active if not occasionally snarky community was decimated by editorial decisions. Still miss the gang.

What happened in particular?