Berserker Day debriefing thread....whoooo!

My first was my favorite but today just oozed fun and excitement and the energy the sellers put in was astounding.

I am full of contentment and gratitude.

Any favorite experiences or finds today?

This was my first Berserker Day as a member (longish-time lurker) and I spent ~3x as much as I planned. I guess I should have expected that. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly, the best experience was seeing the enthusiasm and support from everyone on this board. A memorable day and a great spotlight on the community.

Now… to wait for the tracking numbers.

Yea it was fun. Lots of positive energy and comments on the board. I hope the producers had good days!

Things I thought were great were the support and enthusiasm sellers were showing for each other and the number of women, and even more the number of women with GCC status, who were participating. Diversity makes the community stronger and better and I hope to see a lot of new voices bringing their knowledge, opinions, and enthusiasm to WB.

Whoosh. Made it through with a reasonable 4 cases, a bunch of comestibles, and without having the credit card company call me once! My favorite part was seeing the visible thrill from newcomers like Shiba-Wichern and Aerea have their expectations blown away with the response from the WB community.

Thanks Todd and Brig and everyone for making this happen!

Excited about:

Newcomer winery - Pezzato

Newcomer non-wine - Slim Sadies beef jerky

Repeat - Sojourn

Repeat but new to me - Bougetz

…Sad to see not participate…V Madrone/ AXR

It was a lot of fun. I have no more space and still bought 2x what I planned to last night. I think that is what this day is all about - exceeding expectations, whatever they are. I don’t know how the process works but I seriously doubt there are any underperformers here, which is impressive. Looking forward to opening these with other people (remember that?) soon!

As a first time seller, I just want to say that I am positively reeling. It’s SO hard to break into this business even without a global clusterf** of epic proportions as the backdrop. We spent two+ years getting everything in order to launch Stereophonic on March 16th… Well, I can laugh about it now. When you get positive feedback and people taking a chance on you it means so much! I gotta say, the outpouring of interest and support from WB is seriously transformative for us. Thank you x100 WB, Todd, the Mods and all the other sellers at the fair. Mad love!

One word - meat.

I participated for the first time.

Of note, though - I made my first purchase of New World wine since 2008! Marcus Goodfellow and all who praise his wines broke my streak.

A fantastic two days! Lots of fun leading to reduced buying inhibitions which will lead to a bit of a credit-card hangover, but I can convert those hangover points into Grassl stems, so it’s all good. Looking forward to eating and drinking stuff from purveyors both familiar and new to me. And, somehow, I ended up being the very first customer ever for a brand new wine producer, so how cool was that?

Found some of my willpower. Granted I had ordered from Halcon and Goodfellow before BD, but I at least kept it “reasonable” for the first time in years.

Not that I’m superstitious or anything like that but I’m thinking we should just skip to BDXIV next year.

Great job Todd, Brig and Co. I think I only bitched at Todd one time this year. The selections this BD were overwhelming and if not for the fact that I worked all day I may have given Rodrigo and Bill a run for their money. Well, not really. So much I didn’t pull the trigger on but there’s always BDIV!

I am officially done buying wine until I can build larger storage. Oh look, a new Turley offer…

Edit: I already have wine arriving today from yesterdays purchasing! (Ridge)

Thanks to Todd, Brig, etc for arranging such a great BD! Ordered from some of my old favorites - Sojourn, Jean Edwards, and Boheme, and some new ones - Calluna, HLR. Took a flyer on the HLR. Never heard of them, but my wife wanted some Merlot. Unfortunately due to being home so much, I was already fully stocked. Not sure where I’m going to put all of this!

Ended up with 24 bottles across 7 producers, 6 of which were first time purchases for me. Also grabbed coffee and beef jerky. Thanks again to Todd & Co. for their hard work making BD a constant success.

Thanks to the organizers and participants - I can’t imagine the work that goes into this.

With so many great participants I find myself torn as to whether to use my very limited finds to support newcomers or return to old favorites. I did some of both but wish I could do more. Mike Evans said it better on the ‘Tally up’ thread but I do lean towards buying from active community contributors.

Reading this, it seems that I’m claiming that my purchases are altruistic - perhaps to a slight degree, but I also bought great wines at great prices.

I loved the energy from the sellers and community! Purchased mostly from noobs and mostly whites and mostly low abv! Can’t wait for undry February to check these out…

Bought everything on preview day which made the experience fun, but also a bit more relaxing. Trying to make the best of my Grand Cru status.
I’ll make the final judgement once I get the wines, but I think I made a couple discoveries: Stereophonic for some Saxum/CdP ish blends and Celli for QPR Grenache. Also bought what IMHO he does best, Cinsault and Mourvèdre rose’ from Larry at Tercero. A long time board member and BD participant.

Great fun, as always.

Feeling some minor regret over getting caught up in the heat of the moment and winning a JJ Buckley gift card auction without first checking if they actually ship to me…