After a fitful night filled with all sort of problems moving this site, I have set up shop at my new server. Many of the podcasts still have to be added here and I will be uploading those for the rest of the evening (all the mp3’s are here now; aac’s will be loaded overnight). Most everything else should be working fine with the exception of my sidebar customization (note to self; backup sidebar widget code). Let me know if you see any problems.

I’m not going to do this again anytime soon.

Update 1/8: All podcasts have been migrated and all customizations have been reloaded. I’m now all here at Media Temple; let me know if you see anything broken. I’ll be adding a few enhancements this week but it’s pretty much back to normal blogging and podcasting from here.

Thanks for the tip on the hosting, Josh.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be moving this site to a new home which will handle growth in traffic and provide better service. You will probably not notice any difference but I will not post again until I’m safely on the new server in a day or two. Feel free to leave comments as I will port the database as the last step in my racking process.

Thanks!

Update: Well, this is not going very well… wish me luck

Or send me an email before this time next week. That’s when Ryan Opaz from Catavino will visit the fabulous Winecast studios for a podcast and virtual tasting of wines from the Iberian Peninsula.

Like the Cellar Rat, Ryan is a Twin Cities expatriate and he returned to Minnesota for the holidays. I’m taking advantage of this to record a podcast and Ryan suggested we solicit questions from Winecast readers and listeners on the of the wines of Spain and Portugal. As you might expect from my predictions, I’m going to ask Ryan if he thinks Tempranillo will be the hot red of 2007 but there are plenty of other things to learn about Iberian wines.

Just post your question to the comments here or send me an email. Our show will be posted on January 14th.

Last year I posted my goals for the year. This year my goal is to complete 70% of my goals from last year (which are the first seven items for those interested). And I’d like to make some wine.

That was easy

Happy New Year!

As the year comes to a close, it’s time to take a quick look back on 2006. This was a mixed year for me, with some great times but also some pretty crappy times. The most popular posts here point almost exclusively to the good, as expected:

1. Proposal For A Virtual Wine 2.0 Event - Late in the year I became interested in the intersection of Web 2.0 and wine and held a couple online virtual meetups to discuss this subject further. The first one in Second Life was well attended but not as fruitful as the most recent event in Lingr. Still lots of work to do here.

2. Wine 2.0 Just Another Webstore? - My musings about if Wine 2.0 was only about eCommerce provoked a lot of good discussion on the subject. A lot more where that comes from in 2007.

3. Wine 2.0 Meetup Deux on Tuesday - My posting for the second virtual meetup on Wine 2.0; more was learned on the second attempt but it is still difficult to decode from the transcripts.

4. WBW 22 - Lite (alcohol) Reds - My first turn at bat hosting Wine Blogging Wednesday went very well with a great turnout and some very interesting wines blogged. Stay tuned for my next time hosting sometime in 2007, this time featuring my favorite white varietal.

5. Do Scores Here Really Matter? - This year I switched from the vague 20 point scale to the more precise 100 point scale but I took my time about making a decision. The discussion here helped me put the issue into the correct perspective to make my final choice.

6. Virtual Wine 2.0 Meetup This Week - Wine 2.0, blah, blah, blah, etc.

7. Wine 2.0 Minifesto - OK, this really sucked, big time, as Peter Gabriel might say. I’m gonna take another crack at this in January; maybe Hugh will link to me this time

8. A bump in the road… - What a way to start the year, getting canned in a crappy job. Probably was for the best as it offered me an entry into the wine industry. More on this subject in the new year…

9. Should Negative Wine Reviews Be Published? - Perhaps my most important post of the year that still is having an impact. A Google of Graeme Miller Wines today still brings up 50% negative posts on the first page of results (my post is at the top of page 2).

10. Is Wine Too Niche For Web 2.0? - My first post in the Wine 2.0 meme. The answer is “no” by the way

Thanks for your support this year and I am very much looking forward to 2007.

I’m planning to reach out to some of the wine importers and distributors based here in the Twin Cities after the first of the year but wondered how many are now reading wine blogs or paying attention to online wine writing. My guess is less than 10%. If you fit this description, drop me a line or post to the comments.

Thanks!

Twenty-four months ago I installed Wordpress, downloaded Audacity, plugged an Xbox karaoke mic into my laptop and hit record. What came out was the first episode of Winecast and the first podcast about wine. Since then, I’ve produced 69 more full length podcasts and 5 Quick Picks shows. Not a lot of content in the scheme of things but still a decent body of work, I think. I’ve also been joined by scores of other great wine podcasts in these last couple years.

After briefly considering calling it quits a couple months ago, I decided to dive into the wine blogging and podcasting waters even deeper in my third year. Not only will I return to my weekly frequency for the classic podcast, I will also make Quick Picks a regular mid-week feature. I’m developing another podcast right now that may or may not come under the Winecast banner, so 2007 will be a great year for this podcast, and, I hope, it’s host.

Thanks to all who supported the show this year and for all your comments. The best is truly yet to come…

PS: If you already like what I’ve done, you could also Digg the show

When I started this blog and podcast, almost 2 years ago, I set-up on a super cheap hosting account thinking I’d only have a few hundred hits. That was a bad assumption and I ran out of bandwidth within my first two weeks. In January of 2005 I moved to a larger account at Bluehost and it has served me well until the past couple of weeks when the amount of traffic has been too much for my shared hosting account. Therefore, I will have to move to a dedicated server plan in the next few days to avoid the CPU quota errors you might have noticed from time to time.

It’s not a problem at all; I knew it would come to this someday. If you know of any hosts for me to check out with dedicated plans, post them to the comments.

I just noticed a problem with the iTunes feed that might be preventing many from receiving the podcast. Seems I had a bad date on Quick Picks 3 a few weeks back and although I corrected it later, if you hit the feed when it was wrong, iTunes remembers it and prevents any new downloads. The only way to fix this is to delete the subscription and resubscribe in iTunes. Here’s the link to make it easier for you. Sorry about that; I’ll mention it on my next podcast but I don’t think many iTunes listeners will hear me

Man, did I get some great responses to last night’s Wine 2.0 post; this is exactly what I had in mind… more later once I respond in the comments.

Thanks everyone!