Sorry for the bad pun. As Gary Vaynerchuk announced on the 12th January, the Cork’d website stops its operations. You may export your tasting notes.
It was a place where any drinker could write about wine. It was not reserved to advanced tasters and that was good. In respect to this broad public I guess it did not reach sufficient mass unlike Snooth or Cellartracker. See Joel for a discussion on this (business-wise).
This is an analysis of the ranking of wine sites.
3 websites clearly stand out as the biggest wine hubs: the Wine Spectator, the Wine lovers page and Robert Parker’s forum. This in part is explained by their quality. It is also explained by the long time they have been known by wine enthusiasts.
Having an off-line reputation clearly helps. This is easiest for the paper media — as illustrated by the presence in the top 10 of the Wine Spectator, Decanter, Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker.
The top tier is not going away but some writers have steadily increased their readership over the years. The biggest valuation growth in the past year was for Another Wine Blog. The biggest valuation increments this quarter are due to growing traffic:
In the last few years the wine web offer has immensely diversified. There now are many quality wine critics who blog on line. The Top 100 attempts to highlight writers that you should discover. Only the “better” 20% of the websites are shown. Well, “better” here is not an opinion but an evaluation of which sites are more popular.
What other trends can you see from the rankings?
Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:
If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.
Here are the metrics I use for rating the wine sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites 
.
Here is the quarterly ranking of web sites. Webmasters need not apply as the contest includes all sites. The table shows only the 150 ‘best’ — ‘best’ is evaluated with public website metrics. These permit to include all sites — not just blogs.
So lie back, relax, and enjoy my comments on the results.
You may notice that half the biggest websites are supported — and promoted — by off-line operations. They are Web appendices of successful non-Internet ventures: the Wine Spectator, The Pour, eRobertParker, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Natalie McLean, Jancis Robinson.
Most of the top websites stem from operations based in the US. The majority of the listed sites are written from that country. The following facts may contribute: the USA still is the country the most present on the Web, they still dominate the English-speaking culture and they are on a trend to become the top wine drinking country in the world.
So here is a list of all the websites which are pure players (without offline operations), in the Top 150 and not based in an English-speaking nation:
Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:
If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.
You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites .
There is a complementary contest: the Wine Blog Awards. It has a focus on US blogs and uses some subjective judgment by peers. The purpose is entirely different to that of the Cellarer ranking, which automatically includes all sites and is limited only by publically available data (which mostly is not directly influenced by peers).
Here is Cellarer’s guide to the most popular food blogs. The contest includes all personal sites but the table shows only the 100 ‘best’ — ‘best’ is evaluated with public website metrics.
Herebelow is an overview of the results.
The number of websites that I retrieve metrics for is 500. This (update: private) list is close to being complete: it includes almost all the websites that qualify.
I chose to not include magazines, that is sites that are written by many contributors. Press and firms have their means of getting known. I’d rather promote unique voices (blogs). So the top food blogs is a convenient tool for getting to know prominent culinary authors. Please tell me if you spot an item in the list that would have more than 2 contributors.
Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Top food blogs, the below conditions must be met:
You can follow the ranking evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites .
There are ways to discover food-related sites. Here is the list of the best French food blogs. You can also take the tour at Cellarer search, a search engine dedicated to wine and food.
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