Tag Archives: birthday week

Wednesday Birthday Week giveaway: $100 Wine.com gift card

wine.com gift card

And the winner is: Rafael Chelles Barroso, who selected 123; the winning number was 136 (screen shot to the left). Thanks to everyone who participated. Tomorrow’s giveaway: the six Reidels — two Vinum sparkling glasses and four O red wine glasses — courtesy of Banfi Wines.

Today, to celebrate the blog’s 10th anniversary, we’re giving away a $100 Wine.com gift card, good for anything on the site of the world’s largest Internet wine retailer. Thanks to Wine.com, a long-time supporter of the blog and what we do here. This is the third of five daily giveaways; check out this post to see the prizes for the rest of the week.

Complete contest rules are here. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of this post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts. Unless the number is in the comments section of this post, the entry won’t count.

If you get the blog via email or RSS, you need to go to this exact post on the website to enter (click the link to get there). At about 5 p.m. central today, I’ll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose entry is closest to that number gets the gift card.

Winebits 515: Birthday Week 2017 — welcome, Gen X and Millennials

Birthday week wine news: Gen X and Millennials have learned to love the blog, plus way more posts than any one Curmudgeon should have to write

• Younger and younger:  Almost half of the blog’s visitors between November 2016 and November 2017 were younger than 44, more than a third were 25-44, and only one out of five were Baby Boomers. In other words, the blog has finally become relevant to the next two generations of wine drinkers. I’ve been working on this for several years, and am very glad to see it. Maybe the Gen X and Millennials can save us from the tyranny of scores and winespeak. Plus, the blog is even less male — 53 percent this year, compared to 55 percent last year.

• Almost 3,000 posts: I don’t think about it much, given that writing for publication every day is the norm in the newspaper business, where I started. But that’s a lot of writing, especially since I teach and write 50 or more freelance pieces year. Still, as I have said since 1991, when I got out of the newspaper business: It beats working for a living. No matter how many times I pound the keyboard or scream at the walls when I get stuck, I never have to attend a meeting. Ever.

• Linux still at one percent: There was a brief dustup among Linux geeks last month when a consultancy reported that Linux’s share of the worldwide desktop computer market in September reached almost seven percent. It’s usually one percent, and the consultancy immediately said it had made a mistake but wasn’t quite sure where. I’m here to report that it remained about one percent on the blog, so my statistics are more accurate than a company that gets paid to study these things. No, I don’t know what that means.

expensive wine

Tuesday Birthday Week giveaway: French wine accessory gift pack

French wine accessories

And the winner is: Tom Geoghegan, who selected 49; the winning number was 54 (screen shot to the left). Thanks to everyone who participated. Tomorrow’s giveaway is the $100 wine.com gift card, courtesy of the blog’s long-time pal and the world’s largest Internet retailer.

Today, to celebrate the blog’s 10th anniversary, we’re giving away a French wine accessory gift pack, courtesy of Teuwen Communications and its French wine clients. This is the second of five daily giveaways; check out this post to see the prizes for the rest of the week.

Complete contest rules are here. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of this post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts. Unless the number is in the comments section of this post, the entry won’t count.

If you get the blog via email or RSS, you need to go to this exact post on the website to enter (click the link to get there). At about 5 p.m. central today, I’ll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose entry is closest to that number gets the gift pack.

Monday Birthday Week giveaway: $50 Bonny Doon gift card

bonny doonWin a $50 Bonny Doon gift card


And the winner is: Jeff, who selected 912; the winning number was 947 (screen shot to the right). Thanks to everyone who participated. Tomorrow’s giveaway is the French wine accessories gift pack, courtesy of Teuwen Communication.

Today, to celebrate the blog’s 10th anniversary, we’re giving away a $50 gift card from Bonny Doon, one of my favorite California producers. This is the first of five daily giveaways; check out this post to see the prizes for the rest of the week.

Complete contest rules are here. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of this post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts. Unless the number is in the comments section of this post, the entry won’t count.

If you get the blog via email or RSS, you need to go to this exact post on the website to enter (click the link to get there). At about 5 p.m. central today, I’ll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose entry is closest to that number gets the gift card.

Birthday week 2017 starts Monday

Birthday weekThe blog’s 10th Birthday Week begins on Monday, with some of the the best prizes yet

Birthday Week 2017, the 10th annual, begins on Monday with perhaps the best prizes in Birthday Week history. And why not? Ten years doing this is a long time, and especially doing what we do here.

Hence the Wine Curmudgeon’s annual thank you to everyone who reads the blog and visits the site, since none of this would happen without you. Contest rules are here. Those of you who get the blog via email or RSS will need to go to winecurmudgeon.com and click on that day’s prize post to enter.

Each day next week, a prize post will run in addition to the regular post. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of the prize post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts, like this one. Unless the number is in the comments section of the prize post, the entry won’t count.

This year’s prize schedule:

• Monday: A $50 gift card from Boony Doon Vineyards.

• Tuesday: A French wine gift accessory pack, courtesy of and much thanks to Teuwen Communications and its French wine clients.

• Wednesday: A $100 gift card from Wine.com, and thank you very much to the people at Wine.com for their annual enthusiasm for what we do here.

• Thursday: Six Riedel wine glasses — two Vinum sparkling glasses and four O red wine glasses — courtesy of Banfi Wines.

• Friday: Four autographed copies of the cheap wine book.

Besides the prize giveaways, I’ll recap the past year on the blog — the top posts and the least liked on Monday, as well as my always insightful analysis about what it all means and the future of the wine business on Thursday.

Friday Birthday Week giveaway: VinGardeValise Petite

VingardeValise petite
And the winner is: Anthony Chavez, who selected 351; the winning number was 353 (screen shot to the right). Thanks to everyonerandom5 who participated. This was the second consecutive record-setting birthday week, and I am most grateful.

Today, to celebrate the blog’s ninth anniversary, we’re giving away The VinGardeValise Petite, the ultimate wine bottle suitcase, plus an autographed copy of the cheap wine book. Thanks to VinGarde, a long-time pal of the blog, for its support. This is the final  giveaway for Birthday Week.

Complete contest rules are here. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of this post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts. Unless the number is in the comments section of this post, the entry won’t count.

If you get the blog via email or RSS, you need to go to this exact post on the website to enter (click the link to get there). At about 5 p.m. central today, I’ll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose entry is closest to that number gets the VinGarde and the book.

Thursday Birthday Week giveaway: $100 NakedWines.com gift certificate

$100 NakedWines.com gift certificateAnd the winner is: Lincoln Stuart Farnum, who selected 666; the winning number was 689 random4(screen shot to the right) — and it was damn close for all the prizes. The second- and third- place winners are long-time blog visitor Burnsey, who has been around here as long as I have, I think (713) and Patty Collins (657). Thanks to everyone who participated. Tomorrow’s giveaway, the final one for Birthday Week, is the VinGardeValise Petite, the ultimate wine bottle suitcase, plus a copy of the cheap wine book.

Today, to celebrate the blog’s ninth anniversary, we’re giving away a $100 gift certificate from NakedWines.com, plus a $100 voucher for a $160 order for the second and third place finishers.. Thanks to NakedWines.com for joining us for the Birthday Week fun this year. This is the the fourth of five daily giveaways; check out this post to see the prizes for the rest of the week.

Complete contest rules are here. Pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of this post. You can’t pick a number someone else has picked, and you need to leave your guess in the comments section of this post — no email entries or entries on other posts. Unless the number is in the comments section of this post, the entry won’t count.

If you get the blog via email or RSS, you need to go to this exact post on the website to enter (click the link to get there). At about 5 p.m. central today, I’ll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose entry is closest to that number gets the gift certificate, and the the two entries closest after that get the voucher.