The final post

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

man making a point
Ah, the WC look. Who else could get away with that?

“My necessaries are embark’d: farewell”

Yes, the quote is from Shakespeare (“Hamlet,” Act 1, Scene 3). And why not go out by stealing from the best?

Today’s is the blog’s final post, and it has been a grand and glorious run — some 4,700 posts over more than 16 years. Which, actually, was even longer than my time in the newspaper business (and I didn’t have to cover one high school football game in the process).

Who knew that would happen?

The blog survived the Trump wine tariff as well as the worst recession in 45 years, and it even survived all those people – and there were entirely too many — who never understood why I didn’t want to write about $40 wine. “Because most of us can’t afford it!” “No? Really?”

What it couldn’t survive was the 21st century wine business, and that I wrote about entry level wines at a time when there were fewer and fewer entry level wine drinkers. Or, as my brother told me when we discussed this, “It’s so hard to stay fresh when the industry you cover is so stagnant and status quo.”

Which I wish I had written, say, 10 years ago.

As noted, I’ll take the paywall off the old blog at winecurmudgeon.com later this week, so anyone who wants to can pick and choose and hopefully get a chuckle from some rant back in 2011. The Substack will go away, also later this week; I’ve been assured that paid subscribers will get refunds for their unexpired terms.

Thanks to everyone for the kind and more than gracious remarks they’ve emailed, commented, and even posted elsewhere on the cyber-ether since I decided to close the blog. I am flattered and even a little embarrassed. At heart, I guess, I’m still a newspaperman, and we’re not used to that sort of attention.

In the end, I have my cheap wine – my quality cheap wine, I should add — and I have my memories. They are fabulous, wonderful memories of drinking and writing about the wine that most of us drink and sharing it with everyone who read the blog.

We had a marvelous time, didn’t we? Which, in the end, is all that really matters.