Happy New Year Everyone! The Cellar Master is back and my New Year’s Resolution is to deliver you content on a regular and consistent basis, a new re-opening if you will. As such for the first post of the year will be on the plan going forward for the Cellar Master as a whole. Starting with the Blog, I intend to post at minimum three times a week with the plan on adding more posts when something interesting comes up that would interest the followers of this blog. As for regularly posted content we plan on doing a Monday-Wednesday-Friday set up for posting.

On Mondays expect to see wine education where I’ll be going in depth into the facts about wine that will help you when trying to buy wines, understanding reviews, and win the occasional bar bet or two. At the start expect a lot of terms to be discussed so we can have a baseline to discuss anything else from aging, a favorite subject of mine, to regions of the world and anywhere in between. This will also be the time I ask questions that you the reader can send me, either through email or comments in the discussion threads down below. If I find your question requires a bit more research and the answer is longer than a paragraph expect it to be a subject for another Monday post!

On Wednesdays will be the wines of the week with a bit of revision from last year. The primary focus will be on two wines with at least one of those being something that can be found in your local grocery or liquor store while the other one will likely be from my own cellar or from a winery itself, though you may get a two for one deal on the easier to find bottles. For the most part I will attempt to match the bottles like to like, say a new Pinot Noir with one I have in my cellar, to give some perspective on age but I’ll likely come across the occasional singleton as well. Ultimately the results of these reviews will be posted in a ranking order every four months, culminating in an end of the year tasting involving a panel of selected judges for wines of the year.

On Fridays you can look forward to the return of the Jekyll & Hyde Cocktail series, one of mine and my wife’s favorite parts of the week. The plan is to take an old staple and create a something new out by changing one or two ingredients to forming a new monster. For example, taking a French 75 and replacing the gin with bourbon and the lemon with orange, creating the American 105. While the core of the cocktail creations I would also love to explore techniques both old and new, forgotten cocktails, and creating new classics.

I also intend to add a few extra posts here and there about beer, spirits, food, equipment, book reviews, and anything else that strikes my fancy. I want to go back to what this blog was always meant to be, an exploration of the beauty of wine, exploration of the culture surrounding it and sharing what I’ve learned with a wider audience. To that end there will be a closer integration with the Cellar Master Social media, to include regular use of Instagram and Facebook creating a community of for discussion and knowledge.

In the future I would like to add more audio-visual elements to the Cellar Master. I’d like to start a podcast discussing wine news and sharing my thoughts on trends and wines I’ve found interesting, perhaps even bringing on friends or other wine experts for interviews and discussion. With some trips planned down the road I’m sure we could grab a few interesting characters to talk wine with. The addition of video would be tremendous as well, instead of merely discussing the creation of cocktails we can show the process of it.

I’m excited for what this New Year will bring and I do hope you’ll join me and invite your friends for this crazy ride!

-The Cellar Master