I regularly visit Bubble Brothers in the English Market(why does it not have its own website?) in Cork. The main reason I go there is that I’m clueless about wine but I know what I like and ask for variations on my taste or ask to try something different. The staff in there are passionate about wine and love talking about it. Seriously, the enthusiasm is addictive and you come away from the place energized. (And often with a few more bottles than you thought you’d purchase.)
If I were to go to an offy or Dunne’s or Tesco’s I wouldn’t hear the story of the wine, I wouldn’t get recommendations. I wouldn’t get the enthusiasm. I think it was Hugh Macleod who talked about Stormhoek and it having a story. I like this idea and I’m happy to pay extra for this kind of service. I just wish that there was a blog on the Bubble Brothers website where the rest of the world could feed off this enthusiasm. Yeah, they do give reviews to an extent in the product descriptions but I think they could do so much more than that and gain a lot more custom as a result too.
100% agree with you on the need for blogs like that. I was trying to make the same point about small food producers recently. For very little effort, many of these companies could set themselves up on blogspot or wordpress.com and start talking about what interests them.
I think the equivalent paper model for Bubble Brothers would be the Oddbins newletter which always used make me feel like I was “in” on a secret club. Everyone wants to be in some club. Posting on wordpress would be a damn sight cheaper than mailing a newsletter every month.
[…] So, I’m going to start looking out for passionate people and passionate companies. My friend Stephen is a candidate for blogging. As is my friend Allan. Same definitely goes for the guy I get wine off of in Bubble Brothers, as I mentioned previously. How many people do we know who are passionate? Why not make a list and have our own tupperware conversion party every few months to try and convert them? The Cult of the Blog O’Sphere. Why am I thinking about that Simpsons episode where they converted Homer by going “ne ne ne ne ne LEA-DER”? […]
[…] Bubble Brothers have a blog. Hooray! Ages back I wrote how I saw them as an ideal candidate for a blog and now Julian, Austin and co have set one up. Call on over and give them some encouragement. Technorati Tags: blogs brothers bubble ireland irish irishblogs wine […]