Since this is my last post for UnReserved, I decided to take a look back at the most hotly debated topics over the past 11 months. The number of comments on each shows which topics touched your nerves. The topics of the posts most commented on included:

Global Warming
Californian vs. European Wine
Tempranillo (who knew?)
Screwcaps and Corks
Two-Buck Chuck

We also had a great run in a post where I asked people to nominate alternative names for American-made Port-style wines. “Forto” was the winner.

I wonder what made these subjects so compelling, and what other subjects in wine you would like to discuss.
You responded to the issues that somehow stimulated your thinking, and in that way made them your own. That’s been the most interesting thing for me about being a blogger for the first time. During many years in journalism – mostly magazines — I was accustomed to feedback, but of a different kind. It tended to trickle in, when it came at all. It got published after long delays, when it got published at all.

Authoring a blog is more like editing a small-town newspaper, which is what I did for the first few years after college. I might write a column critical of a city council person or a football coach, and the next day I’d run into that person in Safeway. It was enlightening, but sometimes deflating, to face my subjects while they nailed me for meddling in their lives. Of course sometimes they were just blowing smoke and I knew it. But most of the time, the comments I heard around town were supportive and helped me do a better job.

Blogging has revived the good aspects of that feedback, and very, very few of you have indulged in the bad.

That is what I’ve been thinking as I write this last post for Wine Enthusiast’s UnReserved blog. It’s been a very fulfilling run for me. I enjoyed working with my immediate editor Susan Kostrzewa, and with fellow blogger Erika Strum, as well as Tim Moriarty, David Talbot and the publisher and editor, Adam Strum.

But it’s time to focus my editorial energy closer to home. Please come back to UnReserved soon to see the enhancements Wine Enthusiast has planned.

Thanks for responding so generously to me as your small-town editor here in one neighborhood of the Internet.

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