AceHighWine

Questions? First visit to the site and wondering “What the..”? Then you’ve come to the right place.

Here are some answers to what I assume might be some frequently asked questions of people who have stumbled across AceHighWine.

Double you double you double you dot Ace High what? Good lord man, are you stupid?

Judging by my recent audition for TV game show Temptation where I topped out at 12 out of 50, yes. But with regards to www.acehighwine.com – well, the jury is still out I suppose. We’ll just have to wait and see…

So explain this www.acehighwine.com thingymajig then…

AceHighWine is a website with wine recommendations during the week and on weekends; musings on poker and life. The idea is that people visit once a day and get to read a little bit about a great bottle of wine out there that deserves some attention.

It should only take you about two minutes tops each day to read about a wine, and then that’s it – you’re done.

And the poker angle?

After thinking long and hard about a catchy URL for a wine-based dot com blog – “Gawd, yet another one,” I hear someone in the background moan – I eventually realized that countless others had beaten me to the punch and registered all the catchy names (www.crulove.com was a leading contender until I discovered it too had been registered).

It was time to turn to a necessary and somewhat spontaneous Plan B – dismiss the traditional wine speak terms and find another angle to relate to the wine from. And lo and behold, www.acehighwine.com was born.

Steady on mate, what do wine and poker have to do with each other? I daresay you’ve indulged in one glass too many of Swan Valley shiraz…

Granted, at first glance, not a great deal – but like getting to know a good bottle of wine a little better, little nuances begin to reveal themselves over time. Without getting too indepth (and risking breaking into extremely tedious psychobabble), wine and poker are two joys that complement each other very well. Also, I believe both are slowly assimilating themselves into popular culture - not just here in Australia, but overseas too.

I believe the key to the wine industry’s sustainability is getting more and more people drinking the stuff across all price points. Remove the uppity-ness and smoke and mirrors; make it easy for people to enjoy and learn about wine and things will be a little easier on wine producers.

And poker? Well, people just can’t get enough of the game. And as I like wine and I like poker - I thought why not combine the two?

Oh, so you’re one of those wine tossers then?

I try not to be – but as one who puts pen to paper about wine, sometimes it’s hard to avoid coming across like that. Like everyone who drinks wine, I was once a scared, bright-eyed drinker once too who was intimidated by the tradition-bound world of wine. In fact, I probably still am, because the more you get into wine, the more you realise how little you know.

Wine is one of life’s greatest hedonistic pleasures and it’s a privilege to be able to write about it and meet so many great people in my journey into wine. This is my way of lending a small helping hand to producers whose wines I rate, ensuring that they can keep making the great wine we love so much.

When all’s said and done, I’ve got nowt to do with “high society” and all that nonsense. I’m just your average Joe who enjoys wine and cards and wants to share his passion with others. Just because a wine is expensive doesn’t mean it’s good and just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, don’t just a wine by its RRP either.

Why does the site look crap? Have you managed to find a “Four glasses of Barossa shiraz” plugin because this is what the screen looks like, particularly the sidebar on the right.

It’s probably because you’re using Internet Explorer which like a lot of Microsoft software refuses to play nicely with others and generally buggerises everything up. If you haven’t already done so, consider making the change to FireFox for your web browser of choice at home (you can try making it your browser of choice at work, but I don’t think the people in IT would like that - or you - very much if you did). On Firefox, the glamorous AceHighWine looks just like a million bucks - or was that rupiah?

And thus end the questions, so far. See the end of this page for information on submitting your own questions and being part of AceHighWine history.

FAQ last updated on Thursday, June 14 2006

There’s a start there! If you have any other FAQ questions you can think of, please send them to poker [at] acehighwine [dot] com.

If I reckon it has merit, I’ll answer it and even credit you. The more tongue-in-cheek the question, the more likely I’ll put it up.

ABOUT ACEHIGHWINE

AceHighWine is a site dedicated to two passions of mine, wine and poker. Wine recommendations are added on a daily basis and I usually post something to do with that most intriguing-slash-infuriating of card games, poker.

Also, this is as good a place as any to draw visitors’ attention to the independence of the ethos of AceHighWine.

No paid advertising is accepted on AceHighWine. At all. Whatsoever.

Any wine and/or poker recommendations have been based entirely on said product’s merits. Therefore if anything cops a mention here, I’m willing to vouch for the said product (for what it’s worth) and all involved (ie me) with AceHighWine are willing to stake their prestigious reputations on the worth of said product(s). As someone who spends time online, there’s nothing worse than visiting a site and having to navigate your way through copious amounts of often-annoying advertising.

There’s enough large scale selling out taking place in the media these days - AceHighWine refuses to be part of the nation-wide media phenomenom of money over morals.