Reddit’s r/Wine subreddit is one of the web’s best places to discuss and learn about wine. While there are dozens of popular wine forums on the web, nearly all gravitate to either the novice end of the spectrum or the expert end. r/Wine treads a nice middle ground, with interesting conversations and useful feedback & info for novices.
So What Scored Best This Year?
What else? A meme. Ron Swanson in the hardware liquor store. As with the most commented on post below, simplifying things in a crude manner, and boasting about being a jerk, will bring out helpful commenters explaining to you why you’re wrong. As the top commenter in the thread, ScumbagBambi writes, “I sometimes get customers like this. Don’t be this guy.”
While r/Wine is home to interesting discussions as well as a massive guide for new wine drinkers, it’s clear that the simpler things are what will win you the most upvotes. While the top 30 scoring posts did manage to cover a broad swath of topics, they fell into a few broad categories (see below). The similarity of the top scoring posts is not reflective of what you find on the subreddit on a daily basis.
Breaking Down 2013’s Top 30 Scoring Posts:
- Most Popular Type Of Post: Images. These images do cover all sorts of different topics, but the point remains – while day-to-day r/Wine is filled with tons of self/text posts, the posts that score the highest have images.
- Most Popular Category Of Posts? Humor. Not all of these posts were actually humorous (we went with the submitter’s intent . . . see below). In fact, the top scoring post — the Ron Swanson meme — was met with a wave of critical comments. Lesson? If your looking for link Karma, being obnoxious doesn’t always hurt. But prepare to be called out for it.
- Most Commented Post: “My aunt knows less than nothing about wine.” When you’re going to call a family member out, the community is going to let you know that things aren’t always so simple. Close behind? Cats of course. Who else would smash an $800 bottle of wine and walk away scot free? Third place goes to Captain Kirk, introducing reddit to his Brown Bag Wine Tasting series.
- Oldest Post: On January 7th, r/Wine moderator cheezerman posted an interesting map showing off sunshine duration in France vs California. This spurred a debate about alcohol content by volume and Parkerization. FWIW, while Parker may have roasted more grapes than the sun in his heyday, we found his influence to be on the wane last year.
- Youngest Post: Zwhidby’s DIY project, a welcome mat made out of used corks. Perfect for our Wine Crafts Pinterest board.
- Post Age: By quarter the numbers were – 6 in Q1; 9 in Q2; 8 in Q3; 7 in Q4. September and October were the quietest months.
- Lack Of Flair:
- Posts by Wine Pros (flair) – 5
- Posts by Moderators – 1
- Posts by Winos – 2
- Submitters: Every single post in the top 30 was submitted by a unique user.
- Dogs: A DIY project turning an old wooden box of Ruffino into a dog bowl holder. The top commenter went where we all were thinking: “Could I really be the first to mention “RUFFino?” Cheers! Cool doggie dish.”
- Cats: Slipping in at number 30, we finally have our cat post! No annual review would be without a cat entry. As OnlyHereSometimes wrote, “/r/wine: now the only subreddit that dislikes cats. Damn shame about the bottle =/”
Our Categories:
- Humorous: This is self-explanatory. We went with the submitter’s intent. As you’ll see below, attempts at humor, while high scoring, often backfire (at least in the comments).
- Interesting: We mean interesting in a wino/wine geek/whatever your favorite term is sort of way. It covers everything from a monstrous pile of study cards for the Master Sommelier Exam (just the theory portion!) to a cork that took part of the bottle with on the way out.
- Visualizations: Infographics and other visual explanations of data.
- Boasts: Boast doesn’t mean bad. You’re just talking about yourself. Although none scored high enough to make the lists, we’d consider the common ‘bottle shots’ aka ‘drank this bottle last night’ posts to fall under this category. Our favorite boast was by an uncle who bought his 1.5-year-old nephew a 21st birthday present, 19.5 years in advance. Not that we wouldn’t love to go start our own winery as well.
- Built: Things people have made to store wine or out of their used wine bottles & cases. We kept these limited to authors who actually built what they submitted.
Note: Data captured at 8PM EST, Dec 31, 2013! We noted the age of the posts. Learn why here.
If you’re wondering, some of us at VinePair have been longtime readers – fine, lurkers – of r/Wine for the past year or so (and Reddit since pre-Digg Exodus), but since we started VinePair we finally jumped in a couple of weeks ago.
