Happy Birthday, Odd Bacchus!

It was one year ago that I walked into In Fine Spirits, asked for their weirdest bottle, and came away with a deliciously velvety Jović Vranac from Serbia. That inspiring find pushed me over the edge into hardcore bloggery, and now, 117 posts later, I continue to milk this blog as an excuse to drink any oddball booze that catches my fancy.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you people who actually read this thing, and to also take stock and see what’s been catching your fancy. Some of my posts are much, much more popular than others, and it’s fascinating to see what drinks people are most interested in reading about.

It was a big surprise to see my post about Becherovka, an herbal Czech liquor which is tasty with tonic, rank at #11. No cocktail posts made it into the top 10, but the posts about Chicago’s Koval Distillery and the “Hidden Gems of Cognac” came in at #6 and #7, respectively.

A piece about the glories of Virginia Viognier made it to #8, but all the other top wine posts — #2, #4, #5 and #10 — were all about wines and spirits from Serbia! Who knew?

Reviews of restaurants that serve intriguing tipples rounded out the top 10. My post about The Aviary ranked as #9 and my post about The Purple Pig came in at #3. Unfortunately, what is perhaps my most inexcusably long-winded post ever, ranked as #1: my review of the Escoffier menu at Next. If you can make it to the end of that gasbag of a post, your powers of concentration have my respect!

At the very bottom of the list, a number of recent posts wait for their turn in the sun, but others have languished in the shadows for months. Most notably, posts with the word “Desert” in the title seem to do particularly poorly. “The Desert Vineyards of Washington State” found but nine readers, and “Rosé in the Desert (Part 2)” garnered just seven! “Voluptuous Tropical Suburbs” also failed to catch on, with only nine views. Climate descriptors in the title seem to be quite the turn-off.

Henceforth, references to the weather shall be stricken from Odd Bacchus. Bring on the Serbian Prokupac!

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