If you wish to buy wine online these days, you are in luck, because the wine world is seeing an explosion of interest as never before, and because of the power of the worldwide web, producers and wine-lovers find it easier than ever to connect, with lots of small producers selling directly to the general public via their own websites.

And speaking of websites, the explosion of the blogosphere has taken the wine world by storm, too, turning once-isolated oenophiles into veritable authorities with followings in the hundreds or even thousands. Really like Washington wine? There exists a blog for that. More than one, in fact, especially when you throw in those devoted more to Oregon wine, which will often cover the entire Pacific northwest region in their musings.

You may be more interested in foreign fare, such as classic Champagne, Burgundy, or Riesling. Well, what do you know, there are even sites for those, too! Because of the internet, wine-lovers have started and coalesced around websites focused on all of the many different details possible in the world of wine. For the more open-minded of oenophiles, there are even blogs focused on vegetable wines made from potato or ginger, and rice and sorghum wines such as are normally found in East Asia. Or how about fermented goat’s milk, such as popularly drunk in Mongolia, where they literally wean kids who are only five or six on the stuff.

For purists, of course, a wine will only mean one thing, alcoholic beverages made from grapes; they look askance at the just mentioned list and its ingredients, sniffing that the word “wine” is simply applied adjectivally and not as a noun. But whatever your definition, there’s no mistaking it: the 21st Century is really a much richer one for the wine connoisseur, more varied and with far more options.

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