Surfarama

I like wine. I am no connoisseur, but my idea of a good night out is dinner with friends and a bloody good bottle of Pinot Noir...infact it was over one such dinner that me and my mate Steve decided to start a wine business. My brother Sam has since invested as well, and while it is an extra-curricular thing we do it has been steadily growing and got a boost this week with a mention in Australia's biggest daily newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald...

Backdoorwine is a site for Australian winemakers to list surplus inventory (canceled export orders etc) for sale direct to the public. In Australia these are known as cellar door sales, and the obvious benefit of BDW is brilliant prices achieved by only focusing on discounted inventory and cutting out expensive middle men.

BDW is different to a regular online wine shop because it doesn't actually sell any wine itself. It exists only as an advertising channel and order routing mechanism. When consumers place an order (Australian delivery only) the system splits the order as required and securely routes the order direct to the Vineyard for processing and shipping direct. We make a small commission on completed sales which the system tracks (pay for performance).

The site itself is also interesting in the way it is basically set up like a blog, so as new offers come up they are listed in reverse chronology. Consumers can subscribe to a feed of all new offers posted on the site, while other sites can syndicate the wine list if they are so inclined. Each wine on the list also has its own permalink, and the next step will be to add a comment type feature which will manifest as reviews by people who have actually ordered particular wines.

We've been quietly working on the site for a while now, but with this recent media mention the time feels right to post about it.

If I have any Australian readers in the market for a case of good value wine, please head on over there ;)