TN: Celebrating CellarTracker's Fifteenth Anniversary

CELEBRATING CELLARTRACKER’S FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY - Seattle, WA (4/25/2019)

On April 25, 2004 we (it was just ME at the time) officially launched CellarTracker for public access. A whopping 13 people registered on that first day…

Today we celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of that occasion. As a community we have now registered nearly 600,000 users, tracking more than 100 million bottles and 7 million tasting notes. Last year more than 10 million unique people visited our website. We have come a long way, and we have so much further to go.

Dan Polivy and his family came over for a last minute dinner with our family, and we popped three bottles from 2004. Given the recent fire at Notre Dame, we decided to have all of the wines be from France.

As I finished up dinner, we gnoshed on the last of my chopped liver from Passover. We started with the obligatory Champagne toast.

  • 2004 Dom Pérignon Champagne - France, Champagne
    Simply lovely bottle of Dom. Broader shouldered than many vintages, bubbles relaxing with some age, this reminds me a bit of the 1996, sort of a white Burgundy with some bubbles. It drank well and unfolded beautifully for hours. (95 pts.)

And then with dinner and hours of conversation and reflection.

  • 2004 Domaine du Pégau Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Réservée - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape
    This has always been one of my favorite vintages of Pegau, and this opens up as an exceptionally meaty and vibrant bottle. Absolutely screaming of garrigue yet with a different energy than many other vintages. As I recall, in this vintage the entire white production went into this red wine. The only troubling note was some funkiness and a hint of oxidation that crept in as we sat with the bottle. I have every reason to believe it was a proper example (I have been drinking bottles from this same case for years and the cork was perfect), but there was just a hint of tiredness that started to show up in the wine. No matter, it is always a treat, but I am going to start drinking up my last ones while this is still a background note. (94 pts.)
  • 2004 Château Rayas Châteauneuf-du-Pape Reserve - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape
    Wow. Wow. Wow. I don’t have a lot of Rayas in the cellar, and I don’t often open them, but they are such a treat. Light in color, almost pale, and faintly cloudy, this is a surprisingly powerful wine that is far more intense than the color would suggest. Screaming of white pepper, pine needle and cherry. Hyper-cherry. This is such a joyous and pure expression of Grenache, faintly sweet on the approach but more spicy and savory as you sit with it. Just haunting. This is still extremely primary. Very pure. (97 pts.)

Thank you to the entire CellarTracker community. In the summer of 2003 when I decided to make CellarTracker a public website, I knew that the vast bulk of the utility of the platform needed to come from the community itself. It warms my heart and soul to see how far my hobby has come across 15 years, and there is so much work and potential for it to go further in the future.

Cheers!
Posted from CellarTracker

Congratulations, Eric. And I also love that 2004 Dom.

Thanks Merrill. The Dom was lovely, but the Rayas stole the show.

Congratulations and thank you for CellarTracker!

Eric, thank you. Without the site, which i visit every day for reading and learning, along with tracking my cellar, i would be lost.

Two words in thanks. Invaluable and Grateful.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank you Hank!

No, thank YOU Frank! I hope we get a chance to meet someday. I have been reading your notes forever.

congrats and, wow, quite an achievement. the entire wine world should be appreciative your collective efforts.

Congrats, Eric! I still marvel at how ridiculously handy CT is, and wonder how anyone who collects wine operates without it, frankly.

Love the idea of an all-2004 vintage to celebrate - I missed that opportunity on BerserkerDay to do the same for the 10-year, oops!

Thanks Yaacov!

Thank you Todd. Well there are always future anniversaries. The good news is that the wines get older and more interesting!

True - 2009 not the best vintage overall, but at least Burgundy should show well! 2004 has similar limitations (though you have Piedmont!!) - guess we should have founded wine-related companies on good vintage years? [snort.gif]

The OC dorks would welcome you any time. I feel like i have known you for over a decade and never met you. So many of us use Cellartracker here, we would probably need to do a restaurant buy-out if you visited.

Congratulations Eric! IMO CT is a “killer app” type of product that has revolutionized how people relate to wine criticism and to understanding wine. I know that for me CT has become a more important and reliable source of wine criticism than any professional wine critic, and has opened up new ways for me to track the progress of my wines and to be exposed to different perspectives on wine. Hope you have 15 more great years!

Mazel tov, brother. Success couldn’t happen to a nicer person. Well, it could have happened to me, but your success is cool too.

Ha! Can’t be a bigger group than your Falltacular gang! We’d love to have you, Eric! Frank throws a great party, too.

This is an amazing achievement - thank you for sharing the anniversary with us! In addition to everything you’ve accomplished so far, you are still at it all the time to improve and grow this incredible resource for all of us. We are all very lucky. Thank you.

Eric, Congratulation, Happy Anniversary, and THANK YOU!!!

Congratulations Eric, besides your well deserved success with Cellartracker over the years you were always a voice of reason which one could always depend on. A very important quality.

One day I actually need to start using Cellartracker (too lazy)

Tom

Congratulations Eric!

Perhaps some day you’ll catch up to mywines…

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