About JancisRobinson.com

Like everything else I have ever embarked upon, this site owes its existence to a random mix of unrelated external factors. Throughout the first half of 2000, towards the end of dot.com mania, a succession of would-be online suitors beat a path to my door, usually literally, to explain to me how they, and they alone, were going to make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice via their particular online scheme. I'm sure this sort of thing was happening to thousands of other people at the time.

Why it all began
Most of it was complete nonsense of course, as I realised too late to excise a mention of the supposed forthcoming www.jancisrobinson.com on the jacket of my next book, Jancis Robinson's Wine-tasting Workbook (sold as How to Taste in the US). This was a bit awkward. I felt that if I were advertising something, it really ought to exist and discussed my dilemma with Bob Brooks of Brooks Associates who was our techno guru at the time. He let slip that he designed websites, which seemed awfully convenient. But I felt very strongly that I didn't want my website to look like everyone else's so I asked a book designer Lisa Sheard, who hardly used the web herself, to come up with some suggested aesthetics. Bob accordingly set to work most efficiently on the technical side of the site, based on the bright oranges and greens and unusual typefaces suggested by Lisa (he probably thought we were mad).

We launched on 1 Nov 2000 and over the next 12 months slowly built up the content with a weekly wine of interest and wine news stories with increasing frequency. The site began to take up more and more of my time. I enjoyed its immediacy compared with the print deadlines of newspapers and book publishers, and it gave me somewhere to share all the extraordinary things I learn and amazing experiences I'm lucky enough to have - much more satisfying than watching a stack of paper tasting notes mount up in a corner of the office. But it had started to take up a frightening amount of time.

The genesis of purple pages
I realised that if I was to continue - and I was keen to start a proper forum for direct communication with visitors to the site - I clearly couldn't go on providing a better and better site as a completely charitable exercise. ("Why not?" would be regarded as a facetious comment at this point.) I was absolutely determined not to accept advertising or sponsorship as I really didn't want, after nearly 30 years of independent commentating, to place myself in any commercial relationship with those that I write about. So Bob and I decided we would try launching a subscription bit of the site for my tasting notes, the juiciest gossip, the discussion forum, the only online version of my Oxford Companion to Wine etc etc. We launched this on 1 Dec 2001, offering early visitors a complimentary month, December 2001, as well as the entire postings for 2002.

Perhaps the most exciting period of the entire site's life was the hour during which Bob posted the purple pages (called after another of Lisa's colour schemes) by mistake for an hour before their official launch and we managed to garner three subscriptions from three different countries during that time. This idea clearly had legs - despite various other wine writers' dire warnings that we would be lucky to get 100 subscribers in total, or that the scheme was doomed. Malcolm Gluck, aka Superplonk and then wine writer of The Guardian, even bet me lunch and a good burgundy at The Fat Duck if I could prove to him that purple pages paid their way but, disappointingly, when he found out he'd lost the bet, substituted supper chez lui.

Amazingly, the site went from strength to strength. Purple pagers seem to me to be an unusually delightful and intelligent bunch - soon from more than 60 different countries around the globe even though we had yet to do any serious selling of the product. This in some ways deplorable state of affairs has continued for years as I'm still too busy on the production line to find the time for selling and marketing.

Bob ran the entire show, apart from the actual writing, with great aplomb - processing subscriptions and battling with banks while his wife Muriel injected a copy editor's rigour. We were all thrilled to be nominated for a Glenfiddich Award in 2003the only time they have had a multimedia category, if less thrilled to see the award go the BBC. Huh!

The control freak takes control
From the beginning of 2004 however I decided to try to speed things up by moving the base of operations from the Brooks' rural idyll in the depths of Gloucestershire to London. At least that was the original plan, except that the clean, new website design ended up being achieved largely by Marie Louka of Tuscon, Arizona, ably assisted by her sisters Nancy and Victoria Preston in Paris and Boston respectively. (Too long a story to relate here but Christmas 2003 was not my most tranquil.)

Sandy Ingram valiantly battled with the manual subscription process we inherited while Kwok Wai Tang built me a delightfully simple content management system and Georges Sokol held my hand when technology threatened to submerge me. It was a huge step forward for me to be able to input my words directly from the beginning of 2004.

Full automation
On New Year's Day 2005 we took a giant leap with yet another new site design - much more ambitious than its predecessor and the product of SubHub who host many more sites of a similar nature. This is much more flexible than before so that I can update the site with delightful ease wherever I am - too often some might say.

The really significant bonus was the new system's automated membership and password system meaning that subscriptions coudl start at any time of year rather than only on 1 Jan, as per the original Bob Brooks system. (You can change your own password and email address by clicking on Preferences at the bottom of any purple page, for example.) Of course this system was sold to me on the basis that hardly any human intervention would ever be needed. Huh! again... The redoubtable Rachel Shaughnessy is our subscriptions supremo and is kept very busy indeed answering your queries and helping those who forget their details or find purple pages otherwise impenetrable.

New features, new people
have subsequently, not without an extraordinary amount of effort and complication, added a database of my thousands of tasting notes with its own special tasting notes search facility. This has been helped enormously by a team of hardworking transcribers led by Master of Wine student Mel Jones.

At the end of 2005 I was able to announce a dramatic doubling of the site's editorial team to the grand total of two thanks to the arrival of Julia Harding MW who, as a recent top Master of Wine, fluent French and German speaker, and previously the most superlative freelance editor, could hardly be more perfect. 

Since Aug 2006 we have been joined by the extremely highly regarded Linda Murphy as West Coast specialist.

By Sep 2006 the forum had become so popular that editing and publishing its increasingly frequent posts was threatening to eat up my time to such an extent that I would be unable to add enough material to other areas of the site so we took the plunge into a unmediated forum - less pretty but much more immediate. This coincided with the first of several leaps on to an even bigger, if invisible, better platform. I had been worried that without my omnipresence and mediating hand (not that I had used it much), our forum might degenerate, but I am delighted to say that it still qualifies for the compliment from France's only wine magazine, that it is "the most courteous wine forum on the planet". Purple pagers really are a very civilised, curious and well-informed bunch.

Finding out what you want
In 2007 we added audio podcasts and in early Jan 2008 videoclips, the latter in response to the many suggestions we received when we undertook the most ambitious survey of visitors to and members of this site to date. This was at the behest of purple pager Harry Cragoe who is currently spurring me to improve the product so that he can devote some of his considerable entrepreneurial energy to telling more people about it. Very gratifyingly, amazingly really, almost one in every four members, who now come from more than 80 different countries, took the trouble to respond and taught us a great deal. 

As a result of this survey, we have already made many improvements to what we offer. For example, it came as a surprise to us that so many members wanted more emails from us,. Thanks to Nancy Preston's skills, we have already obeyed. Most importantly however we are currently undertaking a major redesign of the site, as I write early in 2008. We can't wait to improve everything on www.jancisrobinson.com, particularly the navigation and search, and to add all sorts of exciting new features to the site. Please keep coming back to monitor our progress.

I can tell you that of the many things I do, writing my FT column, keeping my books up to date, tasting and travelling, this website is by far my favourite outlet and the one I spend by far the most time on.

The site is of course far from perfect but I am aiming for the highest standards in every aspect which is of course the least that you, gentle wine-loving reader, deserve. Thank you very much indeed for getting this far and do keep sending feedback.