Alcolog

Alcolog hasn't really been a news-based website. There are plenty of news sources on the Internet, and there's no need to re-invent the wheel. But I never realized until a few days ago how much news about booze I read on any given day. There are times it can take a good two hours to catch up on just one day's news. New product releases, reviews and tastings of special bottlings, and the occasional blog post. How does someone burn two hours reading about alcohol? Here's a good start:

Just Drinks
Between Olly Whering's blog posts and the news feed, there's about two dozen stories a day. It's not liquor-specific, and so a lot of the stories are about wine (Constellation Brands pops up a lot) and soft drinks. But they usually are the first to announce new things emerging in various markets. They also help brush up on drinks business lingo with terms such as RTD (ready to drink cocktails), alcopops (similar to RTD, but usually involve cola or spritzer), and functional drinks (soft drinks that include health benefits). They also get credit for teaching me that "Travel Retail" is considered a regional territory in the business. Who knew?

Google Alerts
Due to some create filtering on Google's News Alerts, I can get a pretty consistent stream of newspaper articles about booze. Sure, some of it tends to be repeats and they also cover Just Drinks, but the geographic diversity of the news is pretty strong. This is also where I learn about new craft distillers all around the country, the most prominent was learning about Templeton in 2006. Any time I know I'll be traveling to some place, I'll check the archive of stories to see if there's something I should buy while I'm there.

Newswire Feeds
Some less-fruitful news sources are places such as Drinks Business Review and Drinks Media Wire. They tend to be either low volume or news poor, but they're also free and that helps. Drinks Business Review tends to have analysis on what kinds of products were big in the last quarter or if a company is changing CEOs. Pretty dry reading. Drinks Media Wire is all press releases with a bit of a faulty filter because it's mostly restaurant and hotel announcements.

Blogs
Blogs tend to be low traffic, but give a good idea of what everyone else is talking about. Here's who's currently on my reading list:
Art of Drink
Liquor Snob
Luxist Spirits
Templeton
The Scotch Blog
What Does John Know?

It's pretty thin compared to, say, what The Cocktail Nerd reads, but most alcohol-related blogs on the web are focused on mixed drinks and not so much on just liquor. Liquor blogs also suffer a risk of going stale and not updating for long periods of time. Heck, even Alcolog has had that problem in the past. But they're nice because they don't tend to be very filtered opinions about what's happening in the business. Blogs are also nice because they're interactive. I'll occasionally respond to a posting if I feel there's something useful to add to the conversation. Mostly just reading, though.

So do you want to kill two hours of your days? For the hardcore folks out there it's the most fun you can have without actually drinking. Enjoy!