After trying to become a full fledged "wine geek" for years and failing miserably at nearly every aspect of wine tasting, I had almost given up. I could taste that wines were different from each other, but no matter how hard I tried I could not taste the apricots and almonds or the rubber boots and chalk in the white wines; and I couldn't detect the baked cherries and bitter chocolate or the horse blankets and dried leaves in the red wines! It made planning a dinner party really difficult, too. How does one go about finding the best tasting wine with just a hint of horse blanket to go with a Colorado Roast? I've given up trying to have an intelligent conversation with the wine consultants at Calvino's. They know so much and talk so fast.....I'm pretty sure half of what they say is in French or Italian. I'm lost from the very beginning.

Just when I was about to give up entirely, I found Snooth, www.snooth.com, that is. In case you don't know what I'm talking about - and wouldn't that be a first, me actually informing someone about something "winey", Snooth is a New York based company that launched a social networking website for wine enthusiasts in June of 2007. But it's more than a Facebook for winos, it's actually a cross between a Facebook and an Amazon where you can search for wine, read reviews of wines, talk with other wine enthusiasts, and buy wines online.

Snooth claims to have the world's most comprehensive wine database and has nearly 2 million wine reviews that are both professional and drinker generated. Their site features natural language searches meaning that you can search for a "Spicy Cab" and it will know what that means. They draw quite an eclectic crowd, too, from very knowledgeable wine enthusiasts intriqued by the science of wine, uppity wine snobs who spend big bucks on their wine, all the way down to people like me - a lowly wine geek wanna-be who tries really hard but still doesn't know the first thing about wine. When you become a registered user you can enter into conversations in the forums and track all of your wine activity, like tasting logs and meal pairings. You can even become a sort of cyber wine stalker by making friends with people who have similar taste profiles and tracking their wine tasting activities.

Snooth.com is cool because it takes the guess work and embarassment out of being a newbie in the social wine culture. There is a lot of information there and a lot of people who are willing and excited to share in a culture they love. At Snooth there is something for everyone, so pour yourself a glass of "Spicy Cab", light a candle on your desk and....."Cheers! See you on Snooth!"