You read that right.

KoeppelOnWine.com, which I launched on Dec. 12, 2004, is going inactive. The demands of constantly keeping reviews and commentaries going in six categories on that website plus keeping an ongoing stream of chatter, commentary, rudeness and reviews going on this blog, BiggerThanYourHead (as well as attending to a real full-time job at the newspaper), has for many months been producing pressure, stress, guilt and a tendency toward voluminous martini consumption.

I started KoeppelOnWine with high hopes, as if anyone inaugurates a project with low hopes, but despite the brilliant design (by Lucas Bond and Katherine Carr in Denver: bondcarr.com & boardpusher.com) and my efforts, readership never took off. And the site’s small subscription component never attracted many subscribers, though the few I had were very loyal, and I thank you for that, and I’ll be pro-rating your membership fees. On the other hand, PayPal, through some technical glitch, was bad about not letting people renew their memberships.

At this point, and for the past few months, hits on KoeppelOnWine have averaged about 1,100 a month; hits on BTYH average about 21,000 a month. (No, it ain’t YouTube.) It doesn’t take my high school math teacher, Miss Bridger — could she have had a first name? we didn’t think so — to figure out where my attention should focus. Since considering the demise of KoeppelOnWine, I have consulted with friends, relatives and colleagues, with marketing and PR people, asking their advice, and the answer has consistently been the same: “Go with the numbers.” So that’s what I’m going to do.

I’ll be moving the “Wine of the Week” from KoeppelOnWine to BTYH. I’ll be doing more reviews and commentary on the blog, offering more information and opinion (perhaps even wisdom) about wine and spirits, eating and drinking.

Regrets? Hell, yeah. KoeppelOnWine was a great site, a beautiful site, and it made me proud and happy every time I looked at it, but we have to grow and adapt and embrace change, right, at least that’s what everybody says.

Ruth, that’s what is was. Miss Bridger’s first name was Ruth.

Normally — it only makes sense — the “Case of New Releases” page on KoeppelOnWine.com consists of 12 wines, there being, traditionally, 12 bottles in a case of wine. Except that some wineries nowadays have screwed up the system by selling or marketing their wines — and these are always expensive products — in six-bottle “cases.” Thanks a lot. Anyway, the way I got ahead of myself was by arranging the wines I was going to review by wineries, four of them, all in California, and I realized that there were three groups of three and one group of four, and a quick hands-free calculation in the old noggin told me that those groups added up to 13. What was I going to do, kick a wine out for being the odd one?

No, I couldn’t do that, because I liked these wines very much, especially a couple of chardonnays from Morgan and three pinot noirs from Belle Glos — the Belle Glos Clark & Telegraph Pinot Noir 2006 is exceptional but not cheap — and that quartet of wines, three reds and a white, a splendid roussanne, from the highly individual producer, Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, in North Yuba. How individual is Renaissance? How about this? No new oak for red wines; alcohol levels below 14 percent; holding the top wines for years before release; giving wines real structures based on acid, tannin and fruit rather than plush, Barbie-doll textures. Unfortunately, Renaissance makes wines in very small quantities, usually no more than about 3,400 cases annually of all the types and varieties. Take a look, in any case. Click on the link in the first paragraph.

So here I am, blathering on — because I really want you to look at KoeppelOnWine, where I do most of the actual reviewing — but what I really want to say is that I’m sorry about the dearth of images on BTYH, the reason being that the monitor on my “official” computer died and I haven’t gotten a replacement yet, so I’ve been doing all the blog and website work on my laptop, which is fine, except that the image function of WordPress, which DID work perfectly until weekend before last, now, for some reason known to a billion 15-year-olds but not me, won’t work. I can post a post — ta-dah! — but I cannot upload (I hate that word) and send images to the editor thingie. It’s damned frustrating because I HATE seeing the blog without art. So, this weekend I’ll fork over the dough and get a new monitor for the “official” computer and then see about getting WordPress to work properly on the laptop.

Did I mention that I hate computers?

… and the reason I make that assertion of commonplace knowledge is that while my objective on KoeppelOnWine.com was to replace some pages every week and others every two weeks, constant readers will know that I often fail to meet that criteria, so I cry “Mea culpa!” — or “Meal culpa!” as they say in the restaurant biz — in apology for having left a page up for a month. Just yesterday, I wrote and posted a “Refrigerator Door Wines” page of inexpensive products for the first time since Oct. 24. In some compensation, instead of six or eight cheap wines, as I usually do, I offer 15, but, you will notice, these are not all positive reviews. My philosophy is to warn you away from the bad as well as urge you toward the good, rather like a preacher of the fire ‘n’ brimstone school. And I wonder, as I always do, why bad or mediocre or just generic wines exist? How, for example, could a producer, Washington State’s Stonecap, in this case, offer a terrific riesling (for the price), an undrinkable chardonnay and a bland cabernet sauvignon and sell each one for $11? Why do the wines, especially reds, in the $10 to $12 range of Australia’s largest producers — Penfolds, Lindemans, Rosemount — all taste so similar? Does that case have something to do with the fact that these once independent concerns are all owned by the giant Foster’s conglomerate? What’s interesting here is that Penfolds “Koonunga Hill” line, intended to sell for $11 or $12, I find merely average to forgettable, while the Penfolds “Thomas Hyland” line, priced at $13 to $15, offers far more authenticity and integrity. Should two dollars more make that much difference?

Unanswerable questions, perhaps, but that’s always been the purpose of art; let philosophers and scientists probe for meaning.

Take a look, anyway, at the current “Refrigerator Door Wines” page — not for wines you keep in the refrigerator door but the list you post on the outside of the door to remind yourself to stop by the store and pick up a bottle of wine for dinner — and notice that my favorite wines of the bunch are the two Penfolds Thomas Hyland wines, Shiraz 2005 and Riesling 2007, and the Borgianni Chianti 2005.

No “mea culpas.” Enjoy.

First, readers, I can’t help noticing that about 25 percent of you that travel to my website http://www.koeppelonwine.com from the links provided on this blog stop at the index and go no further. Perhaps you are put off by the word “member” that occurs several times on the home-page. It’s true that KoeppelonWine has a membership component; it’s right there in the “Members’ Wine of the Week,” which is available only to subscribers. Other advantages of membership — $48 a year, a mere 95 cents a week — are the ability to search the archives for past reviews and stories and automatic email notification every time I post a page. But all the other pages, The Featured Article, the Case of New Releases, Refrigerator Door Wines and Eating & Drinking, are there for anyone to look at absolutely free. So, next time you follow a link to KoeppelonWine, don’t glance and run; take your time and read. Better yet, subscribe.
Second, to entice you that way, yesterday I posted “California Cabernets from 2002, Part Two,” reviews of 18 cabernet-based wines from the excellent vintage, including the superb Joseph Phelps Insignia ‘02 and the Ladera ‘02. Here’s the link: http://www.koeppelonwine.com/Featured_Article.asp

Third — I know, we’re beyond “a couple of things” — just so this post doesn’t seem all about me, Terry Hughes at Mondosapore is celebrating a new design for his blog that debuted this weekend. Executed by Mouse Foundry Media, which made the design for BiggerThanYourHead, the design for http://www.mondosapore.com is clean, easier to read and very attractive.

And fourth, the finalists for the American Wine Blog of the Year awards are posted at Tom Wark’s Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog. Go there, take a look at the nominees, and vote. http://www.fermentation.typepad.com