Irreverent, honest, outrageous, and funny wine reviews for wines people actually drink

We are a husband and wife team who have been enjoying wines for as long as we can remember. Carmela's father is a wine collector, and her grandfather was a beer and wine distributor, so we have been able to drink some really great wines over the years. We love wine, and we know a lot of people love wine, too, but wine can be very overwhelming and intimidating - lots of different names for wines, lots of different price ranges, lots of different styles, and lots of funny words and rules that seem snobby, silly, and frustrating. But it doesn't have to be that way! We are a podcast for people who like wine, and want to easily find wines that are reasonably priced that they will enjoy, but who may just need a little help finding the right ones. Each episode generally follows one of our fun series - like F that Wine! for wines we think are overrated, and our WTF series for wines that we think people will like but may not have tried yet. Each episode, we taste and review 3 wines using our own easy to understand 10 point scale to help you find some wines you might like, too. It’s fun and funny, and we use normal words people can relate to in our wine descriptions - like Twizzlers, raspberry donuts, and P.O.G., and lemonade.
 

One day I was in the kitchen drinking some wine with my wife and adult son, and I was, as usual, trying to determine the smells and tastes coming from the wine. My son sort of put his head in his hands and said "Dad, you should start a podcast." Ding! The light went on! We really like podcasts and had tried our hand at doing one a few years ago, but this idea felt like it had some legs! We love to drink wine, talk about wine, learn about wine, pair wine with food, etc. so we thought what a perfect thing to do together - as long as we make it fun, funny, and interesting! We listened to some wine podcasts and we thought that most of them were a little heavy on things that the average person probably doesn't care that much about - like terroir, or how wine is made, or specific information about a vintner, etc. So, we felt there was a place for a podcast that was made for the average person, someone who likes wine, wants to make some good choices on what to drink, and is interested in learning just a little more so they feel informed enough - and wants to laugh while doing it! Our goal is to help people find wines that are reasonably priced and should be easy to find in their local grocery store or wine shop. Each episode we taste and rate 3 wines and let the listeners know if we think they should buy them or not. We started planning for our podcast in July of 2021, but it took us a few months to get off the ground. It wasn't super hard, but it did take some time - we had to get the right equipment, the right recording software, a podcast hosting service, a website, and, most importantly, write some episodes and record several before we officially went live. So, I would say it took us about 3 months to go from ideation to getting our episodes live.
 

We record one episode a week, usually on a weekend evening, and release them each Sunday. This is definitely a labor of love as both of us have day jobs, but when you do something you really like, you find ways to make time for it! It takes us a few hours to prepare for each episode - creating our show notes, talking about the episode, buying the wine, taking some pictures - then it takes us about an hour or so to record each episode, and then it takes us about two hours to edit and optimize the recording, upload it to Buzzsprout, write our episode description, and create social posts. So, in total, we probably spend about 5-6 hours a week on the podcast, and we completely fund it ourselves currently. The costs are relatively low, and the highest cost is probably the wine, but, since we love wine, that is a cost we would probably have each month anyway!
 

We are not doing this for the money - at least not yet! This is about the two of us doing something we love together. For us, a big part of the joy of doing this podcast is that it allows us to do something creative together as a married couple. As a former singer and performer, I always try to find ways to express myself creatively, and our podcast is a super fun way to do that. We do not have any sponsors, and if we do get the opportunity to have sponsors, we would want to be very careful because we really want our reviews to be honest and trustworthy. Being sponsored by a specific beverage company or retailer could taint the objectivity of our reviews, and we don’t ever want to do that.
 

We have found some pretty simple tools to use to create our podcast, and there are lots of videos on YouTube that are helpful as well. We use Audacity to record and edit our episodes, which is a free, powerful, and simple audio interface, and I use a Surface Laptop to run all of our software. We record straight to our laptop via audacity using two MXL 990 mics which are great mics and inexpensive, and use an M-Audio M-Track Duo as our interface. The M-Audio interface is awesome - it is simple to use, plugs directly into a USB port, and allows us to control the volume of each mic and headphones. For headphones, we are LyxPro Studio, and they are inexpensive but really good. For our podcast hosting service, we are using Buzzsprout, which is really easy to use and great for getting distributed on different directories, and we use Podcastpage.io for our website, and that is another great and simple service for those who are not very techie, and their customer service is fantastic. All of our guests so far have been family and friends and we record them in-person in our home, but we are hoping to have some outside guests on the show in the future. As mentioned above, our preparation for each episode consists of coming up with the wines we want to taste and review, writing notes for the episode, and then discussing the content and other funny material we want to bring into the episode.
 

Listeners can find our show on any major podcast directory - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, etc. Buzzsprout is great about getting the podcast distributed as part of their service. 28% of our downloads come from Apple Podcasts, and 13% come from Spotify - those are our two largest directories so far. We are still pretty nascent in our marketing, but we are active on Instagram, have a website where people can find and listen to the podcast, and we try and be active in a few other forums as well like Quora. We are also listed in the top 50 wine podcasts on Feedspot.
 

We are still pretty new ourselves to podcasting, but I would recommend listening to podcasts in a similar genre to see how you can differentiate yourself, and really think about who your podcast is for. We are definitely a podcast for adults since we are talking about alcoholic beverages, but we aim for adults in the 25-55 age range or so who are interested in wine, food, and learning. So far I would say that you have to be patient and not expect to be an overnight success, you have to constantly think about your show, be willing to adjust and optimize, and produce great content, and you have to be consistent in reaching out to people to talk about your show. Don’t be shy about it! If you think it is good enough to record and post, it is good enough to talk to your friends and family about! We are still discovering our best resources for podcasting, but Buzzsprout and YouTube have been very valuable.
 

You can visit us on our website: https://www.thewinepairpodcast.com/. You can contact us there, leave us a voice message, subscribe to our podcasts, etc. You can always reach out to us as joe@thewinepairpodcast.com if you want to chat, talk about ideas, figure out ways to collaborate, etc. And you can follow us on Instagram at @thewinepairpodcast. We would love to hear from you, and we are really good about responding!