Conrad Grah and Drew Lambert are both based in Sydney, Australia, and spend a lot of time traveling the wine world, which gives their social media a global focus. Humour is a central theme of our writing style, attempting to put the wine in context rather than churning out mind numbing descriptions of wine.
Wine Wankers, a social media success story started in 2012. If you haven’t guessed already, the name is lashed in irony. To quote Urban Dictionary, a wine wanker is, “somebody who drinks wine pretentiously in the company of others to show off their knowledge and try to make other people feel inferior.”
The Wine Wankers are thinking of themselves as an ‘anti wine wanker brigade’, aiming to make wine more accessible by taking the pretentiousness out of the wine fraternity – ie, wine without the wankery.
On the Wine Wankers’s media feeds one can see their massive success: besides funny wine photos and memes it offers good reviews on wineries and wine regions in a down-to-earth way. Drew says “People love to see the real slice of life behind the scenes. See how wine is made, have a laugh and, once again, see beautiful vineyards and photography. Wine writers take themselves too seriously. We were exactly the opposite – fun, engaging, replying to every comment.”
The Wine Wankers are globally one of the highest rated wine blogs, they built their more than 150,000 Instagram followers by not taking themselves too seriously, a lesson for others in the wine industry. They have a large international following of 500,000 people across several social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, WordPress, Tumblr, and Linkedin.