We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jon Thorsen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

The price of wine is not necessarily an indication of its quality. Study after study has shown that when tasting blind, people are terrible at picking out the more expensive wine (even wine judges). People are also very influenced by prices and can actually derive more pleasure consuming an item simply by thinking it is more expensive than it is. Our goal at Reverse Wine Snob is to help people break themselves of the false belief that the more expensive a wine is the better it will taste. So we do something that most people in the wine industry do not (even though the average price of a bottle sold is under $10) – we celebrate inexpensive wines and help people find the absolute best wines at the lowest prices.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My goal at Reverse Wine Snob is to turn wine snobbery upside down.

If you’ve been in the wine world long, you’ve met the pretentious wine snob type who a) knows everything about expensive wine and b) loves to tell people about it. There is a bit of good in wine snobbery, however, it’s the enthusiasm.

My solution is to turn wine snobbery upside down — to be a wine enthusiast with an open mind and a reasonable budget!

I am simply a wine consumer. I have no special training or tasting powers. I don’t have any certifications or fancy letters after my name; in fact, I’ve never even taken a “wine appreciation” class. I’m not able to tell you the region or variety of a wine just by sniffing it. I’m just a guy who loves to drink wine and tell people about the good, cheap ones. I love saving money and not overpaying for things.

14 years ago, after constantly hearing about all the health benefits of wine, and knowing that heart disease ran in my wife’s family, we decided that we should drink wine more often. After we realized that three or four $20 bottles a week was going to quickly blow apart our budget, I went on a search for great, inexpensive wine that we could use as a “daily drinker.”

Like most people we assumed you had to spend north of $20 on a bottle to get a quality wine. After all, the cheapest bottles on restaurant wine lists were often much more than this. We didn’t expect to find much, and thought our adventure with wine was going to be a short one, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there is a ton of really good, inexpensive wine out there. Once we made that discovery we knew we had to tell others, and Reverse Wine Snob was born.

Since that time we’ve been traveling the world, tasting thousands of wines and bringing our readers the best ones – both through reviews and our Insider Deals program where we offer limited time, highly discounted, winery direct offers.

Our goal in all of this is to get more people to enjoy the world of wine. We believe there are still a lot of people who would drink more wine if they just knew that you didn’t have to spend a small fortune to enjoy a glass of good wine with dinner every night.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I started Reverse Wine Snob as a blog 14 years ago, not really expecting much but hoping I might make enough money from Google Adsense ads on the site to pay for the wine we were drinking. I love writing and technology so I figured starting a blog would be a fun hobby. The site quickly hit a nerve and began growing completely organically, mainly through social media and Google Search. Throughout this time, I worked a corporate job as a Senior Director of Marketing Analytics & Strategy at a large multi-channel retailer.

For the next 8-9 years it continued to grow and build an audience, but the number one complaint I received from readers was that they couldn’t find the wines I recommended locally. That was when our Insider Deals program was born, bringing limited-time, highly discounted wine deals on some of our favorite, highest rated wines to our audience. It immediately hit a nerve and began to grow, but it was COVID where it really took off.

With everyone at home and ordering online, our customer base exploded. After trying to work and manage this growing business, about 3.5 years ago I quit my corporate job to focus on the business full-time for the first time. Sales have continued to grow every year and I am loving my new career!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Content marketing is king. We’ve never spent a penny on any paid advertising, focusing instead on organic search and organic social. Good content brings people in and then continuing with compelling content through email keeps them.

While it continues to get harder to rank organically, content that fills a need, and does it well, will find an audience, whether it be through search, social or just good old word of mouth.

I’m also a huge fan of just plodding along, growing and refining your content a little bit each day. Consistency is key and getting a little bit better every day adds up much quicker than you think.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reversewinesnob.com/