Google the word wine and up pops a selection of more than ten million websites that include a reference to wine.

Narrow the search to "wine review" and a mere three million choices are presented. It is clear there is no shortage of wine information on the web.

Why, then, Wine Review Online? Why add another option to the confusing and often conflicting mix of sound commentary and outright propaganda that already exists in cyberspace?

Good question. What was I thinking?

Well, for starters, I thought the world of wine appreciation needed another powerful voice. Despite the astounding number of print and cyber publications that provide commentary on wine, there are but two publications I would consider truly powerful. Some would say too powerful.

Why? Because two powerful voices are not enough. Whether a wine qualifies for superlatives is a subjective decision. There is seldom one perfect assessment that fits all palates.

If you could round up the five most respected winemakers in the world and coax them to taste a flight of ten wines blind, the odds against all five of them agreeing on the rank of all ten wines would be astronomical.

So why should any wine enthusiast believe that the two most widely quoted sources at the retail level--the ubiquitous RP and WS--represent the final word on a wine's worth?

With all due respect, they don't.

There are a multitude of other voices that are just as experienced and equally credible, but they're not being heard--at least not to the degree they should be.

That thought came to me as I scanned the tasting room at the first annual Critics Challenge International Wine Competition, in the Spring of 2004. Critics Challenge was my baby and I had personally recruited all of the judges. They were other wine journalists, colleagues I had come to know and admire over the previous dozen years or so.

All of them had established bonafides. Mary Ewing-Mulligan, the Chief Judge, was a Master of Wine and together with husband Ed McCarthy had authored numerous wine books, including the best-selling Wine for Dummies.

Michael Franz, who introduced me to the great Spanish white wine, Albarino, had been writing a wine column for the Washington Post for the past decade.

Leslie Sbrocco, an author and columnist, had been involved with the late, great WineToday.com, which had been way ahead of its time and suffered an untimely demise, I surmised, because of the burden of high overhead rather than a lack of editorial excellence.

Gerald Boyd had been Editor of the Wine Spectator at one time, and more recently wrote a long-time wine column for the San Francisco Chronicle and articles for numerous wine magazines.

Paul Lukacs, whose book on the history of American wine had earned him a James Beard award, was there with his wife, Marguerite Thomas, a columnist for the Wine News.

The list went on, but you get the point. The room was full of experienced, credible journalists, all with their own niche in wine journalism.

What if I could pull this group together, I wondered, and create a publication out of this all-star cast? It would be powerful, exciting and no doubt highly entertaining.

But a print publication was out. The cost of launching a slick four-color magazine would have been prohibitive.

This had to be an internet platform; an attractive, easy-to-navigate site with genuine star power, and chock full of credible and entertaining commentary, informative articles and hundreds of recommendations.

Wine Review Online has been a year in the making, and I have been joined since first entertaining the idea by Franz, whom I was happy to welcome aboard as Editor earlier this year.

Together we are committed to raising another voice -- the assembled voices of our distinguished WRO columnists -- in the discussion of wine, particularly the question of what to buy and why.

If I could tell you only one thing about our WRO columnists, it would be that to a person they love being clued into a terrific wine. But what really stokes each and every one is to be the person leaving the clue.

I am confident that over time you, too, will come to appreciate the dedication and wisdom of my outstanding colleagues.