Big Apple, big worm

All you have to do to get 50 visitors on your site at once is comment on a New York Times blog -- leave something written in vaguely threatening language and then in the next clause offer important details on personal safety with some subtly prostelyzing text that doubles as a hyperlink, hiding behind it, of course, the URL to your web address.

Let's review.

Foreboding words > promise of salvation > clickable URL . . . hits from NYT!

Of course I am still talking about wine, oftentimes a topic not far from egomania.

Recently, this blog managed to see a record-setting 113 visitors in a single hour because I left a small caveat on Eric Asimov's blog The Pour. He posted how serving wine at cold temperatures can be far from ideal, even in summer, even in a place as searingly hot as New York City. (Just this weekend, New York's inimitable heat was reiterated in the Times in no uncertain terms -- "The average Manhattan midsummer day is hot, rank and long" -- so you get the sense how radical Eric's post is.)

CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE

Me, I wanted to add that when it's rank and hot, sparkling wines are not only quite enjoyable served very cold -- colder than other wines -- but also that uncorking them requires that they be chilled to an icy cold temperature. This is key to avoid a potentially volatile opening with bubbly spurting everywhere. Warmer bottles have a tendency to do this when opened, as I helpfully explained in my comment with a link to this post, blog fodder that taught me a real lesson in how to chill wines appropriately.

I didn't mean to be alarmist. I've left many comments on Eric's blog that refer back to mine and none generated the amount of referrals of a carefully worded caution about how not to have Champagne blow up in your face.

And that either means people read the New York Times because they're savvy drinkers always looking to stay savvy or because they're a real frightful, impressionable bunch that startle easy and always fear the worst.

I need a better stat counter to figure that one out.