August 21st 2023, Memphis — Fredric Koeppel, long-time wine writer, has moved his award-winning wine review website BiggerThanYourHead to Substack.
“After almost 17 years of giving away content,” he said, “I decided on this move to simplify and freshen the website’s format and to reap some financial benefit from my experience, expertise, knowledge and writing. I think that Substack allows more freedom as well as providing an easier process for posting than my previous platform. Substack feels more user friendly for my work,” he adds.
“Fredric Koeppel is a clear-eyed reviewer, one whose wine writing is informed by vast expertise. But his wine knowledge is never foregrounded; instead his lens is always trained on the wine, its story, and what the reader wants to read. The results are stylish and lucid but also fresh and approachable. BiggerThanYourHead is required reading for anyone who cares about wine — or simply wants to see how a master works his craft, glass by glass,” says Meg Maker, who authors https://terroirreview.com/ .
“In my experience wineries have always been honored to submit their wines to Fredric, knowing that he would judge them professionally and write about them with great erudition and a sense of perspective,” says Napa Valley-based wine publicist Julie Ann Kodmur.
Koeppel started writing about wine in 1984, as a freelancer for The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis. He went to the paper full time in 1986, and by 1989, his weekly wine column was being distributed nationwide by the Scripps-Howard News Service. A change in editorial policy brought the demise of that column, but Koeppel moved online and launched BiggerThanYourHead in December 2006.
BiggerThanYourHead won Best Wine Review awards from the Wine Blog Awards organization in 2009, 2010 and 2013.
Koeppel started his career as a college English teacher and then worked for The Commercial Appeal for almost 23 years, writing in the areas of arts and culture, books and classical music recordings, food and wine. He is a published poet and fiction writer. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with his museum-director wife and a pack of rescued dogs.
Subscriptions to his new Substack publication are $60.
