Do you know who you are? We do! Should you ever have an identity crisis please do come back to this post for some reasurance regarding your identity. Now, before you get all excited and ask where you can join our new cult group I should probably qualify that: we do not know who you personally might be, but we know a little something about you collectively. And that is because we Wine Ramblers, like many others who run websites, do occasionally analyse visitor statistics.

If today you came here to find inspiration about German (or other) wine I must disappoint you, but if you are curious about who else came to us for ramblings in 2012 please do read on.

In 2009 for a short moment I was cool. You might have been too, without knowing it. Back then we had street cred - just by drinking Riesling. No, I am not insane, nor did I have too much Riesling tonight. In 2009 middle-class wine geeks had a moment of cool when Jay-Z put the following words into the mouths of millions: "I'm beasting off the Riesling!" Twitter was full of references to Riesling, mostly from cool kids who sounded like they'd never before heard of it. Just one line, but much more effective than any marketing campaign - I have brought this up in every discussion on how to raise the profile of German wine since.

Vineyards in northern Yorkshire, dentists, wine museums without wine, finding the pink soul of Riesling, drinking some of the best and worst wines of Germany, finishing unfinished business in Washington, almost enjoying fermentation, sex and murder - it is hard to think of something 2012 did not have on the cards for us.

So before the New Year really starts it is time to look back over a year of wine rambling and pick up a few of the high- and lowlights.

We could not leave the waning year behind without giving you the official shortlist you've all been nervously waiting for. Just to make sure you don't get the wrong impression: This is a highly subjective parade. It's ours alone, and it's in no way a comprehensive ranking. The following are simply those that impressed and delighted us most out of the minuscule drop of German Wine ocean that we happen to have sampled over the past year. It so happens that all of them were from past vintages, rather than fresh out of the 2011 barrels, but again, that is in no way a judgement on the qualities (or lack thereof) of the current vintage.

Munich. It is late on Christmas Eve. Snow falls, it is icy and families are sitting around the hearth. No, wait. There is no snow. There is no ice. It is not even cold. Earlier today I arrived in Germany to spend Christmas with my folks and found that summer rules in the lands of Bavaria. A record breaking 20.7C measured in the city centre of Munich! Goodbye to the German cliché of Christmas then, at least for this year. And goobye to the idea of decorating this Christmas post with an illustration of German Christmas Gemütlichkeit, as I had planned.

So I have to resort to an illustration of American Christmas cosiness - "here is one I have prepared earlier" (Newport Bridge, as seen from Jamestown CT a little over a week ago). Maybe not such a bad thing to be more international, after all our readers come from all over the world. So wherever you are this Christmas, the Wine Ramblers send their love and all the best wishes for a great holiday, health and good wine!