The world?s leading Internet search engine for wine connecting thousands of wineries around the globe has been developed by local businessman Robin Blackburne.

His browser Robin Blackburne?s WineDirectories (www.winedirectories.com) has been running for less than three years but he says it is already the toast of connoisseurs and those in the drinks trade, with 1.5 million hits every year.

Mr. Blackburne, a Master of Wines and inventor, is the Island?s leading wine expert.

He hit upon the idea of an Internet wine search after getting frustrated at the difficulty finding a tennis racquet he invented when using leading search engines.

And he found that when looking for running shoes, the leading brands such as Nike and Reebok did not appear on the opening pages of some Internet search engines.

That drove him to develop a worldwide directory of services and products to place brand names on the front pages of search engines, and he decided to test drive the idea on a huge database of wines.

?It just happened to be a business opportunity that screamed out at us and it has been absolutely fascinating,? said Mr. Blackburne.

?It is the most used for people looking for wineries globally. The Wine Spectator has a fairly good list, but it doesn?t approach us in breadth and they are nowhere near as fast as us for searching.?

Mr. Blackburne, a former wine dealer, used his contacts in the business to collate details on wineries around the world, and there are currently around 10,000 on the site, broken up into countries and regions.

He said he did not know how many wineries there are in the world because about 150 new ones open up each year.

?It was hugely time-consuming and fairly costly, but we were setting up the world?s most valuable database of wineries,? he said.

?Eastern Europe and Russia aren?t there. Chile and Argentina are only fair, and one or two of the lesser regions of France are incomplete

?We haven?t sought publicity because it isn?t totally populated yet, and we don?t want a slightly imperfect press report.

?I am an ideas man, an inventor and solution finder, but I am not a programmer.

?Programming is a dedicated sport, but the problem with programmers is they don?t think outside the box, but in the end, anything can be done.?

Mr. Blackburne?s directory allows wine enthusiasts to search under country, region, sub-region, and wine brand.

Between 100,000 and 200,000 people are using the search engine on a regular basis.

He says even at a dinner party, wine fans could quickly log on to find a wealth of information about the wine they are drinking.

?All people in the wine business need to do research and it was quite difficult,? he added.

?It can take ten minutes to find a telephone number and you find it very difficult to get an e-mail address.

?It was just a nightmare getting this stuff out, but this search engine is infinitely quicker.?