Holiday Fun and Games for Wine Lovers

Got an oenophile on your list that already has four sets of stemware, a gross and a half of logo glasses and a drawer full of every corkscrew and foil cutter invented since the 1600's?

First off, you could give them this Taylor temp and humidity sensor (wirelessly monitors wine cellar temperature and humidity from up to 100 feet away) ... or give the gift of a perfectly controlled wine storage locker environment with Safe Haven Wine Storage Gift Certificates! They come complete with access to our VIP Wine Salon.

On the other hand, why not instigate some lively holiday gaming? Let the kids take over the 42" plasma with their new wii stuff while the adults gather around the table to play and learn with their favorite subject; wine.

All items featured can be found at www.beveragefactory.com (800-710.9939)

The Winerd® game is the perfect way to turn your passion for wine into laugher with friends! Creator Tamara Leigh Murphy paired fun wine trivia questions with an innovative spin on blind tasting to create a board game that is a HUGE hit. The Winerd® game includes: * Winerd® game board * Nearly 300 fun and interesting Q&A cards relating to just about every aspect of wine * 12 Bonus/Challenge cards * 4 custom synthetic cork playing pieces * A Blind Test notepad Wine and friends not included. Sale Price: $34.95

Designed by wine experts, VitiVini is the only game of its kind to offer an entire course on wine, wine tasting and food pairing. With VitiVini, wine is de-mystified and made both approachable and entertaining. Sale Price: $21.25


A world of fun as well as a source of information and inspiration. A game on the world of wines and spirits for novices and experts alike... Bouquet® is a unique fun parlor game with questions on wines and spirits – and an instant hit in Sweden, with more than 10,000 games sold already. List Price: $62.44 Sale Price: $42.46 Shipping: This item SHIPS FREE!

Not games, but other great gift ideas for wine lovers.
Label Remover & Savers Never forget a great bottle of wine you had
at your favorite restaurant or wine event with a pack of these. Great for ardent scrappers, too! 12- Pack of Label Savers: Sale Price: $9.31



Everything needed to conduct a blind wine tasting is included (except the wine) in this kit: six individually numbered cloth bags that cover a bottle each and a pad of scoring notes. The Wine Tasting Kit makes a wonderful gift for any wine connoisseur. List Price: $24.94 Sale Price: $16.96

This World Wine Wheel and Food Matching Guide is a quick and easy way to learn about the world's wine varieties and the world's foods that perfectly compliment all different types of wine. On one side of the wheel you will find 14 different red and white wine grape varieties displayed along with abundant information about the taste of each variety and their significant growing regions around the world. On the other side of the wheel, learn all about suitable matches for various food styles with the world's wines. List Price: $6.88 Sale Price: $4.67

Americans Seeing Red... and Lots of It!

Wine Spectator magazine reports that for the third straight year, Americans are expected to drink more red wine than white, thanks to a projected 3 percent increase in red wine consumption in 2008, to 121 million cases, an all-time high.

White wine consumption is also expected to grow this year, but by a slightly slower 2 percent rate to 118 million cases, while rosé and blush wine consumption is projected to decline 3 percent.
The “echo boomer” generation began reaching legal drinking age in the mid-1990s, adding about 60 million potential new wine drinkers, according to the report. By the end of this decade, those consumers will be in their 30s, the prime target for wine marketers.

Most of red wine’s 2008 growth is projected to come from sales of variety-labeled brands, both domestic and imported, particularly Pinot Noir, which is expected to advance 12 percent, to 9 million cases. Cabernet Sauvignon is also projected to perform well, according to Impact Databank (parent company of Wine Spectator).

The recent success of red wines can be attributed to the American consumer’s increasingly sophisticated palate, expanding knowledge of wine and willingness to experiment with a wider variety of wine styles. Drinking red wine has also been linked favorably in numerous medical studies to various health benefits, such as a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.

Among white wines, Chardonnay continues to lead the pack, except when it comes to imports, where it was once again surpassed by Pinot Grigio.

Meanwhile, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling imports will continue to surge at double-digit rates in the near term. The lone bright spot for blush wines this year is white Merlot, which is expected to advance by a modest 3 percent, while the much larger white Zinfandel category is projected to decline by 2 percent. Some imported rosés have started to come on strong, but from a very small base.
Source: Wine Spectator

Put a Cork In It!

The debate between “cork vs. screwcap” still continues in the wine industry. And there’s lots of subtle issues underlying the humble closure we appreciative wine consumers take for granted.

Did you know that wine makers have to actually make the wine differently if the closure is going to be a screwcap?

Do you know the claimed carbon footprint difference between sustainable cork crops and the manufacture of screwcaps? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.
For those who are interested here’s the basic information about cork and a link (at end of article) to a great site that promotes the sustainable farming of cork.
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In the 1600s a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon observed that wooden stoppers wrapped in oil-soaked rags used to seal his bottles of sparkling wine often popped out, and so he replaced them with the conical pieces of cork to seal his bottles of sparkling wine.

Cork soon become essential for wine bottling. The world's first cork stopper factory opened in around 1750, in Anguine (Spain). The best cork comes from Portugal, and the country is the world's leading cork producer. The bark of mature cork trees is harvested just once every nine years.

Cork trees are not regarded mature enough for bark harvesting until they are at least 25 years old, and the bark itself is not suitable for wine corks until the third harvest. A cork tree will yield 13 to 18 useful harvests in its lifetime. The processing of cork oak bark includes repeated sorting, boiling, punching, slicing, polishing, washing, drying, finishing and wax coating, and takes about a year.

The cork’s cell-like structure (there are around 800 million cells in a single wine cork) makes it best sealing material for wine bottles. Cork’s biggest disadvantage is the trichloroanisole contamination that is being aggressively addressed by the cork industry.

Fun facts: Recently cork has also been used in rocket technology due to its fire resistance.
And a recycled screwcap chair is bound to be uncomfortable.

And this is a great cork promotion website: www.savemiguel.com

An Investment Headed for the Cellar!

Fine-Wiine Investing A Lot More Palatable in These Days of Market Turmoil

By Jennifer Waters, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- On a hot, sunny Friday here in September only days after the first Monday market meltdown, two well-heeled wine buyers battled each other at a private auction for the privilege of shattering a world-record price for a single case of 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

A Chinese buyer who flew in from Beijing for the Hart Davis Hart Co. auction won with a final bid of $54,970 -- a whopping $4,580.83 a bottle. At its release in 1984, a single bottle would have sold for roughly $100.

With the financial markets in turmoil, the sometimes lucrative market of fine wine may appeal to investors, but it's not as simple as stashing bottles in your basement. MarketWatch's Jennifer Waters reports from a Chicago wine auction.


A case of 1990 Romanee-Conti Domaine de la Romanee-Conti that was released at about $500 a bottle sold for $179,250, or $14,937.50 each. A case of 2000 Chateau Petrus was bought for $57,360, or $4,780 a bottle. At its release, the price was $750 a bottle.

Such dramatic price appreciation is not the norm for wine investments, but it does underscore how lucrative and resilient investing in fine wine can be -- particularly so at a time when market volatility is deflating 401(k) accounts and retirement nest eggs, and low interest rates are choking returns on cash and other investments.

"Historically blue-chip wine prices have risen but at a modest pace compared to some other investments," said Allan Frischman, a senior specialist at Hart Davis Hart. "Over the last couple of years these wines have gone up quite dramatically but it's hard to say how long that will keep up."

It's simple supply and demand that is driving up prices. There are scores of new wine drinkers, mostly in emerging economies such as China and Brazil but also in wine bastions like the U.S. and Europe.

READ MORE

More than just a wine label!

New High-Tech Wine Labels Detect Temperature Fluctuations During Shipping

High-tech wine labels track travel temperatures, providing users with a temperature paper trail. Sultry weather can be hard on any traveler, and for wine it can be disastrous.

Spoilage in wine shipping, which haunts consumers, distributors and merchants, has become easily detectable. California's wine industry has begun using a temperature-sensitive label that for about two years had been confined to the food industry.

A high-tech shipping label now being used by some in the industry aims to warn customers if there's a chance they're getting cooked Cabernet.
The small label, programmed to reflect a band of temperatures, goes on bottles and packages. They are about the size of a pack of sugar and can be programmed for a range of temperatures and placed directly on the product or product packaging. The light flashes green if the product stays within specifications and if temperatures get too high or low, it flashes yellow. Information on exactly what temperatures the product reached and when can be downloaded via a portable reader into a computer spreadsheet. If there is a problem, the data show where it occurred, helpful in determining who's responsible.

Among those using the technology is WTN Services, a Napa-based shipper that has been offering the temperature monitor to customers of its retail brand Ambrosia, a wine catalog, and is now making it an option for other wineries shipping through WTN. The labels cost WTN customers $20 a box — the equivalent of 10 bottles of Two Buck Chuck, but a fraction of the cost of a case of $100-a-bottle Napa cab, Edwards notes.

Made by Boise-based PakSense Inc. and on the market for about two years, the temperature monitors had been primarily used by the food industry but lately have been finding a market in wine shipping as well, company spokeswoman Amy Childress said. Temperature control is key for wine. Heat speeds up aging, which may sound like a good idea but results in diminished flavor. If the bottles get too hot the wine is "cooked," which means it may taste flat or be otherwise flawed.

A low-tech warning sign is if the cork has been pushed up out of the bottle, but that doesn't necessarily mean spoiled wine. On the other hand, a bottle may look fine but be spoiled. In Napa, WTN Services, which both distributes wine and sells it directly to consumers under a program called Ambrosia, pronounces itself happy with the labels, which are made by an Idaho company called PakSense.

A California winery, the Schug Carneros Estate Winery in Sonoma, started putting PakSense labels on its shipments this year, using a type of label that is sent back by distributors and downloaded at the winery to provide trip details.

On the consumer front, New Yorker Reynold Weidenaar frequently orders wine, although he usually deals with the heat issue by buying in cooler months. He said he wasn't inclined to spring for an extra $20 for his shipments of moderately priced wine, but could see the appeal for a high-end collector. "We've had a few wines where you can see a little bit of leakage, a little bit of residue past the cork," Weidenaar said. "That's always a sign you better be nervous."

Edwards sees the labels as reassurance to people buying expensive wines that the shipping system is working. To avoid transit trauma, WTN has warehouses in California and New York so products don't have to travel too far. It uses packaging called the TemperEco-Pak, which is made of corrugated or pulp materials that control temperatures but can be recycled curbside.

WTN has been using the labels on Ambrosia shipments for about two months and "they've been blinking green upon delivery every time, so that's a good thing," Edwards said. (2.)
"It's been a great success," said Chris Edwards, vice president and general manager of WTN, which like Ambrosia is a subsidiary of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM Inc.

Sources: “New label detects temperature change during shipping,” Howard G Goldberg, Decanter; “High-tech wine labels track travel temperatures,” Daily News, September 22, 2008

Discover Your Inner Wine Maker!

Or, "Making Wine Without Turning Your Feet Purple."

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to make your own wine? Maybe, but where do you start? Or yes, but don’t have the resources or desire to purchase the necessary equipment. Would love to, but don’t really have the time to devote to the process.

These questions and concerns are typical and can be easily solved by numerous “custom crushes” popping up in cities and towns near you. For myself and my husband Daniel, we found Crush Pad, in San Francisco, which provides grapes from the West Coast’s top vineyards, an industry-acclaimed wine making team and a state-of-the-art winery 100% focused on making wine in small lots.

We were fairly involved in the entire process but many of their clients simply want them to “make the best barrel of cab you can and call me when it’s ready.” Here on the Central Coast a new custom crush facility has opened; Zoller Wine Styling, the first winery located in downtown Paso Robles.

They offer a unique opportunity to anyone interested in creating a custom wine, from growers to businesses and retailers who wish to produce their own label and individual wine enthusiasts. You can even make a barrel of wine with your friends! They can also accommodate those individuals who wish to create a business by producing wines that can be sold at retail.

Even if you don't live in the town in which the crush facility is located facilities like Crush Pad and Zoller have clients from all over the U.S. and the world who are able to participate in the wine making process via interactive, computerized tracking and monitoring systems.

And of course, once your wine is bottled, you can store and ship your wine through Safe Haven Wine Services and use the tasting lounge for all of your special events!
So get busy coming up with a name and designing your label.