Visit us on the Access Zone

For the next three days we will be bringing you the Wine Conversation live from the London Wine Trade Fair and the Access Zone on stand F70 If you are coming to the event, do come and visit us for a good chat, coffee (courtesy of Thierry’s), free wifi and lots of content and networking [...]

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Leslie Bega Leslie Bibb Lil Kim Lily Allen

Petite Sirah Celebrates 50 Years As A Varietal

I have been on this planet for a shade longer than a half century since my birthday this past November. But there is a wine variety that I think is underrated that has also just turned the big 5-0 as a varietal, Petite Sirah. I even included this grape in a rough draft of my [...]

Petite Sirah Celebrates 50 Years As A Varietal originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Leila Arcieri Lena Headey Leonor Varela Leslie Bega

Another Wine.com Deal: $30 for $60

I remember the first time I saw a young mom with a shopping cart full of wine at the liquor store. This was before we had kids and it seemed a little strange to me at the time. Now that we have kids it makes perfect sense.

Zulily - who offers "Daily Deals for Moms, Babies, and Kids" is offering this deal:
$30 for $60 from Wine.com

Sale ends 6/20 at 6am pdt

Keep in mind - as with previous Wine.com vouchers offered by group buying/deal sites the voucher cannot be used towards shipping. The first bottle usually costs around $12 to ship which diminishes the 50% off nature of the offer. But it's still a good deal I think - even with Wine.com's often higher-than-average prices. Especially if you've signed up for their Steward Ship shipping program. 

Happy Father's Day!

PS The $35 for $70 from Eversave is active through the end of the day on Father's Day. Check that one out too if you missed it the first time around.

Oh wait - here's another one $35 for $70 from Plum District. My goodness - how many deals can they run? Expired.


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/KP_Al1CT6lE/another-winecom-deal-30-for-60.html

Magdalena Wróbel Maggie Grace Maggie Gyllenhaal Majandra Delfino

?Which are the best Napa Valley Wineries to Visit?

We frequently get emails from visitors to our Website, WineCountryGetaways, asking for advice. The most common email goes something like this: ?We will be in San Francisco in September and want to spend two days in the Napa Valley. Can you please tell us which are the best wineries to visit?? Continue reading

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/%e2%80%9cwhich-are-the-best-napa-valley-wineries-to-visit%e2%80%9d/

Maggie Grace Maggie Gyllenhaal Majandra Delfino Malia Jones

The Best Door Stop you can buy

It weighs in well over five lbs. measures nearly a foot in length and contains over 2500 pages. 

Bed time reading?  Only if you have the energy to wrestle the massive tome into bed.

While it’s odd to consider such a book in an age where reading the newspaper is quaint, magazines are building their proverbial bridge to cross the digital divide and e-book sales are skyrocketing at the expense of their paper-based brethren, I’m here to encourage you to not only buy a relic of the 20th century, but to buy a used 1980s version before it’s too late; they won’t be available forever.

The Bern’s Steakhouse wine list is the stuff of legend and a worthy addition the wine enthusiasts’ book collection.

Bern’s boasts the largest wine list of any restaurant in the world and not so coincidentally they have the largest private wine cellar in the U.S.  A winner of Wine Spectator’s Grand Award every year since the award’s inception in 1981, they have earned their wine bona fides. 

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The wine list itself has grown in legend comparable to the cellar. 

The story goes that as Bern Laxer’s wine cellar and wine list at his eponymous restaurant gained notoriety, the lists intended for patron perusal would frequently go missing by diners who wanted a souvenir of their meal (albeit a very large and unwieldy souvenir).  Out the door these wine lists went covered by a dinner jacket or (in)discreetly tucked into a purse or satchel. 

To combat the nicking, Proprietor Bern Laxer started publishing the wine list in book form and selling them complete with plenty of personally written wine region overviews, photos from travels and hand drawn maps. 

Discontinued in its gargantuan form with the 1994 edition when the updating process became too cumbersome in an already cumbersome process, the handsome, large format leather-look books are entirely charming, comprehensive, personal in authorial style and, dare I say, a must have.

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But, to repeat, you need to buy a used, vintage copy.

I only recently purchased my copy from Amazon.com.  The 1984 edition came to me in nearly perfect shape for the absurdly reasonable price of $23 plus $4 in shipping and handling.  The foldout maps are clever, the prose is folksy and to the point and the unpretentious historical perspective on the regions of the wine world and the great vintages dating to the mid-to-late 1800s is nearly impossible to find in other books.

It’s a tough sell these days to advocate buying a wine reference book.  Who has the time to read a doorstop?  These books are better used for occasional review and even then it’s better to know where to find the information then to have the book, or so goes conventional wisdom.  Where do you even put it?  It’s something else to collect dust…

Perhaps that perspective is valid, but there’s a lot to be said for looking at wine books, particularly vintage wine books, as equivalent to snatching up classic greatest hits of musicians in LP form – the recording as the artists intended it, a snapshot of a time and place that is entirely authentic.

You may want to buy a dictionary stand for it (another quaint relic of a bygone time) in order to have it at-hand and handsomely displayed near your wine, and you’ll have to sleuth out used versions on Amazon.com, eBay or your local used bookstore, but I can confirm definitively that having a copy of Bern’s Steakhouse Wine List from the 80s or 90s won’t be the most important wine book you own, but it will become your most treasured.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/the_best_door_stop_you_can_buy/

Olivia Munn Olivia Wilde Padma Lakshmi Paige Butcher

First Impressions of Virginia Wine ? Wine Bloggers Conference

It was also fun to hear several references to the Napa Valley. Once again as in Washington bloggers conference a year ago everyone is shooting to topple the king. I don?t see any Virginia wines available where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of it is consumed in Virginia and much makes its way to Canada and the U.K. Ther is much more to learn about Virginia wines as the wine bloggers conference rolls along. Continue reading

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/first-impressions-of-virginia-wine-wine-bloggers-conference/

Keira Knightley Kelly Brook Kelly Carlson Kelly Clarkson

Does your website have a mobile version?

It was reported today that consumers spend more time on mobile apps than on the web. Really this is no surprise. It is the way the world works, big things become smaller and smaller as technology gets better and better. If we could go back in time and start the computer revolution today, no-one would [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/44xk6hY0kos/

Katie Cassidy Katie Holmes Katy Perry Keira Knightley

Marcassin swings at La Tache but ultimately breaks arm patting self on back

The most recent newsletter from Marcasin (pdf), written by owner Helen Turley and husband John Wetlaufer, makes for fascinating reading. Consider some of the tidbits. Readers learn: * They are avid observers of golf. * Marvin Shanken asked Helen Turley to increase his personal allocation of Marcassin while presenting her an award from his magazine, [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/GuSC/~3/-G3r6YvaUis/

Kate Walsh Katharine McPhee Katharine Towne Katherine Heigl