Morton’s and Riedel have teamed up to offer a unique experience. The steakhouse was nice enough to offer Kim and I complimentary tickets to their “from the vine to the glass” event at their King of Prussia, PA restaurant next Monday. Since Kim is abstaining from alcohol while nurturing our baby in her belly, I’ll be going to the event with Anthony. He’s not as cute, but is a one of a kind wine lover and will enjoy the event.

The event will be featuring wines from Chateau Ste. Michelle, which has me excited. I’ve enjoyed some of their wines in the past, but never logged them. So I’m excited about the opportunity to fill this whole in my wine log.

OK, so I wasn’t off gift shopping for some flowers to take to the Pope, I admit it. His continent was involved, however. A few weeks back, my sister and my mom headed off into the skies towards a three week trip in London and Paris. Freed from familial ties, my Dad and I decided that it was time for another Pops & Son Wine Trip, this time in the Summer. Previous wine trips taken during my week off from the day job during the holidays have included Glen Ellen and surrounding Sonoma wineries, Healdsburg and surrounding wineries and wineries in Napa that we had yet to visit. This time we were planning on doing a hybrid of both valleys.

Earlier this year, Jason and Kim sent me this really great wine gift package to review, from Giftybox.com. I figured that this would be a great time to use my Winery Tour & Tasting package.

I was first initiated into the innovative world of Wine 2.0 when I attended their NRO event at Varnish last November. What I found was an extremely thriving movement of loosely knit and mainly younger wine aficionados, producers and entrepreneurs that were expanding upon the path set down by the original Wine Brats…they also tend to throw a party with a little more enthusiasm than your average wine event!

With those thoughts in mind, I geared up for some serious wine-drinking, networking and, well, partying last Thursday night. I was keenly aware of how the night would unfold and so I decided to BART and cab it to the event, held at the 3rd street warehouse of Crushpad in San Francisco. Crushpad is a custom crush facility, meaning that they provide equipment, bonded space, reagents and even fruit for boutique wineries and amateur winemakers, alike. They are one of the most well-known companies where winemakers can go to make their own wines with as much or as little hands-on participation as they might choose. I’ve been hearing about them for years and have been rather intrigued by their facilities, so I was quite happy to check out the space when I first arrived, just before the event opened.

Natalie MacLean deserves all of the buzz that her first collection has garnered since its release in 2006. Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass (978-1582346489) is a phenomenal work of wine writing that manages to touch on all aspects of wine from producer to consumer, with a freshness and vivacity that more than lives up to its reputation.

You might be familiar with Natalie MacLean through her highly rated and visited website, Nat Decants. You might have even read her article about Valentine’s Day ideas here on WineLog.net. Ms. MacLean has built up a very strong following of wine enthusiasts in her native Canada, as well as around the rest of the world. Her writing has garnered her prestigious awards from numerous food and wine organizations including the James Beard Foundation, the Association of Food Journalists and the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Her website has a tremendous food and wine pairing tool and her free newsletter is read by tens of thousands of readers every month.

I made my first visit to the latest “castle” in Napa this past weekend, in honor of my sister Shauna’s birthday. Saturday morning Beth and I made the cruise up from the East Bay and into the Valley, meeting up with everyone at my parents’ house in Browns Valley.

Now…when I say “castle,” I don’t mean some overgrown McMansion built by the latest tech wiz from San Jose, I mean a real and ginormous Italian castle! Daryl Sattui, family patriarch and proprietor of the enormously popular V. Sattui winery destination on 29 just before St. Helena proper, has spent the last 14 years and over US$30 million building an obsessively authentic Italian castle on Diamond Mountain.

At 121,000 square feet, 8 stories and 109 rooms, this painstakingly-designed replica of a Tuscan medieval-era castle, while ostentatious, is so well executed that one cannot come away from visiting the grounds without a sense of awe and inspiration. Most of the stone, artifacts and other materials were imported from Italy, as were many of the artisans that worked on the building. The building is replete with a dungeon and even a torture chamber!

Wine.Com has taken the esoteric and somewhat archaic direct wine shipping laws into their own hands. At the very end of last year Wine.Com, took direct aim at competing online wine retailers by engaging in their own “sting operation” to flush out competing retailers that flout the direct wine shipping laws. Wine.com claims to spend millions in an attempt to satisfy these laws for their own business needs.

This was first reported in the Wine Market Report 12/27/07, where they actually published some of the letters that Wine.Com wrote to state governments detailing these non-law abiding retailers, complete with order confirmations and receipts as evidence of the wine that was shipped illegally to Wine.Com’s “sting operators” in each requisite state. The Wine Market Report was immediately credited and re-told by Alder Yarrow in his venerable Vinography blog on 01/04/08 and the report itself, was archived at the Specialty Wine Retailer’s Association (SWRA) site here.

Since Alder’s post, the issue has exploded across the blogosphere and into more traditional print magazine sites…

Ever since The Cash Money Millionaires rapped about their “Bling Bling,” fine people across the globe have used the term in reference to anything expensive and flashy. Thanks to HipKraft.com, you can now be a blinging wine lover.

Brian sent over some Fabolous shirts for Beth (Drxeno’s birthday plannin’ wife) and myself to try out, and we think they are G-R-R-R-R-E-A-T! The cute-sy sayings are written in white, red, and yellow rhinestones (think 6th grade bedazzler) and actually don’t look as showy in person as they do on the site. You could wear the shirt with pride to a jazz club or a southwestern hoedown. Witty designs in the “wine” realm include such phrases as “got wine?“, “Wino” (with a red or white wine glass), and my personal favorite “Therapy” (with the “y” letter replaced by a glass of red or white wine).

People often email WineLog, confusing us as a winery’s website. So we get to share in all the praise and criticism directed at you poor winery folks. Here’s an interesting one we received about a synthetic cork that is difficult to re-insert:

“I enjoyed your Shiraz Merlot. However, I did not finish the bottle of wine. It is impossible to reuse the stopper you used for this bottle. It is some kind of plastic that defies going back into the bottle. Not everyone consumes the entire bottle each time it is opened. I am afraid I will have to make it a point not to purchase any of your wine in the future.”

Ouch. First, if the wine is good, don’t stop buying it just because of the cork (I’m actually fond of synthetic corks). This problem has been solved by third parties, and it’s called the “Wine Vacuum Pump”.

Below are a couple options I found at Amazon which are very affordable.