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.

So I’ve been waiting for an occasion to bust out some more box wine. I had a good experience with Hardy’s Box Wine in the past, but have been wanting to try something from the King of Box Wines: Franzia.

The Super Bowl is a perfect occasion for box wine. 5L is a lot of wine. It’s like 30+ servings, so you need a big crowd to get rid of the stuff quickly enough. I guess it’s cheap enough (at about $12 for 5L) to throw some out, but I’m one of those guys who eats everything on his plate and tries his best to waste nothing.

So there’s another annual “100 Top Wines” list on the block these days. It seems like this aspect of the wine industry gets blown out of proportion more and more every year (see the marketing ploy for the 100 from Wine Spectator this year??), but this new one is more interesting than any other, at […]

Kim has one. Now here is my sexy wine-guy photo from our honeymoon. We had a great time. Kim recapped the resort’s wine pretty well. In short: the house sparkler was pretty good, red was okay, white was horrendous.

I’ve had an AWESOME past few weeks. But now I’m ready to get back to business here. WineLog users, take a look at the recommendations page again. Let us know what you think. We have a ton in store, but wanted to get at least the basic functionality out there: show you the wines our algorithms have picked for you.

FYI, here are the wines we had at our wedding. All are great value buys, and all are great for wine newbies and aficionados alike. (Those were the main 2 criteria for us.)

For those that don’t remember from my initial post, I am generally cheap when it comes to wine. It sometimes means I end up drinking bad wine, but many times it means I find hidden gems.

Tonight, I had to run to Target for a few items (the wife’s birthday is coming up). If you didn’t see another earlier post of mine, my local Target is now selling wine. They have an OK selection, and most are between $8-15. I picked up 2 bottles under $10. For future reference, I always tag those under10 so you can find them easily searching on the site.