Ever heard the saying ‘give and you shall receive’? Well it works. Giving is how we bond, and those that give the most with genuine care are usually the ones that reap the most benefit out of life. I love this cool site, Gift Tree, you can send your friends or family gift baskets of flowers, wine & champagne, gourmet food, spa accessories, baby stuff. You can pretty much find anything for any special occasion.

We’re obviously most interested in the wine gift baskets. It seems that they have a really good selection for reasonable price. My favorite is the California Comforts wine gift basket, which includes a bottle of 2006 Mirassou Pinot Noir (which is an amazing Pinot Noir for the price — its our Pinot Noir Taste ID wine, btw) along with Camembert cheese and crackers, Jordan almonds, Almond Roca, and chocolate bon bons. This would make for an amazing picnic on the beach. And we all know that the biggest problem with having wine shipped to your house is the ridiculous shipping premium, which makes you say screw it, I’ll go down the street and buy it. But with these gift baskets, with the delicacies already put together, it makes it worth the price.

The California Comforts basket is $49.95 plus $11.95 standard shipping and an extra $20 bucks to get it there overnight. That puts it up over $80, but its ok if it serves as an entertaining picnic for you and friends. I’m really looking forward to seeing how companies like this progress over time as logistics become optimized.

So, while browsing the web today, we stumbled upon an interesting site, and decided that we had to share it with you.

Introducing The Wine Rack

What a great little gadget. You fill up the “rack” with wine (or any other drink) and head off to the concert, or event of your choice.

Apparently they are adjustable, in the sense that you don’t have to worry about “flattening” as you continue to drink. You can simply fill them back up with air as you drink all the wine.

Guys, they did think about you, and knowing that it wasn’t likely that you would pass as normal wearing a wine rack, they created the Beer Belly.

Unfortunately, you may never get a chance to explain to the hot girl at the show that you aren’t fat, your just sporting a beer belly to avoid the $10 cans.

We’ve been working on some upgrades…. mostly on functionality, and ensuring that you are able to find the specific wines you are looking for. We tweaked the search feature on the front page because many of you had voiced that it seemed like too many options. Now you can choose a wine type, a flavor characteristic, and a food pairing. You of course don’t have to pick all, but they are available for you.

We’ve also been working closely with our Sommelier to offer more recommendations for each of your searches. Please be patient as we work to continue this process.. we have one of those Sommeliers that insists on drinking all of the wine vs. spitting it out… “If I spit it out, it’s because I don’t like it”. I can respect that opinion.

We also have new wines we are adding into the system on a consistent basis. Feel free to suggest any new wines that you cannot find in our system… If you feel a wine should be appearing under a specific search, help us out by searching for the wine, and giving your review and tag it.

It was announced today that the Champagne region of France is expanding to meet world demand and we’re really excited. Most think of wine as a drink only for celebrations, but now it appears to be in demand for many other reasons.  It seems that the younger generations just like to drink champagne for any reason… tonights a party, a new episode of Lost is on, I made it home safe, I bet that would go great with my pb&j (ok maybe not quite that far).

Champagne and Sparkling Wines are just awesome.  You can find them for a variety of prices, and its much healthier and tastier than soda.   Plus, there’s nothing like that little adrenaline rush you get right as the cork ‘pops’ out of the bottle.

We’ve always believed that wine is the one taste substance that everyone around the world shares, and maybe this news is a small sign that we’re starting to celebrate more together.  Heck, I’m going to go open a bottle of Moet & Chandon to celebrate Pi day today.

Hey all, just a quick update…

Check out our new search results page and let us know what you think. We’ve added some banners from our affiliates in hopes to not only have a little revenue stream to support our drinking habits, but to also provide some cool stuff that you might like.

We’ve added a bunch of food items that we are in the process of pairing to wines, and we also have some recipes from Epicurious.com There are also a few random things, like corkscrews, wine coolers, etc.. that you might also enjoy.

Cheers!

You may have noticed that the front page of Tastevine has undergone some changes over the past few weeks. One of the things we were/are focusing on in User Experience, is making your life easier through the searching feature on our site. Now, instead of having to type in the words, you can easily just select a few of the tags that describe the wine you want.

Currently, the tags represented are based on the most popular searches that have been made on Tastevine.com. We hope to tweak these regularly based on your feedback, to make sure they stay relevant to what you are looking for. If you feel that we left off something that would make your searches easier, just comment here or drop us a line. Thanks again for all of your suggestions, and we are working hard to implement all of them.

Cheers !

After a lengthy evening of sipping (and sometimes chugging) champagne, and fun filled conversation, it is now officially 2008. Someone pointed out last night that it will be extremely easy to turn the accidental 2007 into a 2008, which further brightened my excitement for the coming year and a common problem of mine.

Someone else also pointed out the chip dip was AMAZING. I took some photos during the easy 5 step process of making it to share with you, as we did a little tweaking to the recipe.

Click here to read more …

For all of you who have missed my recommendations lately here is one that will truly benefit all. Go out and buy a bottle of wine! Its the middle of the work week, spice it up. Once you’ve drank that wine log-on to tastevine.com and rate it. The fall is truly here with colder temperature moving across the south, this is how I know its fall. Neauvo Beaujolais is produced this season and varies year to year but generally produces a crisp red wine. Check out grapethinking.com for other recommendations from wine correspondents around the world. Cheers!

I have have been in Charleston, SC all weekend doing wine tastings and I have two great recommendations to get everyone on their way to discovering their tastes in wine.

Da Vinci Chianti is a reasonably priced and easily accessible Chianti from Italy. Chianti is Italy’s most famous red wine, which takes name from the eponymous traditional region of Tuscany. It used to be easily identified by its squat bottle enclosed in a straw basket, called fiasco (”flask”); however, the fiasco is only used by a few makers of the wine now; most Chianti is bottled in traditionally shaped wine bottles. Low-end Chianti is generally fairly inexpensive, with a basic Chianti running less than US$10 for a bottle. More sophisticated Chiantis, however, are made and sold at substantially higher price points.

And Ravenswood Zinfandel, a great Zin from California. Typically, Zinfandel wine tastes spicy and fruity. Vintners use Zinfandel grapes to produce a wide range of wine styles including sweet White Zinfandels, light-bodied reds reminiscent of Beaujolais nouveau, full bodied dry reds, sweet late harvest dessert wines, and port-style wine.

We helped sponsor the Deck Party in Research Triangle Park, NC and had an awesome time. We’re going to do it again in Atlanta next weekend, so come join us for some fun!