ie8 fix

wine

Blue Monster Reserve: It's how Steve Ballmer gets plastered

The more Microsoft events CNET sends me to around New York (the Windows Vista launch weekend, Halo 3's raucous little debutante ball), the more I realize one thing: No matter how much Gates, Ballmer, & Co. seem to always have issues (like that "Zune" debacle), that company knows how to throw one hell of a party. I'm not kidding. It even has its own wine now.

Created by South African winery Stormhoek especially for Microsoft, the "Blue Monster Reserve" sauvignon blanc is accompanied by the tagline "change the world or go home." … Read more

Yahoo partnering with Woot for new daily deals site

In the past couple of years Woot.com has grown from a five-days-a-week deals site to a veritable three-store conglomerate that features a new deal every day, and a wine and T-shirt spinoffs. Today they announced their partnership with Yahoo, as part of Yahoo Shopping for a new co-branded site called Sellout.Woot. The site will serve up a completely different offering than the standard Woot store, and carry with it a small amount of Yahoo branding.

The only way to access the site is via Yahoo Shopping's front page, in what Yahoo is calling the "Deal of … Read more

A wine cellar for the fridge

If we had to pick our favorite inventions, the refrigerator bar would have to be near the top of the list. But, sadly, we acknowledge that hard liquor isn't for everyone. We further realize that space-challenged dwellings present some difficult logistical issues for the wine lovers among us (Caroline McCarthy). Nor can everyone afford a wine vault, much less a cellar of the brick-and-mortar variety.

There is one possible alternative, however: the wine fridge from the U.K. department store John Lewis. This inspired appliance cools up to 39 bottles of your favorite fermented beverage (never red, of course) … Read more

Wine & Movie - Coppola Style

What is better than a nice bottle of wine and a movie to curl up with? How about a 3 liter bottle of wine, with a DVD built into the bottom? Yes? Well don't worry, Francis Ford Coppola is one step ahead of you, and he has JUST that set up ready for you... if you want to watch Apocalypse Now, or One From The Heart (see image after the jump). And what wine is perfect to pair with such films? A 3 liter bottle of their 2004 Francis Coppola Reserve Syrah apparently. This collectible is an online exclusive, so browse here if you are ready to drop $225 on the Apocalypse Now set or $160 on One From The Heart. (via Porous Walker on NOTCOT.org)

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Whine about wine with Snooth

Snooth is a wine review and recommendation service that launched early last month. The idea is simple--provide a few simple ratings of wines you like or dislike, and Snooth will serve up ones it thinks you'll enjoy. It runs on a similar system to the one you find on Netflix, with one to five star ratings, and a bevy of user reviews. The system currently has a listing of over 1.5 million wines, and if you can't find one you've had or liked in the past, you can simply add it.

In addition to showing user … Read more

Wine Anyone?

Been a lot of wine goodies popping up over at NOTCOT and TasteSpotting the last week or so, and with all the summer pot lucks and parties on the rise, how you present that bottle of wine can be key! So here are a few greener and more gorgeous ways to tote them around.

First here's the Tipsy Bag in felt by Illu Stration. Notice how the zipper that holds the bottle in actually doubles as the strap as well? Mary-Ann Williams is actually called the "Queen of Felt" and has many more felt wine options for you at Illu Stration. Three more options below...… Read more

How to swank up that box of Franzia

Boxed wine: it's the punchline of so many jokes and the drink staple of so many low-budget sorority parties. Once you're a "real" grown-up, it's more than a bit gauche to actually serve this stuff without some kind of forced hipster irony--and in case you didn't get the memo, that faux-cheapo attitude is so out. Nevertheless, if you're on a budget and need to serve a lot of beverages to a lot of people, boxed wine is still a tempting choice. So how can you make it a little bit sexier?

Leave it … Read more

Sun supper offer appeals to Torvalds

In the latest word in a peculiarly public interchange, Linux leader Linus Torvalds appears inclined to take up Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz on his offer for dinner.

Last weekend, Torvalds expressed some "cynical" thoughts about Sun's intentions regarding its open-source Solaris operating system, which in turn led Schwartz to invite Torvalds to dinner to demonstrate Sun's intention of being a team player in the open-source realm, not a parasite.

In an interview Wednesday, Torvalds indicated he was interested in the dinner date, even given the condition Schwartz attached.

"I'm a fervent (believer … Read more

An eBay for wine collectors

Half Moon Bay, Calif.--The best wines in the world aren't at Trader Joe's, it turns out. They are in some collector's cellar.

"The better the quality of the wine, the harder it is to get," said Stephen Bachmann, CEO of Vinfolio, a wine trading/collecting site at the Think Tomorrow Today conference taking place in Half Moon Bay, California this week. "The best wines that get released end up in the cellars of collectors. Private cellars have more supplies of these wines than the trade does."

Vinfolio essentially acts like an eBayRead more

33 wine temperatures? And here I thought there was just 'chilled' and 'not chilled'

I guess I'm not a legit wine aficionado, because when I read about this wine chiller by Waring Pro, I was immediately astonished by the fact that this gadget provides 33 different temperature settings for different varieties of red wine, white wine, and champagne. Wow. And here I'd been thinking that the rule was "put it in the fridge if it's not red." I guess I just haven't been getting the full experience--maybe I need one of these. You can get them for $90 at Kohl's.

Considering we like wine so much here … Read more