Sounds like a big joke, too… Roll blockquote, AP!

(This is not the AP, this is still Gary. Did you know that the AP actually charges bloggers who quote their articles? Casting Fair Use into the wind, they’ve thoughtfully setup an online form for bloggers to pay to quote their articles. Here it is. To quote their article here would cost me $17.50. Absurd.)

Anyway, the Eniac-like machine has the following process. First, the consumer swipes his Pennsylvania drivers license. Not good. The state shouldn’t be keeping records of who buys what, right? That’s against Liberty and Freedom and all that, right? Nobody would be interested in compromising the electronic records of these machines, right? You have the Liberty Bell right up the street.

Okay fine, swipe my ID. Now what?

The consumer then blows into a breathalyzer to ensure he is not drunk. I say this all the time on this blog: DRUNKS DO NOT SLAM CHARDONNAY TO GET DRUNKER.

Now, machine, you have my ID and you have taken a breath sample and verified that I am now drunk. May I have my wine?

No, because this is the best part. The consumer now has to look into a video camera so that a state employee, sitting in some office in Harrisburg, verifies his identity via real-time video.

Now, finally, you may have your room-temperature wine.

I can’t even get into the downright absurdity of this whole thing. It’s just nuts.

Here’s the thing: Pennsylvania residents are so accustomed to driving to a separate store for their state-selected wines that they’re positively thrilled that they can finally buy groceries and wine in one place. People aren’t lighting torches and rising up an anger. They’re smiling about it. You know, I just might be smiling about it too if I lived there.

More coverage from Pennlive, who did not charge me for linking to them.

Sponsored message from WineChateau.com: Fine wines – Get 1/2 off shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles with coupon code “vino35″

Vinfolio used to publish a twice-yearly volume called the Wine Price File, an encyclopedic-class book that contained all the auction results for the past several years sorted by wine and vintage. This being the Internet-age, Vinfolio decided to move all of that information online and make it free. This comprehensive data serves as the base for Wineprices.

On Wineprices.com you’ll find auction and retail values for a particular wine and year. The auction data is broken down by size, year, auction house, and presented in charts for five, three and one year time frames. You can also find stores that stock the wine and the prices that are advertised. The retail data is updated every two weeks, so the information isn’t as current as, say, Wine-searcher. It is, though, meant to provide a current picture of the retail market for a particular wine.

Go poke around and drop me a line in the comments to let me know what you think.

Okay, so maybe not those last three items.  But the first, oh how it will help with the first!

I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned it here, but my day job is working as a Software Engineer for Vinfolio, the San Francisco based wine retailer and collector services company (Full disclosure: I work for Vinfolio).  I know, I know, you’re all shocked that my day job isn’t “professional wine critic.”  Such a day may come, but likely not in this lifetime.

Since The Wine Collector, Fermentation Blog, and Vinography have taken their whacks at announcing this thing to the world, I figured I could slip a post in there too. Vinfolio recently relaunched their cellar management tool called VinCellar. I worked on the development team from birth to launch and I’m happy to see it out in the world.  I’m no marketing guy.  They don’t let us programmers talk to people or do anything that might damage the company.  But, I will attempt to answer the question you’re all asking.

What’s so great about VinCellar, Mr. Smarty Pants?

Maybe I’ll just turn it over to the landing page, where highlights include:

• It’s free
• Share your wine tasting notes with the VinCellar community and (soon) the world!
• Get comprehensive valuations on your wine.  Vinfolio’s valuation algorithm is awesome.  Trust me on this
• Extensive auction results data, viewable in tables and on charts (pictured at right), and by bottle size.
• The Label View browser is really cool
• The cellar analysis charts and tables are just amazing.  Cut and slice and dice your collection in ways you never dared to dream of
• The professional critic content integration is fantastic.  VinCellar displays reviews and scores from Tanzer, Burghound, Galloni, Juhlin, and others.  If you subscribe to their services, the reviews and scores will show up alongside your wines in your VinCellar
• It looks so slick
• And a million more…

VinCellar is a public beta, so there will be (hopefully minor) bugs.  Don’t expect those kinks to linger.  We’re all over it.

Check out the detail page for 1995 Latour

The VinCellar launch signifies the fruits of the hard work that the Vinfolio team put in over an undisclosed number of months. Sitting in on design meetings, planning iterations, and rolling out the code to the world was a great experience and I learned a ton.  I’m  happy to have worked with those guys on this product and I’m proud of the results. If you’re not a member, sign up and add a few bottles and kick the tires.  Let me know what you think either via email or in the comments.  Enjoy the wine.

Picked this up from the LA Times of all places: Both Brooks Robinson and Eddie Murray have lent their names and likeness to a series of commemorative wines that will be sold for charity. Brooks Robinson Chardonnay and Eddie Murray 504 Cabernet Sauvignon are both on sale now and will be shipped in mid-June. Perfect drinks for whenever the Orioles are tagging Josh Beckett in Fenway.

The athlete’s proceeds from the sale will go to benefit the Baltimore Community Foundation, an organization that sponsors grants and endowments for Baltimore City. Mike Schmidt’s Zinfandel benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, another organization near and dear to my heart.

Grapes for both are sourced from Paso Robles. I poked around but haven’t found anything about where they make the wine. I imagine the answer is “somewhere in California.”

Both wines can be ordered from Event Wines, a company that apparently specializes in this sort of thing: paring athletes with wine for charity.

Of course, what would a blog post be if I couldn’t sound off about the Maryland shipping laws? Neither wine can be shipped to Maryland, just as the Mike Schmidt 548 Zinfandel cannot be shipped to Pennsylvania. Contact your local state representative and try to persuade them to blah blah blah…

Who is in for a case? Link to product page.

Image is of third base in Nationals Park. CC licensed photo from Flickr user f1rstborn

Featured: 2006 Boordy Chardonnay. Not pictured: my other pickle slice (consumed)

The early wine glasses: big, aroma-releasing, tailored to each varietal, and a liability in the dishwasher. Broken wine stems and glass bowls abound, and my nice glasses were taken out of the rotation. Riedel devolved the wine glass into a stemless version, solving the broken wine stem dilemna but the glass bowl was still nice enough to get smashed up or cracked.  Add to this the fact that the Pinot glasses were gigantic and could not fit in anything anywhere.

Crate & Barrel took wine glass devolution to the max with their stemless version. Simple, elegant, and impossible to break. If it does break, who cares? For $1.95 you can throw them at the wall when you’re finished drinking. Perfect for the mobile wine drinker, either out on the porch or at a picnic in the park. I had a few (I’m very mobile) but just picked up a bunch more last week for patio cookout season kickoff.

Link

Link to Wine.Woot.

Uncorked on Hulu

Also on Hulu, I stumbled on a show on Fox Reality (which I try to avoid) called Corkscrewed. If you haven’t had it with the cork puns yet, Corkscrewed follows Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick (producers of American Idol) in their quest to purchase a Paso Robles winery. The show is slick and compelling, as you would expect from two of the fathers of modern reality TV.

Corkscrewed on Hulu 

Rapper Lil’ Jon has launched a winery, Little Jonathan Winery, and bottles of his Cab, Merlot, and Chard will be hitting shelves in California in one or two months. Yes, that Lil’ Jon. The one with the goblet.

But while Crunk!!! is “bold pride, ridiculous parties and endless energy,” according to the beverage’s website, Little Jonathan Winery is “not no ghetto Boone’s Farm,” Jon said.

“This is real wine.”

Really, Jonathan? Real wine? Well I’d like to be the first to thank you. I’ve never heard James Suckling use “WHAT?” in a wine review, and now it’s a virtual lock that I will.

Supple and appealing in texture, the 2005 Leoville Poyferre is a monumental effort. Aromas of plum and blackberry hiding under a lot of spicy character. Lingers on the palate with soft, mid-balanced tannins that make you say WHAT? 94.

Middle-aged women at stuffy wine-tastings in the SOMA district are going to swirl their Cabernet around a few times, take a big whiff, sip, savor, and say “YEAH!” The skit pretty much writes itself.

You know what, I’m back on the other side of the fence. No way this is true.

Is it?

Link to quoted story. Link to “winery website”

Link

This past Sunday, the slightly larger Baltimore Sun ran a piece of East Coasters putting custom wine cellars in their expensive homes. These wine cellars can be nuts in terms of amenities, from oak and cherry wine racks to $20,000 temperature control systems. They sure can look sweet though.

Cellars can cost as little as a few thousand dollars for a simple grotto or well into the six figures for an architectural statement, and they are as likely to hold inexpensive vintages as they are those valued at upwards of $2,000 a bottle.

My wine storage corner pales in comparison.