Dr Vino's wine blog

Are you interested in becoming a sales rep for a wine distributor with the area industry’s “highest salaries”? Or becoming a senior buyer at a chain of 78 wine stores grossing $1 billion? How about a senior PR position at a wine importer? Would you like to be a sommelier at a leading restaurant in New York City?

All these positions–and more!– currently available and posted over at the new wine industry jobs board that I am launching today. Consumers, turn your passion for wine into a profession, either full-time or part time. Trade readers who want to trade up or trade across, check out what is available.

And employers, shine a light on your search by listing your open positions. For a limited time, take $99 off a classic listing (yes, that makes it FREE) or a premium listing by entering “pinot” at checkout. Premium listings remain at the top of the page, get listed in the daily email, and on the sidebar of the blog. Leverage our audience by providing the best possible visibility to your search for finding the strongest candidate.

So what are you waiting for, click over and take a look at jobs.drvino.com!

Do you love the smell of freshly baked blog posts hitting your inbox every morning? Then sign up for my new “daily dose.”

I’ve been sending them with the new service for about ten days so if you are a subscriber and you have been feeling a nagging emptiness in your inbox, then something has gone wrong–feel free to let me know or add tyler @ drvino.com to your white list. I’ve already done some troubleshooting with a couple of loyal readers and we seem to A-OK on all mail programs.

Sign up today and get a gold star! If you’re not into email, you can plug the blog feed into some browsers, mail programs or Google Reader. Keep in touch! And as they say in America’s finest restaurants: “enjoy!”

SIPPED: quality
The Muscadet region, known for quantity over quality, now boasts three sites officially recognized as superior, as crus, including Clisson. So glad the authorities are catching up! [larvf.fr]

SNAPPED: fun pics of the 2011 harvest in the Loire (one of which is above). [Wine Terroirs]

HAMMERED: $500k of Lafite
A vertical of 25 solid cases of Lafite from 1981-2005 sold for $539,280 to an “anonymous Chinese phone bidder” at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong. Great way to dump those ’91s! [WSJ]

SIPPED: going postal: The budgetary crisis at the US Postal Service puts wine shipping on the table. [NYT]

SPIT: frauds
Mike Steinberger summarizes the recent reactions–and adds his own–to Parker’s recent report on tasting fraudulent wines. [winediarist]

SIPPED: edumacation
My next NYU wine course runs Oct 12 – Nov 16. Registration and details.

Yes, just what the internet needed–another page for Dr. Vino on the internet! You can now follow us over on Facebook. However, for reasons known only to Mark Zuckerberg, the best way to keep up with the page is to “like” it by clicking the LIKE button on the page. This puts page updates in your news feed–assuming you are one of the 500 million people on Facebook, that is. Whether you have joined or not, you can click on the the “wall” to seem the latest links and commentary. Join the fray!

www.facebook.com/drvino
Tweet: you can also keep up on Twitter.com/drvino

It’s that time of year again: the wine blog awards! A panel of (unnamed) judges has selected some finalists in eight categories. The awards are always a good way to discover some new blogs or check in with older ones.

DrVino.com has been named a finalist in the “Best Wine Blog” category. The other finalists are the New York Cork Report, Palate Press, the San Francisco Chronicle’s The Cellarist and 1winedude.

Check out all the nominees and cast your ballot. Voting ends Sunday, May 30.

John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter, the wildly popular wine columnists at the Wall Street Journal, published an updated glossary of handy wine terms in Saturday’s column. Here’s their headline:

Singing the ABCs of Wine
The columnists’ updated glossary swaps Parker for Dr. Vino and Vayniacs; why there are 27 entries

It was very nice of them to give Dr. Vino a shout out! (Click through for their full comments.) And to hold up my book A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season in the accompanying video! Check out their glossary for other fun wine terms, such as Xinomavro and Zweigelt (also good in Scrabble).

Voting is now under way for the 2009 American Wine Blog awards! This blog has been nominated in two categories, best wine blog and best wine blog writing. Head on over to the Fermentation, check out all the blogs since it can be a good way to discover new ones, and then cast your vote!

And while you’re there, be sure to Vote Vino! Yes we can!

The past year has been a great year and I thank you for your participation in making this blog lots of fun. Looking forward another year of wine talk that goes down easy!

Timed strategically to drop after the election and before the holidays (but on Veteran’s Day, a holiday itself!), today is the official release date of my new book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season!

Instead of traversing the familiar terrain of regions or grape varieties, I forge a new path by plotting a seasonal arc for wine consumption. This ties in to the way that I enjoy wine, by emphasizing the context of how, where, when (and with what and with whom) we drink wines, as well as linking to the trend of seasonal cooking that is so prevalent today among professional chefs and home cooks. I’m glad that this theme resonated with so many of you in our previous discussion.

The book has short essays and hundreds of wine recommendations across the twelve months of the year. There should be something for wine lovers of all levels, newbie to full-on wine geek. There’s also some information for all seasons about wine style, wine service and how to actually find good wines near you. And twelve wine travel sections help you even change your context for maximum wine enjoyment.

Alex Eben Meyer contributed the great illustrations. Check out his excellent portfolio at his site!

And a total of thirteen sommeliers lent their thoughts to the volume. They include: Richard Betts (The Little Nell, Aspen, CO); Shayn Bjornholm MS (Washington Wine Commission); Thomas Carter (Blue Hill Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, NY); Belinda Chang (The Modern, NYC); Christie Dufault (Quince, SF); Erik Liedholm (Seastar, Seattle); Rajat Parr (Michael Mina Group, SF); Shelley Lindgren (A16 restaurant, SF); Roger Morlock (Park Avenue Seasons, NY); Virginia Philip, MS (The Breakers, Palm Beach); Tysan Pierce (The Herbfarm, Woodinville, WA); Juliette Pope (Gramercy Tavern, NYC).

So check out the book’s page over at Amazon (or Barnes and Noble or Powell’s if you prefer) and see what Kermit Lynch, Eric Arnold, David Lynch, and Bobby Abreu had to say on the back cover. Or ask for the hardcover at your local bookstore and check it out in print. And if you do get it, let us know what you think of it here!