Now that party season is upon us, we all have to contemplate strategies for dealing with the “third hand” problem: in order to eat some hors d’oeuvres, you need two hands, which means you can’t also hold a wine glass.

Above are two commercial solutions, the plate on top of the wine glass or the glass in the plate.

What’s your approach on this burning problem? Have your say in the latest poll!

While more details and opinions about Aria are forthcoming (check out some photos on urbandaddy), the nature of the wine list does raise an interesting question: should a wine list be structured to highlight almost exclusively women, who are woefully underrepresented in winemaking, or is that just a gimmick? Have your say in the comments or the latest poll!

Choose up to two responses

Would you like to see more reviewers noting alcohol levels? Although what’s written on the label is what we have to go on as consumers, it’s not always accurate given that federal regulations allow one to one-and-a-half percent wiggle room from what’s stated on the label. Have your say in the latest poll!

Also, just how did the NYT panel’s favorite wine, Nicolas Joly’s Les Clos Sacrés from the damp 2007 vintage, reach 15 percent alcohol? This is the Loire, not Lodi, after all. For perspective, I asked Nicolas Joly for a comment, which follows after the poll.

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Since several years the profile of most years here lead to a year dominated by light more than by heat which may be there for 2 or 3 weeks in July mainly. O7 is a year of light as O8 and O9 (where most nights were 1O°Celsius lower than day) the same. And 2OIO is on the same way. Global warming is in my mind for here incomplete Some magnetism of the earth is changing. Spring is less pronounced, very slow to come with not much force up to May. Surprising and worrying indeed. But people are lost in their heads and prisoners of too much intellectuality. What comes is not what is expected.

Why 15° of alcohol then? Because if you wait for the “right” maturity (yellow leaves which tells you “my job is over” , right taste etc ) the beginning of some concentration have happened although we do not reach at all the so called late harvest. Why not increasing the yields then by pruning longer? Because beyond the yield of 2O max 25 hectoliters by hectare you loose “something ” precious …I remember Lalou [Bize-Leroy] saying beyond 15 hecto / hectare you cannot make a great wine. This is probably what she meant. But with vines of 3O to 7O years old as here 2O to 25 works.

You do not get a painting away from a painter unless its work is achieved. When has the chenin completed its work is then the question? Fairly late is my answer although not at the stage of vendange tardive . Keep in mind first that chenin is a very difficult child to raise ; poorly handled it becomes a disaster, well handled it is a miracle . The basic is that you cant put it almost anywhere like a sauvignon or even a chardonnay ; a chenin will not forgive any mistake from your side. Second it does not support high yields ( like french fonctionnaire but this time for the benefit of consumers !!!); the best chenin here comes from October harvest where the cool nights and the indispensable end of the maturity permits much more subtleties and complexities to fully come out. the excess of one half of a degree to one degree does not mater you do not taste it as such!

Then last as always the simplest terroir comes out first as always .you have to move into the complexity of the wine to see the huge difference If you compare on a 8 days tasting a Coulée O7 and a Clos Sacré O7 (one glass a day just recorked no fridge ) you will see a Van Gogh beside an impressionist after 8 days !If you have been tasting a great Bordeaux of the fifties 2 years after its harvest you would not have bought it .I mean that if you just want a pleasant evening with a wine full of originality take a Clos Sacré ( sold as Vieux Clos in France ) it is great .If you have something very special wil reall friends devoted to a real thrue food take certainly a Coulée it is not the same trip This will be even clearer in one year or 2, but is certainly visible now. Make the experiment.

you can publish this on your blog of course!

Is this wine targeting minors, adding fuel to the fire of distributors who play the underage drinking card in the direct shipping debate? The wine’s marketer told LA Weekly: “My take on it is this: with over 60,000 Hello Kitty sku’s in the marketplace and at 35 years old now, she is definitely ready for more adult skewed products. I don’t think that the $15,000 dollar Hello Kitty handbags are aimed at children either.” What say you: is Hello Kitty wine the Joe Camel of wine?!?

Consider this exchange. Paul Grieco, owner of Hearth restaurant and Terroir wine bar in NYC, tweeted that he was going on the TODAY show to talk wine and chocolate. (See segment here: both regular and sparkling shiraz feature.) Eric Asimov tweets back “chocolate and wine? what are you thinking, man? Who cares about what to drink with chocolate? Food mag nonsense.”

Oooh, snap! Wine and chocolate are two fine things. But this is one of those “impossible” pairings that has yet to convince me. My rule of thumb: Have wine before dinner. Have wine with dinner. But let chocolate dessert stand alone! Then resume drinking, if necessary. (Or try a Banyuls with the chocolate dessert if it’s a question of life or date.)

Have your say about the great chocofight 2010 in the comments–or with the latest poll!

So now that the book is closed on 2009, how did your wine buying and consuming change, if at all? Did you deplete your existing stock? Only buy wines on closeout? More dining at home? Hittin’ the Carlo Rossi?

Have your say in the poll and comments.

Second place in the voting was Gary Vaynerchuk, a wine retailer and internet phenom. With nearly 850,000 followers on Twitter, would Gary summon the VaynerNation to do his bidding? Eric and Gary crossed champagne sabers here and on various of the wine forums. Here’s a taste from Twitter:

Gary: @cellartracker hey are u whipping my butt LOL congrats bro …have a great new years!
Eric: Happy New Year’s to you too! You could whip me in 1 sec if U wanted. Love the Misha [Gary's daughter] pic, daddy!

Wow, they are at each other’s throats!

If you are not familiar with CellarTracker, check it out or feel free to review all the comments on the previous thread. For your convenience, since some might say that CellarTracker is Zagat to the single critic’s Michelin, here’s a summary of what people said:

“CellarTracker…represents the rise at the beginning of this century of the power of the consumer critic…The fact that the users have essentially created an instant database of every wine under the sun is astonishing. The value and power of it will only increase as more people use it…Not only has he provided a well thought out system for tracking one’s wine experiences, it can be free (if you choose not to donate), it records tasting notes from thousands of different palates (not just one, i.e. Gary), and it has changed the way I purchase old and new wines…a game changer…CellarTracker changes the way wine is stored, appreciated, reviewed when it first appears, and reviewed as it ages. Eric gets my vote…My grown kids laugh because the site is my “home” page…it represents what’s right about the web…I can say unequivocally that I would not be the wine drinker I am today without CellarTracker…I would be lost if you took my CellarTracker away!…Long live CT! … And Eric LeVine is one the most rational and most interesting commentators on wine boards.”

Well done, Eric! The early betting shows that you are the one to beat for next decade’s title as well.

John Casella: CEO of Casella Wines, which launched the now ubiquitous [yellow tail] in June 2001.
Fred Franzia: The California-based creator of Two Buck Chuck, which debuted in 2002, believes that no wine should sell for more than $10 a bottle.
Paul Giamatti: played role of Miles in Sideways (2004); crushed the fortunes of Merlot with a single line while the film boosted interest in Pinot Noir
Shin & Yoko Kobayshi: authors of “The Drops of the Gods,” a Japanese comic started in 2004 that is, according to the NYT, “the most influential voice in Asia’s wine markets.”
Eric LeVine: Formerly of Microsoft, LeVine opened CellarTracker.com to the public in April 2004; now, it is the dominant site for user-generated tasting notes with over one million wine reviews.
Robert Parker: Critic who popularized the 100-point scoring system; as winemaker Randall Grahm put it in the comments: “His influence on winemaking styles world-over is massive, a bit like the light-bending properties of a ginormous black hole on nearby astral bodies.”
Terry Theise: wine importer who has championed “grower” champagnes, ones from those who grow the grapes as opposed to large houses
Gary Vaynerchuk: dynamic wine retailer; host of almost 800 episodes of Wine Library TV; internet phenom who is, in his words, changing the wine world.

If you’d like to elaborate why you voted the way you did, hit the comments. Nominees appear alphabetically and from left to right in the images. You can only vote for one person. Voting ends with the decade on 12/31.

But one commenter who wasn’t laughing was Paul Gregutt, wine columnist for the Seattle Times. He had this to say:

there’s little doubt that the most difficult cork pulling experiences in my life come when someone has slathered their weapon-grade wine bottle with a pound or two of faux wax. You need a chainsaw to drill through some of these things. It is not helpful to embark on what is supposed to be a thoughtful review of someone’s wine with blood all over the corkscrew, the bottle, the glass and the writer. Perhaps you will join me in an effort to dissuade wineries from using this stuff?

I’ve enjoyed quite a few wines–from Lapierre, Foillard, Vatan, and Lopez de Heredia to name a few–sealed with a wax layer on top of the cork. While they are annoying since they require an additional sweep of the counter, I’ve never shed blood as Paul apparently has. And I think they do add a nice aesthetic touch.

But what say you? Should wineries no longer use them as Paul suggests?

I recently had the $19 Nicolas Potel 2006 Bourgogne rouge and found it a great value, lean, old world pinot. In previous vintages, I’ve enjoyed value Pinots from Austria (e.g. Stadlmann) and Italy’s alto Alto Adige region (e.g. Hofstatter) as well. And I’ve had some good new world Pinot under $20, such as the “H” Pinot Noir from Hamacher in Oregon. (search for these wines)

What about you? Have your say in our latest poll!

But have Americans gotten so into wine that even a recession can’t take wine off the table? It appears that wine sales sales for 2008 may be up fractionally by volume but the value is likely to be down since many consumers are “trading down,” or reaching for less expensive wines.

We last checked in with you about your buying habits on September 29. Lots has happened in the economy since then. Tell us how your wine buying and consumption is now! And with the new polling software, you can now select two answers!

What do you say? Even if you like screwcaps for your own wine, have screwcaps gone mainstream enough that they’re not a stigma for gift wine? Let us know using the snazzy new poll software!

The governor proposes raising the state taxes on wine. Given that the state tax is currently $0.19 per gallon, below the national median of $0.69, we could have seen that one coming.

But he proposes a more far-reaching change: selling wine at grocery stores. Yes, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and others might soon be able to sell Sancerre right next to the Camembert without the need for special, at-grade entrances to separate facilities. This could really shake up New York wine retail by offering more convenience to consumers and increase wine sales overall; indeed, the governor estimates that it will bring in $150 million in revenues to the state.

Given that the number of licensees would jump from 2,400 to 19,000, the plan would presumably, remove the limit to one location per licensee. This would allow stores such as Zachys, which has only one location in suburban Scarsdale, to open stores in Manhattan or other successful Manhattan stores to open in other neighborhoods. Presumably, they would also be allowed to sell cheese and bread if they wanted to. Many details clearly need to be worked out and we’ll see how it unfolds between now and March.

In the meantime, have your say in the latest poll!

poll now closed

Ray Isle, Deputy Wine Editor at Food & Wine magazine, the frequent face of wine on the Today Show, a wine blogger in his own right and all around good guy joined me in narrowing the field of suggestions. So here they are, the finalists, for your voting. Decide America’s new wine motto here and now!

The one with the most votes as of Friday will be crowned the winner and will receive a signed copy of Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. That’s right, the book that tells the story of wine in France and America through the lens of industry politics will be on of theirs in time for the Fourth of July. Congratulations to site readers Mark Ashley, Patrick Henry (who knew?), and Katie for making it into the finals!

poll now closed

Here are the four “groan cru” (sorry, had to do it) wine names. Vote now for the worst offender! And remember, this isn’t for the worst label design, just the name, hence no finalist labels are shown to distract us.

poll now closed