Archive for the ‘Wine accessories’ Category

Here’s an excerpt from a very interesting article by Sean Sullivan, printed recently in the Washington Wine Report. “The Great Recession has left many in the wine business looking for new ways to provide high quality wine at more affordable prices. One approach, which I wrote about recently, is keg wine.” (I also wrote an article about keg wine article for thewinecellarsclub.com.) “Another, which has recently started in Seattle, is the use of refillable wine bottles.”

“Paul Beveridge of Seattle’s Wilridge Winery started offering reusable bottles several months ago. Beveridge says that the inspiration was both to be as green as possible and to provide high quality wine at “recession buster” pricing.”

“The reusable bottles reduce environmental impact by eliminating cork (the bottles have reusable stoppers), capsules, paper labels, and the waste associated with recycling glass. “It takes five percent of the energy to clean and refill a bottle as it does to recycle a bottle,” Beveridge explains. Additionally, unlike boxed wine, it comes in a package consumers are already familiar with and that is fully reusable.“

I’d say this is an idea whose time has come, if only it hadn’t been around for eons already. We may not have seen it in the U.S of A., but in Europe, reusable bottles have been a way of life as long as they’ve been making wine (and that’s a long time). Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all done it — wrestled with a screwdriver, coat hanger, letter opener, or Swiss Army knife trying to open a wine bottle. Or worse yet, tried to use an actual corkscrew that left you tugging and grunting while the cork stubbornly refused to budge and your girlfriend/boyfriend looked at you like you were some kind of moron… So let’s get clear on the correct and best way to uncork a wine bottle.

First, let’s talk tools. There are hundreds of weird, exotic and expensive openers on the market, but we swear by the tried and true Waiter’s Blade. This little item costs less than 10 bucks and folds up neatly to fit into your pocket, purse or briefcase (so you’re never without wine-opening paraphernalia). So let’s begin… Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a bright side to our country’s economic woes: wine prices have come down out of the stratosphere and into the reach of us average wine drinkers.

I noticed in the Fall of 2008 that the new releases of big name Cabernets and Pinot Noirs were coming in at 15% or even 20% higher than the previous vintage. I’m talking about names such as Silver Oak and Opus One, which I could argue were already skating on their past reputation and wouldn’t stand up in a head-to-head competition with less expensive up-and-coming brands. Read the rest of this entry »