When buying a bottle of Champagne, if the label says from “Champagne, France“,“methode traditionelle”, or “Méthode Champenoise”, the wine is in fact truly a “Champagne“. All other wines are “Sparkling Wine”. While this does sound somewhat snobbish and aristocratic, it does serve a good purpose in protecting the brand of the area. Another example of this type of “rule” that you may be more familiar with is the Vidalia Onion, which you can easily cook with champagne, or sparkling wine, to create some great hors d’oeuvres for this New Year.

You have to check out these Champagne Onion recipes we found over at The Gilded Fork. I’m going to make them tomorrow, and have a good idea at the different flavors I can create by using different combinations of sparkling wine and onions.

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The press release below was brought to our attention today, and with our love of music and wine, we wanted to share. I’d also like to point out, that in reading Josh’s website , it appears he has done several things for charity, including a recent donation of a song to the WHY Foundation, founded by Harry Chapin. The foundation released an album “All-Star Charity CD SERVE2: FIGHTING HUNGER AND POVERTY”, featuring tracks from many great musicians, Bruce Springsteen, OAR, Citizen Cope, and Natasha Bedingfield just to name a few.

A MÉNAGE À TROIS WITH JOSH ROUSE AT CARNEGIE HALL
NEW YORK-November 28, 2007- Fresh from Spain, Josh Rouse comes back to delight fans and make some new ones with his latest release, Country Mouse, City House. His seventh proper full-length album on his imprint label Bedroom Classics (through Nettwerk Music Group) was released this past summer.

Following the release, Josh has partnered with Ménage à Trois wines in a new marketing venture. The promotion, which starts November 1st, will display a hang tag or tear pad with Josh Rouse information (tag line, URL, and code for downloads) on over 2 million bottles of Ménage à Trois wines, inviting them to download samplings of Josh’s music. Fans can also enter to win a trip to see Josh perform live at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The winning fan will receive all expenses paid trip to New York for two to see Josh’s concert on April 18, 2008 - plus receive $1,000 in spending money. Fans can find bottles of wine to purchase in major supermarkets. In addition to the sweepstakes, a free song preview off the new album is available at menageatroiswines.com. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve recently added the Skribit Widget to our site. This is a great tool that allows us to get in sync on what you would like us to write about. Just click on the suggest a post button, and start typing. Pretty soon you will discover we have written on your topic of choice. Oh… and if you see something interesting.. click the button on the right to give it your vote!

Though the name suggests a bit of dicking about, the juice in the bottle is not half bad. Honestly though, I was glad that I purchased this at a store because I’d be at loathe to order the ‘Willy Willy 2006′ at any restaurant if I were in earshot of just about anyone. This wine drinks smooth, entices the nose with vanilla pods and white pepper which translate into a little ‘hows your father’ on the mid palate and finish. I think this wine goes to show that Aussie Shiraz is so seriously good that they can give it as stupid a name as they like without having any cause for concern.

The World Cup of Rugby is just around the corner and will be upon us in September. Now I know that American’s don’t really give too much attention to the amazing sport: but this year is perhaps a year to change your mind. As you may or may not know - France, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Italy and New Zealand over and above being awesome regions for the production of wine - are also the world’s top Rugby players. In the rest of the world outside of America, we genuinely mean ‘world’ when we affix the term ‘world’ before a sports tournament - and thus watching one of theses series’ is about more than sport: it’s about international unity, global community and solidarity. This year the tournament is taking place in France (it only happens every four years) and so - for any of you curious globally oriented wine lovers out there, nows a chance to get yourself to France, participate with the rest of the world and get a taste of some great wines and some of the global culture too. For those of you unable to go - fear not - the World Cup of Wines , which is a virtual live wine-tasting taking place on September 1st, 7:30pm-9:30pm at the Virtual Wine website, where they’ll be pitting the wines of Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Argentina and South Africa against one another - so switch on, pull up a chair, get some wine and pick a side. The folks at Virtual Wine have done some pretty cool events in the past, which shows that this could pretty easily become a trend in the future of world wine tastings.

However - with the intent of drawing some attention to the of my passions - travel, wine and rugby - www.grapethinking.com in association with www.tastevine.com will be hosting our very own Wine World Cup for the month of September.

For every day in September myself and a handful of the wine blogerati (volunteers welcome) will be doing one review on one wine per day for each of the six countries. That’s 180 posts in total (and a lot of wine to be drunk.) I’ve already got 16 bottles which I will begin opening this weekend to start my reviews. At the end of each week we will decide on a winner - and at the end of the competition there will be one country and that comes out tops.

TasteVine is working on planning a few live wine world cup events in the south, which will be an opportunity to taste 6 wine regions at once, and an enormous variation in style, flavor and taste.

In addition we’ll be awarding prizes (details to follow) to people who make comments and having a random draw for people who subscribe to our blog during the duration of the competition.

I’ll be giving regular, brief updates of the goings on the the actual teams who are playing - and all in all this is a blog event which hopes to spark interest in global culture and give us all a good excuse to go out and try a lot of different wine!

The first post for the World Cup of Wine will appear at 10am EST on September 1st. We’re accepting reviews before then - and will be sure to feature any reviews we receive. Get tasting and may the best wine win!