If you are in the mood for traveling, or nearby, you should probably set your sites on one of these cities, as they we’re recently ranked The Top 10 Places to Celebrate July 4th:

1. Boston
2. Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard
3. Chicago
4. Mount Rushmore
5. Philadelphia
6. Queen Mary 2
7. San Diego
8. San Juan Islands
9. US Virgin Islands
10. Washington, DC

Enjoy a safe 4th of July and Happy Birthday America!

What is crazy is that none of these firework shows above will compare to the Thunder over Louisville show.  I know Louisville has a great show, so if you are nearby there (Jeff…), it would probably be worth the trip.  As a child, our family would always trek to see Thunder Over Louisville in early April, which is claimed to be the “Larget Fireworks Show in North America”… here is clip from last year’s show:

Also… We have some exciting changes here at Grape Thinking (inside and outside) that we will be sharing with you soon!  Just in case you haven’t noticed, we have made quite a few changes to our site, and have more to come.

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I chose this wine because with the unofficial start of summer Alsace is perfect. The white wines here are well known with the Rieslings and Gewurztraminers, and their sparkling wines prosper as well. Another key point is these wines are not expensive at all. Alsace is respected but it doesn’t have the same prestige as Champagne, Burgundy, or Bordeaux. This is great for you. In the US a typical bottle will be between $12 to $20.

This wine is from Rene Muré, a Cremant d’Alsace. On the nose is a wave of fresh pears and peaches. Keeping with the farm stand pattern it’s granny smith apples that take over the palate. This wine is a Brut, so it’s going to be dry, but with a slight sweetness upfront. Overall it is fresh and bright.

Now if anyone was wondering, yes, Cremant does taste delicious with Cassis Liqueur or perhaps orange juice. Did someone say Mimosa? I could swear I heard someone say it. Well either way, this is a fantastic way to liven up Sunday brunch and to Wine Your Diet. It’s light, refreshing, an excellent source of calcium, and one way to stay cool in the hot sun. There is one problem with Mimosas though; they go down way to fast. Pace yourself, there is something called too much calcium.

From Pars I say au revoir, but soon I will be greeting you from New York in hopes of bringing back pride to Long Island wines. For now go grab any bottle of sparkling wine, it doesn’t even have to be from France, pop it, enjoy it, and as always don’t forget to Wine Your Diet.

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How dare Senator Clinton come out against Senator Obama, after his over rated comments about small-town America being bitter, with a series of photo-opportunities, going through the motions with a camera crew in tow – and in one audacious clip, pausing to have a sip of beer and drink a shot!

Oh sure Hillary, you drink beer so that makes you working-class.

The idea that a certain product can dictate one’s class is especially infuriating to a real wine-drinker, who recognizes wine’s essentially humble and agricultural roots – much the same as beer. That Clinton thinks that she can relate to the working class man with a photo-op drinking beer demonstrates that she is in fact far more derisory of the working class than she would dare let on. Although Obama may be on record saying that people cling to guns and religion because of economic uncertainty (which may not be entirely untrue), for Clinton to respond by taking a sip of beer and drinking a shot means that she thinks the best way to get the attention of the working class is to show an affinity for the bottle (which is slanderous.) Unwittingly, and thus tellingly, she implies that middle-class America are a bunch of drunks.

It is in follies like this that you can see the Rove-style politics at play, where there is power-play between the have’s and have-nots and well-to-do senators descend into the unwashed masses for the photo-opportunities and a quick ego-boost. However, with the recent Gallup ratings showing Obama’s new lead, we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that our man Obama will most certainly win in Pennsylvania tomorrow night.

What the Clinton coalition will never understand is that instead of being like a fine wine and maturing with age, they,ve gone sour. Obama has the sparkle and fizz of youth, with the sophistication, complexity and dynamite of champagne. Every time he finishes a speech one feels like celebrating and toasting the future, whilst Clinton’s speeches do nothing more than make you want to imbibe ouzo.

Obama has a fight cut out for him, but I advise you go and buy some champagne today and have it at the ready to pop open tomorrow night: because 20 years from now, you’ll want to be able to tell your children that that’s what you did. Essentially Obama has allowed every citizen to become part of the citizenry. Unlike the last two elections where many Americans felt robbed. Obama, through grass roots movements like An Obama Minute, his crowd surging rallies, online-community, and a winning coalition of tech-savvy , wine-drinking, young and able people the world over has been able to win countless hearts and minds. Being an American president is not so much about experience, but more about being able to take big ideas, and like the epiphanies at the end of a symposium, make people excited about them. And if it’s inspiration America wants, I’d recommend champagne over vinegar.

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For more reading see: Champagne – A New Year Tradition

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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. I figured we would make these 3

• “Sweet Vidalia Champagne Onions” – This recipe will make a great chip dip. We’ll cook the onions and some freshly minced garlic in Andre Blush Pink Champagne (a $4 bottle of delicious sparkling rose), and then add sour cream, chives, fresh ground pepper, and some sour cream and onion dip mix.
• “Purple Champagne Onions” – We’ll cook the onions with Hardys or Leasingham (both are a sweet sparkling Shiraz from Australia) or Leasingham then mix with cream cheese, and maybe a little roasted red pepper for spice. Put some sun-dried tomatoes and smoked salmon on a piece of toasted baguette along with a dollop of our extremely colorful sauce, maybe even garnish with a sprinkle of green onion.
• “Champagne Braised Cipollini Onions” – This recipe got me thinking about an entrée , like this beef tenderloin. We’ll cook the onions using Freixenet Spumante (a fruity, dry Cava from Spain) or Mionetto Prosecco Brut (a light Italian Prosecco), then slice them thinly and pour the reduced sauce over them. We’ll either cook a small tenderloin, or grill a filet, then thinly slice it; make sure you let it for 5-10 min. before slicing so it stays tender and moist. On each slice, place some onion sauce and horseradish cream (horseradish and sour cream). If I have a hard time finding Cipollini Onions, I’m sure the Vidalias would also work great.

Most people will go out this holiday season and buy bottles of Andre and Cook’s, both from California, which are a great and inexpensive way to bring in the New Year. The Cava, Prosecco, and Sparkling Shiraz mentioned in the recipes are also great imported wines for toasting a New Year, plus I don’t think any of them are over $20.

So go out during the Holidays and buy any bottle of Champagne or Sparkling White Wine, pop the cork if you feel the need because whatever you find enjoyable whether it be a loud or soft pop, is your preference. If hanging out with a cultured crowd the flamboyant procedure might not be advised. Sit back and let the bubbles tickle your throat and get jazzed about a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Quick Lesson: Champagne is a wine region in France located about 100 miles east of Paris. It is legally divided into 5 wine producing ‘districts’: the Aube, Côte des Blancs, Côte de Sézanne, Montagne de Reims, and Vallée de la Marne. Champagne/Sparkling Wine is generally marked as Extra Brut, Brut, Extra dry, Sec and Demi-sec, depending on how sweet they are. Extra bruit is extremely dry, while demi-sec is the sweetest.

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It’s that spirit of enlightened opportunism and pioneering spirit that makes America great. It’s the reason that no other country has teenagers and people in their early 20′s starting companies which become million and billion dollar corporations. It’s the reason that musicians, artists, writers, circus acrobats, engineers and architects from abroad set their sites on its soil. American’s may not be free from healthcare woes; but at least those who are unhappy about it have the opportunity to make a film about it without censorship. Wineries are not free to send their wines directly to their consumer in many states, but people have the opportunity to challenge that too. Americans may not be the most free nation on the planet but they certainly have some of the greatest soil on which to find and make the best of an ever increasing amount of opportunity.

As we go to our respective firework displays tonight and partake in whatever festivities there may be (I can’t believe I’m missing Macy’s fireworks this year) there’s no doubt that we’ll all take special care to remember to be grateful that we’re in the country with the largest wine industry on the globe and an emerging group of people not yet enthusiastic, but very open to food and wine.

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You know what Ruarri?

What M.O.D?

“That’s why I like wine, because it’s different, you know? Like this Yellowtail stuff here. It’s made in Australia, but I’m drinking it in Colorado, and you know, because of the altitude and all, it’s completely different. I bet you those folks in Australia had no idea how good there juice would taste at this height, I aint even sure if they have mountains over there, being on the other side of the world and all. Wine at altitude dude! WOO HOO!

This snippet of conversation is but one of many I’ve had in my life where people learn of my wine background and then go on to show that they have no what wine background at all. That’s not a bad thing by the way. In fact the thought that there are people out there who think that Yellowtail tastes different at different altitudes is so crazy that it may even be part of a bizarrely genius underground buzz-marketing campaign. Let me fast-forward a year though, where I had chosen to not spend Christmas in Vail, but had been invited to a small farm in the Netherlands to have Christmas with my wife and some of our friends on a farm.

Being a Dutch farm, there was a fantastic Cotes du Rhone being passed around and to follow, the Le Riche Cabernet Sauvignon 1995, which is one of my favourite wines. One may not understand what being a Dutch farm has to do with the wine selection, but the Netherlands is both close to France in Geography and close to South Africa historically, and so the connection between the French wine and a South African wine on a Dutch dining room table is rather breath-taking when considered in great detail, but I’ll leave that to another blog-post.

The people in our party were master’s students, young accountants, entrepreneurs and photographers, as well as our hosts who owned the farm. Being ex-pats we all joined forces and prepared our own dishes for the Christmas feast, and while we cooked passed around Chablis to cleanse our palate and ignite a little festive spirit. As we all sat down, everyone emptied their Chablis glasses to make way for the Cotes du Rhone, and it suddenly struck me how completely different it is to be a young person in Europe than being young in the US. No one in our party had ever been on a cooking course, or had gone to wine school, but it was just a part of their life-style. When they thought of Cotes du Rhone, they thought of summers spent in the region and how long it would take to get there. It so happens that the family’s uncle stayed opposite the Le Riche estate in Stellenbosch, and it just seemed that everyone had far more of a relationship with wine and food.

There is no question that McDonald’s is satisfying and cheap; and that Yellowtail is affordable and sweet. McDonalds has no relationship to its food, its food for food’s sake. Most people eat it whilst on the run and most people drink Yellowtail as part of their pre-game, that is, a means to the end of getting drunk. Whilst out on the farm I felt reconnected to the route of wine, to how embedded it is in farming, relationships and special occasions. Being in Manhattan, reading the Wine Spectator and taking occasional visits to Napa created a rift in my mind where I began to believe for myself that wine is about profit. If one closes their mind a little, it would be easy to believe Hollywood and can get the impression that a good film should be about massive production costs and Box-Office sales. However, for anyone with a passion for old movies or foreign film, they will appreciate that this is clearly not the case.

This past year, the quality of my free time has been greatly increased by my iPOD and being a subscriber to Netflix. This is by and large because I’ve been able to rent movies I was never previously able to and that I no longer have to subject my mind to radio-jockeys or advertising, and can instead listen to selected Podcasts, ‘This American Life’ and the Princeton Review’s ‘LSAT Logic in Everyday Life’ being among my favourite. And I really needed my free time, because most days I became frustrated at how restricted wine-buyers, and therefore consumers were by shelf-space. It was over Christmas, as I sat in the company of good friends, drinking wine that I thought how nice it would be if 2007 could be the year where everyone in the US in their 20′s could experience something similar to that. The feeling of being connected to a conversation, the meal, the wine and the moment, the feeling of ambience that so many Americans completely miss out on when they’re young.

Tastevine is 100% committed to changing the way young people experience the wine-industry, and 2007 is going to be the year that the wine industry is no longer restricted and that the diversity of it is saved. Until now, consumer trends in the USA were the cause of drastic and volatile decisions. We all know now that the end effect of the ‘Sideways’ phenomenon was that the industry ended up having a lot of bad Pinot Noir and a lot of good Merlot, and many farms planted Pinot Noir vines where it wasn’t able to grow and tore out Merlot vines from perfect Merlot-terroir. This is quite obviously the result of a trend gone wrong, and ultimately was caused by misinformation and an overly influential movie. The internet and Web 2.0 will help people receive better information; experience wine more diversely; research their decisions and ultimately have a more fruitful experience. May 2007 bring you good friendships, good times and good wine. Cheers.

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