Get more wine for less money with wine clubs

I love being part of the WineShop at Home wine club. When the box arrives every month with my two reds and two whites, it feels like Christmas or my birthday. I know it's something I'll really enjoy, and it came to me - I didn't have to get in the car, chase it down, and hope it's something I'll like. Nor did I have to nag someone else to buy it for me. ;)

Especially if you don't live in an area where it's easy to find good wine close by, or if you just don't have time to run an extra errand to get good wine, wine clubs make good economic sense.  Have the wine you want and need delivered to you, so you have it handy for gifts, parties, or your own sipping enjoyment. If you're entertaining more at home these days instead of spending extra money to go out, you'll want to have value-priced, high-quality wine around.

More of what I love about my wine club:

• Wine Club Members receive DISCOUNTED PRICE SHIPPING on all case and half case orders.
• Flexibility to choose two or four bottles of premium wines each month. Go all red, all white, or some of each.
• Ability to change your selections to match the tastes and seasons throughout the year.
• Conveniently delivered right to your door in our signature box.
• Tasting notes about the wines plus information about the varieties, vineyards, and wine makers. Expand your knowledge of wine as you enjoy the selections at home.
• Recipes matched to specifically pair with each wine.
• Discounts on featured wine selections.
• No membership fees and cancel anytime without obligation.

Want to try it for yourself?

Great mulled wine recipe for the holidays

This recipe comes from Ina Garten. I am not a fan of cloves or anise, so I leave those out and substitute nutmeg and allspice. How much? To taste, which means starting with a pinch and work up from there. I also love adding some cardamom and just a little turmeric.

You can use regular ground cinnamon instead of cinnamon sticks. Ground spices will make the drink a little cloudy, but most apple cider isn't clear anyway. It's about the heavenly smell and taste, not whether you can read a book through it.

If you want to make something even the kids can drink, use only apple cider or apple juice and leave out the wine. Still delicious and warming!

Ingredients

• 4 cups apple cider
• 1 (750-ml) bottle red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 orange, zested and juiced
• 4 whole cloves
• 3 star anise
• 4 oranges, peeled, for garnish

Directions

Combine the cider, wine, honey, cinnamon sticks, zest, juice, cloves and star anise in a large saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Pour into mugs, add an orange peel to each and serve.

New flavors in time for fall

Pied Blanc and Pied Violet are here and they've brought great fall flavors with them. Take a look at the Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Merlot, and see the great food pairing suggestions to go with them.

Wine, food, fall, fun

These wines came today in my 4-bottle wine club shipment. Four new treats, and I don't have to go get them - they come to me every month. Now that's service.

Single-serving sangria. YUM. Recipe within.

I made this yesterday when I realized I didn't have ingredients to make a full pitcher of sangria the way I'd like to make it, but I certainly had enough ingredients to make a yummy one-glass serving. Here's what I did.

1. Take 3-4 raspberries or other berries - the soft ones at the bottom of the box work well for this - and muddle them (gently!) in the bottom of a wine glass.
2. Pour about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of Cointreau (or other good orange liqueur) into the glass.
3. Squeeze juice of 1 lemon wedge into the glass.
4. Pour red wine into the glass and swirl to blend it with the liqueur, lemon juice, and berries. I used the red TABLE. It's perfect for sangria.
5. Drop about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of Cointreau on top of the wine.
6. Squeeze a little more lemon into the wine, and run the wedge around the rim of the glass.
7. Feeling festive? Toss the lemon wedge into the glass and throw a couple of non-muddled berries into the pool, too.
8. Enjoy, and be ready to make more if anyone else gets a taste of what's in your glass.

Try it and see what you think. This has made me a fan of adding orange liqueur to sangria. I'd never thought of that before.

Cheers - and here's to necessity, the mother of invention! It was the best possible way to labor over Labor Day weekend. :)

What's your (vino)type?

Vinotyping, developed by Tim Hanni, is a fun way of discovering which wines you like and learning why you like them. There's no right or wrong - it's all about what tastes great (or not so great) to YOU.

Vinotyping categorizes your taste sensitivity into the category of Sweet, Hypersensitive, Sensitive, or Tolerant. You might be surprised at the results. I was! I thought I was a Tolerant type, but it turns out that I'm a Sensitive taster.

What's your vinotype? Why do you like certain wines and dislike others, but friends or family seem to experience the same wines completely differently? A WineShop at Home tasting will show you how to make sure to choose a wine you'll enjoy, either by itself or with your favorite foods.

Life's short - drink the wine YOU like, not what ratings, reviewers, or wine snobs dictate you should like.

Off topic: Who's responsible for keeping the Web worthwhile? All of us.

Here's a great article by Anil Dash about the Web, civility (and lack thereof), and the responsibility we all have to keep our online discussion spaces from becoming digital dumpsters. The article has some strong language, but I think that helps get the point across.

There are plenty of online Wild West opportunities for people to speak their mind, anonymously and/or unfiltered. I visit some of those places when and where the content is worth sifting through the junk. I don't think everywhere on the Internet needs to be one of those places. As Dash points out, it's like real life. We need places where civility and thoughtful speech can run free, too.

How much wine is good for your health?

By now most of us have heard about the antioxidant resveratrol, and how its presence in red wine can be good for your health. Most medical professionals won't recommend you start drinking wine if you don't already. But, if you already enjoy a glass now and then, the Mayo Clinic recommends keeping it to two drinks a day for men, one for women.

A "drink," for wine, is defined as 5 ounces. Chances are your wine glasses hold more than that. I recommend measuring 5 ounces of water into a measuring cup and pour that into your glass so you can see exactly what that amount of liquid looks like in your wine glass. Then, keep that in mind when you're pouring wine. Don't fill up the glass, tempting as that may seem.

If you run into this "wine to glass ratio" problem, you're not paying attention to the 5-ounce rule...