Wine for Haiti

Wine lovers have figured out a way to donate what we hope is a large amount of money to the American Red Cross, earmarked for use in Haiti.

Palate Press (to which I’m an occasional contributor) and Brother, Can You Spare a Bottle? (with which I’m also tangentially involved) have teamed up to create a Wines for Haiti auction. There are two ways you can participate. The first is by donating a really nice bottle(s) of wine to be sold at the auction. The second way to participate is by bidding on the donations.

There are some great lots already, and there is always a need for more. The auction is being held online, of course, in the comments section of the Wine for Haiti post on Palate Press. Please promise your contribution in the comments over there, and then contribute your bottle for the auction. The next step is to bid, bid, bid.

Bottles should be sent to:

Wine for Haiti
Palate Press: The online wine magazine
9425 Meridian #201
Indianapolis, IN 46260

Here is how the auction will work. As we create individual lots, they will be posted here with a link to the individual lot. Just place your bid in the comments. We will not close any of the bids for a while, but once we do, the auction ends when we go 24 hours without a bid. If we get into a bidding war between two or three people at the end we won’t make everybody wait a day, we will schedule a bid at a set time the contestants (and anybody else lurking and waiting, but interested) agree to.

Please direct all inquires to WineForHaiti@palatepress.com

I hope everyone can find a way to contribute to this, or bid. What has happened in Haiti is tragic, but I’m always touched to see how the world pulls together to help a country in need. If you can’t contribute via the wine auction, consider donating directly to the American Red Cross for Haiti Relief and Development.

A Perfect Holiday Gift: Tix to the Wine Festival

It’s that time of year again – tickets to the Cincinnati International Wine Festival have gone on sale! If you think about it, these would make a great stocking stuffer. The 2010 wine festival takes place March 11 – 13, including the various dinners and tastings. As usual, we’ll prep you and offer our own festival survival tips the week before the festival.

The Honorary Chair for the 2010 event, which also happens to be the 20th anniversary, is Michael Mondavi. Michael is the Founder of Folio Fine Wine Partners, an importer and producer of wines from the world’s premiere and emerging wine regions.  Yes, his dad is none other than Robert Mondavi, so the wine industry runs in his blood. In 2004 (which is when Mondavi was sold to Constellation), Michael started Folio with his wife and children. The Wine Festival will be holding a special Winery Dinner, honoring Michael, on Wednesday, March 10^th.

You can purchase tickets online – our wine festival has grabbed the enviable URL of www.winefestival.com and hung onto it for several years.

You can buy regular tickets or include admission to the Special Tasting Room. For several years I’ve had mixed emotions about the Special Tasting Room: I really enjoyed visiting it last year, and the wine is definitely high-end and special. But I hate that this wine is now held back from everyone who doesn’t want to shell out an extra $35. Is it worth it? Well, yeah. It definitely is, but I’m not a fan of the 1-hour time limit.

So buy your tickets, tell all your friends, and join us at the Grand Tastings!

Dates & Costs

Friday Evening 6:30 – 9:00 PM
$70.00 prior to event, $75.00 at the door
$105 for Grand Tasting ticket and Special Tasting ticket, $110 at the door

Saturday Afternoon 2:30 – 4:30 PM
$60.00 prior to event, $65.00 at the door
$95.00 for Grand Tasting ticket and Special Tasting ticket, $100.00 at the door

Saturday Evening 6:30 – 9:00 PM
$70.00 prior to event, $75.00 at the door
$105 for Grand Tasting Ticket and Special Tasting ticket, $110 at the door

Special Tasting Room
Enjoy high end wines for one hour prior to the Grand Tastings. Each ticket will be an additonal charge of $35 for 7 tastes.

Eat for the Cause Tomorrow: KLP Scholarship Fund and Max & Ermas

As many of you know, I’m working to raise money for a scholarship fund in memory of my little sister. Krystal, at the age of 21, passed away unexpectedly from an undiagnosed congenital heart defect two years ago. We want to put together a scholarship for educations majors at Thomas More College – just like Krystal.

There is an easy (easy easy easy!) way you can help!  Max & Erma’s is donating 20% of all purchases from their Crestview Hills location on Thursday. That’s great, right? There’s a catch. In order for your purchase to qualify, you MUST bring this flyer with you.

But that’s it. Download the flyer, make copies, share it with everyone you know. The flyer is good all day, from lunch through a late dinner. I’ll probably be eating both there. You can also fax in an order and pick it up from their carry-out counter.

Thanks for all your help! It’s an important cause for me personally and this is just such an easy way to help us raise money.

Max & Erma’s
Crestview Hills, KY 41017
(859)426-5501
HOURS:
11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

View Larger Map

Drink Pink: 2007 Hope Estate Pink Awareness Shiraz Reserve

As part of my pledge to Drink Pink this month, I picked up a bottle of the Hope Estate Shiraz. A portion of the proceeds from each bottle is donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. The Hunter Valley “Pink Awareness” Shiraz Reserve will
generate a $60,000 donation to the NBCF. This donation will be used to
help educate women for early detection and for much needed research in finding a cure.

Hope Estate 'Pink Awareness' Shiraz Reserve, Hunter Valley, Australia
Party Town, ~$12.99

While this wine may have a big purpose, it doesn't have a big punch. The nose is loaded with a lot of red fruit, which is fairly typical for an Aussie shiraz. It follows through with all that red fruit on the palate as well. There's a large amount of deep plum and dark cherry. On the finish, there's some kick – with a little bit of spice and cinnamon.

This wine isn't overly tannic – the tannins are almost soft, in fact. The alcohol level on this one is only 13.5%, which I consider blessedly low for an Aussie red. However, I do expect my Shiraz to pack a bit of a wallop and this one didn't. It's more of a gentle Shiraz.

Our rating:

__

Drink Pink!

I've made a pledge to myself this month. I'm going to drink wine with a cause in mind. Anything I can do to help, you know.

What it means is that I'll be reviewing two types of wine this month: wine that directly supports breast cancer research through purchases, and rosés, which are pink. Since it's Breast Cancer Awareness month, and even the NFL has gone pink, it's the least I can do. At the end of each post, I'll include a link where you can donate to the cause.

I'm one of the few people who hasn't been touched by breast cancer in any way. My family and friends have all been blissfully ignored by this particular cancer. However, that doesn't mean I don't live in fear of it a bit. I saw a statistic that other day that around 1 in 8 women will be touched by breast cancer in some way.

With that in mind, on with the cause!

__

Krystal’s Ride

For those of you new to the blog, I lost my little sister back in 2007. She was 21 and passed away unexpectedly due to an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. My cousins and I established a scholarship fund in her memory. Our goal is to raise $25,000 to fund a scholarship at Thomas More for education majors – just like Krystal.

We've hosted two benefits and silent auctions, a Max & Erma's event, and a wine tasting. This time, we're shooting for a slightly different audience and I'm pretty excited about it. We're hosting a motorcycle scramble and poker run around Northern Kentucky.

 
Krystal’s Ride will be held this Saturday, starting at the Florence Elks Lodge #314 on Dixie
Highway. Registration will be from
10:30am to 12:30pm.  Cost is
$20.00/$25.00 per couple. Participants will follow a recommended route,
stopping at predetermined businesses along the way to gather playing cards in
order to build the best poker hand before returning to the starting point.  I'll be sitting at Dickmann's Sports Cafe in Fort Wright most of the day if you want to swing by. My job? To hand out specialized poker cards.

This is the first year for the Poker Run and we hope to make it an annual event. The event travels through several
Kentucky counties and even extends out to the Rabbit Hash General Store. The
ride brings business to many local establishments while providing friendly
competition among the riders. Food, entertainment, a motorcycle show, and
prizes for the best poker hand will be available after the event. Admission to
post-event activities, beginning at 5 pm, is $5.00.

For more information, visit the web site at http://www.klpscholarship.org. I hope to see you there!

Your Thursday Evening: The Palace & the Bacchanalian Society

There is sort of a perfect coalescence of events happening tomorrow night. So here's my recommendation on how to spend your evening.

Once you've gotten off work, head straight to The Cincinnatian. Once there, you've got two options:

• You can enjoy their new Happy Hour at the classy Cricket Lounge. Every night from 4-7 pm you can choose from 1/2 price items on the rather impressive bar menu. Drink specials include $2.50 Draft Beers (including Bass and Christian Moerlein), 1/2 Price House Wines, $5 Specialty Cocktails, and daily food and drink specials.
• Not up for Happy Hour? It's the third Thursday, so that means you can enjoy the Two for $60 option in the restaurant. (Make reservations first though.) You've heard me talk about these enough – you can get a multi-course meal for two plus a bottle of wine for $60 at the Palace. If you haven't gone yet, you should. It's a real bargain and the food is elegant and approachable.

So now that you've eaten, you're ready to drink a little. That's good, because the Bacchanalian Society is hosting their Summer Gathering at the lovely Union Terminal. Haven't been to a Bacchanalian Society event? Well, don't expect high-end wine, but do expect a lot of fun and the chance to meet a lot of new people. This time around, your team (up to 3 people) needs to bring 3 bottles of a French Red. Think Bordeaux, Burgundy, or just walk into Party Source's French aisle and grab the closest Red. 

Now, don't get your hopes up that there will be a lot of expensive wine there, even though it's French. A lot of folks will buy the cheapest wine possible and then drink to get drunk. The kind hosts and hostesses (of which I'm usually one) bill this as a wine tasting, though, so please take that into consideration. (Kevin and I are not hosting this time around, as we've been out of town so often that we've missed all the emails and such. Next time!)

There are, of course, rules to the game, which you can read after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our Own Sin City

Before there was Las Vegas, there was Newport, Ky. No kidding. From spending WAY too much time at York Street Cafe in my life, I knew a lot of the history of that building (speakeasy, hidden safes, etc), but I hadn't realized how real it all was, and how rampant, throughout Newport.

Gangsters everywhere, post-prohibition. Gambling, prostitution, alcohol, casino robberies, murder and tommy guns … it was all in Newport. 

We got to take the Newport Gangsters tour last night. I loved it!  I knew the history of Prohibition and beer in this area from an article I once wrote. It was nice to see what happened in Newport after Prohibition was repealed and the bootleggers, um, expanded.

I had fun with my new camera. Newport has some great buildings. You can visit the Flickr set or watch the slideshow below.

The tour costs $15 and the proceeds benefit a great local charity where our kids are sent to teach for a week at schools in the Caribbean. It's another great cause. The guys that are running the tour are obviously having a great time – and they're sort of overflowing with facts from their research. In fact, I think their research sort of scares them a little. They talked to a lot of people – a lot of the still living (and still local) gangsters and club owners/partygoers from the era. 

It's worth a few hours of your time. Right now, this weekend is your only chance to experience the fun tour, although they're debating on continuing through the summer, as well as looking into a Haunted Newport Ghost Tour. Go show your support – it's a short walk to and from Newport from Taste of Cincinnat and the tour lasts 90 minutes.

You'll never look at Newport the same way.

Tweeting for a Great Cause

This doesn't have a lot to do with wine. But it does have to do with Taste of Cincinnati, which is how I'm justifying the post. Truthfully, I'm a sucker for a great cause and that's why it's here.

I originally posted this on Bub.blicio.us, a Silicon Valley-based technology blog for which I'm a contributing writer.

–

The latest national news out of Cincinnati is what's being billed as The World's Largest Tweet-Up. I'm not sure if that's accurate on a number of levels, but it doesn't matter. It's good marketing for a good cause, and a great example of a non-profit using social media to raise awareness.

Last July, musician Katie Reider passed away at age 30 from a rare form of cancer that attacked the left side of her face. It left her blind in one eye and unable to do what she did best – sing. Katie was a local musician for us, but she'd been on the national scene as well, and was one of those artists spotlighted on WB shows like Dawson's Creek.

500Kin365.org, was created in May of 2008 with the help of Katie Reider's loyal fanbase to reconnect and introduce 500,000 people to Katie Reider, her music and her story over the next year, as she continued to undergo treatment. The site took off, and the goal is to introduce 500,000 people to her music. Two sets of Katie's songs can be downloaded for only $1 each on the site and 100% of the proceeds to go help pay off the family's exorbitant medical bills.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paying it Forward with Drinking Charitably

We managed to pull in some money from our recent fundraiser for the Krystal Pepper Memorial Scholarship Fund. We'll still need to raise around $13000 (my best guess until the hard numbers come in) through 2010, so you'll still have to hear about it periodically.

But it got me thinking. I received so many amazing wine donations – not just from our generous, local wine community, but from a few wine bloggers and wine twitterers who know me only online. In fact, out of both the local and national donors, almost all of them have a wine blog or twitter account. There has to be a way to pay this generosity forward.

Well, David from 2days Per Bottle had the same thought and launched Drinking Charitably. This new blog is a place where we'll post any upcoming events, nationwide, that affect our wonderful and gigantic wine blogger and wine twitter community. I hope that Drinking Charitably will help folks find unique and wonderful causes to which they can donate money, time, or product.

(Oh, and if you head over to Drinking Charitably and see my banner, you'll get a preview of where we're heading with the Wine-Girl.net redesign.