Posts with tag wine

One of our biggest frustrations is looking at our closet, which is packed with clothes, and having nothing to wear. Without doubt, we could walk into a friend's closet and find several great outfits, and probably, a friend could do the same in ours. So, why not have a swapping party and let everyone end up with a new outfit?

File this one under random and totally bizarre:

CBS's undisputed journalism hottie -- 60 minutes star Lesley Stahl -- is creating a fashion line, ya'll. No, really! The sixty-seven years young news anchor recently sent out invites to celebrate the launch of her new clothing line, Little Barrel, which is based on the love of drinking wine. And no, we're not talking about the light pink sparkling stuff in boxes.

When you come across a book with a title like What a Man Should Know, you might expect the contents to center around the simple things that men don't seem to understand about their relationships with women. Fortunately or unfortunately -- depending on your POV -- that has nothing to do with what J. Crew's first book is about. Chess, wine, how to wear white after Labor Day, these are apparently a few of the topics that author Max Blagg covers in his survey course in the art of being a scholarly gentleman.

Some men might tell you that what you need to know to be a man can't be learned from books -- it's all about true grit and personal experience. Pure lies. According to J. Crew, the transformation from bumbling miscreant to a sophisticated man of the world can be covered in a paperback containing 50 manly pieces of advice. We wonder if it's like the Dangerous Book for Boys for men?

Yeah, we're fishing for a free copy. So what?

[via Style.com]

Cabaret Brewed Chocolate isn't what you think- assuming you think it's some sort of hot cocoa. If you think it's an alternative to coffee, tea, or, gasp, wine, then it is what you think and you're a genius. Congratulations.

Lovers of chocolate swear by the uplifting qualities that it carries. This school of thought is enriched deep in history. In the days of yore ancient Mexican cultures regarded chocolate as something more than a snack, it was an experience. Cabaret wanted to bring cocoa back. So they brewed it.

There are the beer and BBQ Dads, and there there are the cocktail dudes.

Some are true innovators with the cocktail shaker, coming up with new combinations of bitters, gin and collins mixer at every family gathering. Others are more restrained, enjoying a sedate glass of Cabernet with steak and asparagus.

If you have a Dad who loves to relax with a stemmed glass, and says things like, "It's after 5pm somewhere!" then we have some ideas for gifts that will make his day special.

Let's get one thing straight first: being the "maid or matron of honor" is not so much an honor as an unpaid job. To be even more blunt, it's a very expensive favor you are doing for someone who will almost certainly fail to appreciate your efforts. But here's the twist: she will most certainly judge you and find you failing at some point in the process.

Now that we have the niceties out of the way, here's the real deal.

Guys, if you think your woman was serious when she told you that she didn't want anything for Valentine's Day, you better read this post about cracking the V-day code. Sometimes men and women interpret the words "anything" and "nothing" differently. So, that said, you might want to stop on your way home and get her a little "nothing" -- even if the only place on the way home is a convenience store.

Aside from a bottle of wine -- which is at least a halfway thoughtful choice -- I've found gifts as cool as these "rose panties" at the corner store by my place. They're not high quality, or edible, but they do serve the purpose of both flowers and lingerie -- two highly appropriate V-day gifts.

If she doesn't like them, play it off as a gag gift. Trust me -- it's better than showing up with literally nothing. I think it was one of the 3 wise men that said "a gentleman always brings gifts."

Well, hell. Who needs Dr. 90210, or a padded push-up bra, for that matter, when you can have a rack that does more than make you look more voluptuous (than you already are, of course)?

The Wine Rack is the women's response to that ridiculous thing I saw last year, the Beer Belly. It's a sports bra with bags that hold wine, or whatever other beverage of your choice that you wear under your clothes so you can surreptitiously sip. Why you would want to drink on the sly is beyond me, and to be quite honest, do you really want to start out as a very "full" (of Merlot) C cup and gradually fade down to a...modest B? I suppose it helps for those times when you're not allowed to BYOB(everage), but no one said anything about BYOB(reasts).

The Wine Rack is $29.95.

It must be January because retailers are selling off their fall/winter inventories like...they're making room for spring!

Neiman Marcus is taking an extra 40% off selected items that are already on sale (some up to 60% off), including a pair of Manolo Blahnik Ankle Boots that are originally $890, on sale for $668, on top o f which Neiman Marcus will knock off 40% at checkout.

The boots come in a purplish wine color (shown) and black hair-calf with black leather straps and buckles on both. With a short little mini dress and opaque tights in a similar hue, these boots will be great for the rest of January, through February, and into March.

Smelling like booze usually means you've been partying. But what if that wine smell came from something else -- like your clothes?

Researchers in Australia have created a dress made not from cotton or silk, but from wine. Apparently, if wine is exposed to oxygen during the fermentation process -- conditions that produce vinegar -- a slimy byproduct called cellulose forms on the top of the vats. Cellulose consists of short fibers that can be combined to produce a fabric. Unlike cotton fib res, which can easily be spun into even longer fib res, wine fabric is considerably more unstable. In fact, if the cellulose dries up you lose the fibers altogether.

To create the dress, the scientists draped the cellulose over inflatable dolls (hehe -- wonder where they got those!). When the dress was complete, the dolls were deflated so that the outfit could be transferred onto the body of the model pictured at right.

But teetotalers shouldn't worry just yet -- wine dresses that last are still a long way off.

Over the past few months, I've noticed a number of new boxed wines cropping in the booze section of the grocery store. Whenever I see them, my mind floods with memories of stealing glasses of Franzia wine from my parents' tap back when I was in high school. (Needless to say, even back then, I could tell they were crap.)

But the new boxed wines, at least in their hype, suggest that they are an improvement over the swill imbibes of old. A sucker for anything new-fangled, I picked up a box of Hardys Shiraz earlier this week. It was $13 off, so I figured that even if it was completely undrinkable, at least I would have also killed my curiosity about the marriage between good wine and boxes.

The verdict? Awful. Absolutely undrinkable. Almost as bad as I remember, which just goes to show that putting lipstick on a pig and saying it's from Australia doesn't make it any more appealing.

It seems like inventors are trying to advance the way we drink wine -- first with the wine-to-go bottles, and now with a wine serving system by Enomatic. It's sort of like the typical drink machines in fast food restaurants -- place a cup under the spout, press the lever, and out comes your drink of choice. But in this case, it's with wine.

Enomatic's system offers quite a few benefits. It provides a way for customers to serve themselves, it preserves the wine for up to 3 weeks, and because it's computerized, it's a way to prevent over-pouring by the wait-staff. And they even offer a "wine card," where patrons can put money on the card to spend in the machine. They offer machines to hold up to 16 wine bottles, which beats the biggest soda machines I've ever seen.

So, imagine this: sitting in a nice restaurant and asking for a refill of your chardonnay, only to hear -- "Oh, you do it yourself. The wine machine's right over there." What do you think? Or even better, having a small version in your house to keep your wine fresh?

A few months ago, I went to an outdoor concert where patrons are welcome to bring their own food and drinks. Like almost everyone there, I took a bottle of wine and a couple glasses. But with the combination of concrete on the ground, darkness, and people continuously bumping into me, it just wasn't the best idea to bring this stuff. Needless to say, I came home with a broken wine glass.

But there's good news -- Hardy Wine Company has launched the "Shuttle." It's an all-in-one, single-serving (187ml), bottle-glass combination that is sure to come in handy for many occasions. The glass actually seals the bottle, and when you're ready to drink, just twist it off. Both the glass and the bottle are made of acrylic, which is perfect for events where glass isn't permitted. For now, it comes only in either Shiraz or chardonnay.

The "Shuttle" seems like a great idea to me. It's better than risking your stem-ware or venturing into boxed wine!

Wine purists, close your eyes. You don't want to read what I am about to tell you.

The Wine Cellar, a gourmet food company is giving new meaning to the idea of dessert wine with its rotating line of wine sorbets. Currently, the company sells three reds (Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Pinot Noir), three whites (Champagne, Riesling and Sauterne), plus a blush wine from New York for $6.99 a pint. Fat-free and low in calories, wine sorbets strike me as an elegant, light alternative to regular dessert. If you're interested in trying this wine-turned-dessert, you can pick up a pint at one of 40 gourmet grocery stores in New York and New Jersey.

I've never been a believer in nonalcoholic versions of alcoholic beverages. In fact, every time I walk past the "nonalcoholic" section of my grocery store, I chuckle to myself and wonder, "Who drinks this stuff?" (Having moonlighted as a cocktail waitress, I know who drinks the stuff -- people who drank a little too much of the real stuff about five years ago. You might also know them as "Friends of Bill.")

All of this has been a round-about way of introducing DRY Soda -- an all natural, cuisine-inspired beverage for foodies who want a nonalcoholic alternative to a traditional wine pairing. DRY Soda comes in four flavors: Kumquat, Rhubarb, Lavender and Lemongrass. DRY Soda can be purchased in multi-packs with three bottles of each flavor.