If you love wine and you’re into social networking, check out the Wine 2.0 website.  There you register as a member and add fellow wine lovers to your friends list, similar to MySpace and Facebook.  There are also blogs about wine, event listings, photos and videos, and a forum where members can discuss all things wine.  Members can also create and join groups about wine-related topics.  Definitely worth checking out if you want to meet and interact with other people who are into wine.

Another great resource if you like wine is Mid-South Alcoholic Supply’s bookstore, which is full of books and courses on wine.

Do you know someone who loves wine?  Perhaps they keep a number of bottles in their wine rack or wine cabinet, but occasionally they need to quickly chill one to serve to guests or to take to a party.  They can put it in the refigerator, but 40-degree refrigerator temperatures are too cold for even white wines.

This single-bottle wine chiller, therefore, would make a great Christmas or holiday gift.  It holds most wine and champagne bottles, and has a database of 26 different whites, reds, and sparkling wines, so it knows the ideal temperature for each.  A display shows the current temperature and the desired temperature for the wine you have selected.  It can also warm wines, in case you need to take a bottle of white out of the fridge and warm it to the 47-50 degree temperature that is ideal for many whites.

Check out Mid-South Alcoholic Supply for many more great wine-related gifts.

Last Thursday, November 20, was a day celebrated around the world, the day when the first wine from this year’s French harvest arrived on the shelves.  This Connecticut Post article talks about the significance of Beaujolais Nouveau, with its simple, fruity taste.  It’s made by about 2,500 French wineries, with grapes harvested in early fall and bottled 6-8 weeks later.  The wine is shipped to the US in small quantities in order to be available in time for Thanksgiving; larger quantities arrive afterward, reducing the price.

Be sure to enjoy some of the first fruits of the 2008 harvest in one of our many fine wine glasses.

Ever wonder what happened to the dogs that were taken away from NFL star Michael Vick after he was convicted of dog fighting?  They’re still alive and recuperating, according to this Nashville Examiner article.  They’re at a shelter in Utah called Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.  They have become poster children (poster puppies?) of the animal rights movement, and their image has been licensed by Caravinis Winery to create a wine called “Vicktory.” Individual bottles of the 22-bottle set cost $40, and the entire set plus two extra bottles commemorating Best Friends’ 25th anniversary, can be had for $672.  10% of the proceeds will be used to fight for animal rights causes.

Be sure to pick up some glasses from Mid-South Alcoholic Supply to use to celebrate the “Vicktory” for animal rights.

It may look like a port and smell like a port and taste like a port, but under new European Union rules, a wine can’t be called a port unless it was made in Portugal.  However, California’s Peltier Station Winery found a loophole.  Rather than calling its wine a port, it labeled the wine “USB,” and on its website, it even referred to the wine as USB Port wine, according to this wired.com article.

Be sure to enjoy USB Port in one of our many fine wine glasses.

Despite being dead for the past 31 years, Elvis has somehow managed to get into the wine business.  This article announces the release of Graceland Cellars’ 2006 Blue Christmas Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  It’s offered at a suggested retail price of $18.99, or as party of an Elvis party pack with Blue Suede 2007 Chardonnay and Jailhouse Rock 2006 Merlot.

You can learn more about the entire line of Elvis wines here.

A new website called SpanishVines.com came online last week, designed to be a guide to Spanish wine, culture, history, and travel.  The site has a “Wine 101″ page that introduces you to Spanish wines, as well as a “products” page that recommends wines.  The travel guide, which is constantly changing, is a good place to start for everyone planning a trip to Spain.  You can also learn about Spanish history, and there are “news & notes” pages, and a blog.

Be sure to enjoy your favorite Spanish wine in one of our many wine glasses.

Yesterday I learned of a good wine review blog, and wanted to pass along the information.  Benito’s Wine Reviews is updated Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  In addition to reviews of wine, he also discusses cocktails and mixed drinks, and pairings of wine with food.  On his sidebar, he has links to other food and wine blogs in Memphis, home of the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World Headquarters.  He also has food and wine links for Cleveland and nationally.  Good one to bookmark, and a good jumping-off point to find other wine blogs of interest.

If you buy some of his wine recommendations and need a place to store them, don’t forget that Mid-South Alcoholic Supply sells wine refrigerators.

If you’re a member of the WineSpectator.com site and you carry a cell phone/PDA, you’ll be pleased to learn that you have some new options available to you on your phone.  Specifically, you’ll be able to

• Search Wine Spectator’s database of more than 200,000 wine ratings for scores and notes on each wine
• View vintage charts to determine best years for wines grown in particular regions
• Access your wine shopping list, as well as your list of what you currently have in your cellar, from the Wine Spectator site

Now you can access your most relevant Wine Spectator data as you’re in the store shopping.  The new mobile platform is available at mobile.winespectator.com.

Another good site to bookmark if you’re a wine lover:  Mid-South Alcoholic Supply, which sells wine refrigerators, wine buckets, wine openers, wine bottle stoppers and pourers, wine racks, wine cabinets, and wine glasses.

If you’ve ever gone through the painstaking process of cutting through the foil on the top of a bottle of wine to get to the cork, check out this video on Eat, Drink or Die.  Gary Vaynerchuk has a time-saving secret - just pull it off, using the slide technique.

As for extracting the cork itself once you get past the foil, don’t forget that Mid-South Alcoholic Supply carries a wide assortment of wine openers and corkscrews.