image courtesy of bostonuncorked.com
Last week in my WashingtonExec column I talked about good bets for Thanksgiving wine. I thought I’d expand the focus here to the holiday season, sharing some suggestions from wine bloggers I read regularly.
Robert Dwyer at Wellesley Wine Press just published a long form piece in his local magazine about wine and holidays. He reaches out to a number of Massachusetts wine retailers for their best sellers and suggested food/wine pairings.
New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov made suggestions via Twitter chat in this column from last week. Joe Roberts of 1WineDude. com published his Dos and Don’ts list on Answers.com.
Jon Thorsen at ReverseWineSnob has a good series called Give Them What They Want. While Jon tries never to spend more than $20 on a bottle of wine, he realizes that many of us want to do so for a gift. So he writes about the more expensive bottles that still deliver good value.
W. Blake Gray in the Gray Reports suggests books that make great stocking stuffers for any oneophiles in your family. These aren’t reference books, they are stories about the world/business/personalities of wine. To his list I’d add The Emperor of Wine by Elin McCoy and The Accidental Connoisseur by Lawrence Osborne.
Finally, here’s a way to possibly stretch your holiday wine dollars. Last year I wrote about online wine shopping tools in my WashingtonExec column.Yesterday Emily from Winestyr reached out to me about a new online resource. Here’s how they describe themselves:
Winestyr is a Chicago-based startup that helps consumers discover, purchase, and learn about amazing wines they generally won’t find on store shelves across the country. Our experts taste every wine before we list them in our marketplace and shipping is $10 or less on orders of any size. Our proprietary software enables customers to rate each wine they drink from Winestyr and receive personalized recommendations based on the wines they liked and didn’t like.
Winestyr is offering a $25 discount to any Work, Wine and Wheels reader. You can enter the code PARENTE during online checkout. This is pure holiday spirit BTW — no revenue share with me. But if you use this discount I’d welcome your impression of the Winestyr customer experience.
I hope this list gives you plenty of wine related ideas for your holiday season. Enjoy!
Thanks for the mention!