10 Wines for Your New Year’s Celebration
What’s not to love about Champagne? It goes with every type of food, it’s perfect all by itself and it makes any occasion special. Going into the next decade of the 21st century certainly calls for a drink – of something special! Cheers!

Top 5 Best Selling Champagnes over $30:
1.    Veuve Clicquot Brut Champagne – $40
2.    Ariston Aspasie Brut Rosé Champagne – $33
3.    2002 Perrier-Jouët “Fleur de Champagne Belle Epoque” half-bottle – $40
4.    Krug “Grande Cuvée” Brut Champagne – $120
5.    Marguet Pere et Fils “Cuvee Reserve” Brut Champagne – $33

Top 5 Best Selling Champagnes for $30 or less:
1.    Ariston Aspasie “Carte Blanche” Brut Champagne – $25
2.    Nicholas Feuillatte “Blue Label” Brut Champagne – $25\
3.    Laurent-Perrier Brut Champagne – $30
4.    Michel Loriot “Cuvee Reserve” Brut Champagne -$30
5.    Philippe Gonet “Brut Reserve” Champagne – $30

Serve with Mini Potato Pancake Appetizers

Recipe:

Mini Potato Pancakes

Ingredients:
2 russet (baking) potatoes, peeled
1 small yellow onion
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 egg beaten
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup Crisco or peanut oil for frying

1. Finely grate the potatoes and onion onto a freshly washed kitchen towel.  When all is grated, wrap the towel around the pieces holding the towel over the sink and wring out all excess liquid.

2. Place the potato pieces into a mixing bowl and add the flour, egg, salt and pepper.  Mix thoroughly.

3. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat. Pan is ready when you splash cold water from your fingers into the pan and it sizzles.

4. Using a tablespoon, drop potato mixture into the pan. Cook about 2 minutes per side, until the surfaces are brown and crispy and the insides are tender and cooked through. If your pan isn’t large enough to cook the pancakes all at once, do them in batches.  Add more oil to the pan if necessary.

5. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate and keep warm in 200 degree C oven while you finish cooking the rest. Serve warm with toppings of your choice.

Favorite Toppings:
Sour Cream with a sprinkling of scallions or caviar
A little granulated sugar
Applesauce
Apple/Onion Chutney – homemade or store bought

Enjoy with a glass of your favorite Champagne.

Rosemary Christmas Trees
You’ve probably seen those rosemary plants trimmed to look like little Christmas trees. They sell them at the home improvement stores, discount stores and even the grocery store. Not only are they are great for gifts or decorating the house, they are perfect for starting your herb garden.

After the holidays, transplant your rosemary into a larger pot with good drainage. Use good quality soil.

Most varieties won’t tolerate freezing conditions.  In areas where there is a chance of freezing temperatures, you can keep it indoors as a houseplant – just make sure it gets plenty of sun and water – year round.

In more temperate climates, keep it indoors until the weather starts to warm up – usually by the end of March.  That way the transition from warm to cold won’t be severe.

A fresh sprig of rosemary in soup, for roasting or on the grill or will enhance any meal.

The Ideal Wine for Food
“In many ways, Riesling is an ideal white wine. It is flavorful–a characteristic that, despite bland Pinot Grigio’s popularity, seems to be a key consideration for mainstream wine drinkers. It is generally not bone dry, just like all those popular, mass-market Chardonnays, and it is delicious with very flavorful foods. It’s fruity, easy to drink and typically has relatively low alcohol content.

We have always loved good Riesling, and we applaud the efforts of sommeliers to entice American wine drinkers by offering Riesling by the glass. Promoting Riesling has seemed to us an uphill battle, however. Riesling, even more than rose wines, suffers from an image of being “too sweet” and therefore the opposite of chic. And yet–statistics don’t lie–Riesling is on the move.” Ted Baseler, chief executive of Washington’s Chateau Ste. Michelle winery

According to Lynne Char Bennett of the San Francisco Chronicle, “west coast vintners have discovered that this aromatic white is suited to Northern California’s Monterey County and to Washington state’s Columbia Valley. Good domestic Riesling is available for less than $15 a bottle – a bargain when you consider its flexibility at the dinner table.”

2008 Chateau Ste. Michelle Columbia Valley Riesling ($10): When this off-dry Riesling was first produced in 1972, it was labeled Johannisberg Riesling. Consistent, easy drinking and value-priced, with plenty of fruit, including green melon, cantaloupe and citrus; seamless acidity, pink grapefruit on the finish.

2008 Fess Parker Santa Barbara County Riesling ($14): Fess Parker’s son, winemaker Eli, and head winemaker Blair Fox now oversee about 700 vineyard acres in Santa Barbara County. Tropical fruit, pineapple and lime; fresh, clean aromas and flavors; weightier body with a fruity, moderately sweet finish.

2008 Firestone Vineyard Central Coast Riesling ($11): In 2007, Bill Foley’s Foley Family Wines purchased Firestone, which was founded more than three decades ago in Santa Ynez Valley by Leonard Firestone and his son, Brooks. This bottling treads a bit on the ripe side; very aromatic and lush with lemon compote, stone fruit and ruby-red grapefruit.

2008 Jekel Vineyards Monterey Riesling ($12): Pear, pineapple and ripe tropical aromas merge on the medium-bodied palate that is not quite as lively as the nose, but will do well by mildly spiced foods. Includes a tiny bit of Muscat.

2008 Maddalena Monterey Riesling ($14): The San Antonio Winery is the last producing winery in Los Angeles. Established in 1917 by the Riboli family, the winery also produces wine from Paso Robles and Rutherford fruit. Lovely aromas and flavors of pear, apple and stone fruit; clean and fresh. This well-balanced off-dry wine is perfect with Asian food.

10 Tips for Buying Wine at the Supermarket
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher write  a weekly wine column – Wine Notes, in the Wall Street Journal. They are a laid-back couple that enjoys traveling and drinking wine all over the world. They enjoy fine wines, sure, but they also drink the every day, affordable stuff. They can find a good wine in any price range. I recently came across an old column they did on how to shop for wine at the grocery store. It bears repeating – so here you go:

1. Stop for a minute and get your bearings. Supermarket wine aisles are often organized strangely. Sometimes wines are grouped by producer, sometimes by type, and sometimes by both. That means California Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, might be on different shelves. Some stores have sections for “fine wine,” separated from other wines, but don’t take their word for it.

2. Eliminate the larger bottles, the boxed wines and the frat-boy stuff. Sure, some fine wines come in big bottles, but most of these are mass-produced jug wines that, in tastings, we haven’t much enjoyed. This will immediately make the aisle much smaller, especially given the size of the huge boxed wines. And yes, some frat boys know their wines, but you want something special with dinner, so throw out those things and all of the really bad stuff on the lower shelves, like MD 20/20 and Wild Irish Rose.

3. Eliminate all the Chardonnay. We know most people really like Chardonnay, and so do we. But Chardonnay’s popularity means the aisles are flooded with it. If you simply pass over that part of the aisle, you’ve once again narrowed your choices considerably. (If you want a Chardonnay, look for one that you don’t see every day. We found a Pedroncelli from Sonoma that was crisp and refreshing for $9.49.)

4. Eliminate the familiar. You will be punished — price-wise — for refusing to leave your comfort zone. Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio was at least $20.19 at every store we visited, far more than better wines, and that pattern was repeated over and over. Had a Petite Sirah recently? Several stores had Bogle Vineyards’ good example of this brawny red varietal for just $9.99.

5. Think outside California. There are some excellent California wines on shelves, of course, but you’ll probably get better deals on wines from elsewhere — from Washington state to Australia. We saw a remarkable number of very good Australian wines on shelves, many just $6.99 a bottle. We picked up a Giesen Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand that exploded with flavor for $9.99. Fine Chianti from Italy is a consistently good buy. Marques de Riscal Rioja from Spain is widely available for about $11.99. One store even offered a few wines from South Africa, including a very drinkable Roodeberg red wine, from the big KWV cooperative, for $10.99. It would be great with steak and peppercorns or herb-rich Mediterranean dishes. Don’t rule out France. Most stores offered both Vouvray and Chateauneuf-du-Pape from the big shipper B&G. The Chateauneuf-du-Pape was soulful and rich, great with meatloaf, macaroni and cheese or roast beef; it cost $19.99. The Vouvray would be delicious with pork; we saw it everywhere for as little as $6.59.

6. Think Beaujolais and Pinot Noir. Every store had at least one Beaujolais, the lively, fruity red from France that’s good with just about all food and costs about $8. And every store had at least two U.S. Pinot Noirs. These are extremely versatile with food, and they tend to be better buys than Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay because they aren’t as popular.

7. Look closely at vintages. As you know, we don’t care much about whether one year was “better” than another. But most wines in supermarkets are for immediate enjoyment. You want them young and fresh, from the most recent vintage available. Unfortunately, at many supermarkets, wines stand on the shelves until they’re sold and, like milk, the older stuff is moved to the front. We saw three-year-old White Zinfandels and Pinot Grigios and a 1996 Pouilly-Fuisse. We saw several vintages of the same wine standing right next to each other. At one store, a 1999 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais-Villages was next to a 2001, identical except for the vintage. You want the newer one, which is sometimes lurking behind the older one.

Of course, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, you can find fine old bottles from great years that are real bargains because the store never raised the price. That’s how we once bought a few bottles of 1974 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, a classic wine. At one store in Clearwater, we picked up three different vintages of reliable Cambria Pinot Noir, for $22.99 each. That isn’t inexpensive, but imagine what a fun dinner party you could give with a vertical tasting of those three vintages. Think of them as entertainment.

8. Look for orphans. Some of our best supermarket deals over the years have come because there’s one bottle of something left and there’s no place for it on the shelves. That happened this time, too. At one store, there was one bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rose Champagne. We’d never seen this pink bubbly and, when available, it’s usually about $36. Well, this bottle was $16.99 — marked down from $18.99. Think about your significant other coming home for dinner and finding that waiting at the table — for $4 more than Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay and $3 less than Santa Margherita. There are often good buys like that if you’ll search (often behind other bottles).

9. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Some supermarkets that have more space devoted to wine actually have thinner selections. They display bottle after bottle of the same exact mass-produced wine, like a valley of the clones that swallows up space for the good stuff.

10. Check prices. That might seem obvious, considering that some of us note whether Winn-Dixie charges more for a can of peas than Publix. But too many people assume that wine prices are fairly stable, and they aren’t. Stores compete on wine prices just like anything else. At the stores we visited, Sutter Home White Zinfandel ranged from $3.89 to $5.49, a 41% difference. The same is true for many other wines.

Now, having decoded the shelves, how many bottles are left to choose from? Probably not many. And if you’re looking for a wine in a specific price range, or if you’re looking just for a red or for a white, it will be even fewer. Among those that are left, close your eyes and pick one. Something new will make dinner more fun.

Sometimes drinking wine can be a real pain.

When organising dinner with a girlfriend and her new beau, my decadent plans (a bottle of sangiovese with slow-roasted veal ragu over handmade pappardelle) came a cropper when she dropped the bombshell: “I can’t have any red wine because it gives me a headache”.

We all have friends and family members who have sworn off red wine for fear of crashing headaches. Sulfites and preservatives in wine get most of the blame, but the likely culprits are pesky phenolics – contained mostly in red wines.

Phenolics and histamines are found in the skins, stems and pips of grapes. They bleed into the wine during the winemaking process when the grapes are crushed and left to ferment. (Unfortunately, the antioxidants that make red wine a heart-healthy drink are in the grape skins, but you’re not drinking wine purely as a health tonic, are you?)

White grapes have phenolic compounds as well, but as the grape skins are discarded when making white wine, they rarely contain enough to cause trouble.

Whites aren’t totally off the hook though – phenolic compounds can also be extracted from the oak barrels used to ferment and mature some white wines, such as chardonnay.

So if you’re prone to wine-induced headaches, stay away from really dark-coloured red wines. Stick to a red wine with low tannins, or reds made without much contact with grape skins. Pinot noir, being a thinner-skinned grape, might be a better choice for you. Rosés and gamays (or a French beaujolais) should cause no trouble as they don’t macerate with the skins for too long when being made. Rosés are a perfect refresher for our climate and our preferences for eating outdoors, and today’s crop of pinks aren’t as sweet and thin as the ones our parents used to drink.
For my money, the best rosés in Australia are Charlie Melton’s Rose of Virginia and Turkey Flat’s rosé, but if you seek out a French one they’ll be even drier.

The concentration of phenolics in a grape’s skin increases with sunlight – so there’s a good chance a red wine from a cool climate would contain less headache triggers than a gutsy, warm-climate one.

But here’s some unexpected cheer: it’s not actually the cheap reds that will give you problems! The wines with more extracts from the grapes and that spend more time in the barrel are more likely to be the pricier, labour-intensive blockbusters. Embrace your new wine preferences and enjoy the savings.

If these red wines still cause headaches, stick to unoaked whites (typically any white but a chardonnay). Avoid fortified wines (such as port and Rutherglen muscat) like the plague.

If none of these measures work for my headache-prone friend, I’ll know she has an allergic reaction to the preservatives within wine.

Despite the bad press, only 1 per cent of the population are affected by sulfites, although asthmatics tend to be more sensitive to them. There’s no such thing as a sulfite-free wine: small amounts are naturally produced during the winemaking process, although extra servings are added to help preserve the wine and kill bacteria. Finding a wine in Australia without sulfur dioxide on the label – as preservative 220 – is practically impossible, although some winemakers have tried to minimise its use.

It’s easy to identify if sulfites are your pain trigger: white wines will affect you more than reds. If reds are your bugbear, you don’t have a sulfite allergy. Honest.

At the risk of putting you to sleep (or being accused of pushing you to drink), you can minimise wine headaches by following a few sensible rules: don’t drink without food (starch and oils line the stomach beautifully) and drink plenty of water while sipping the wine.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can recommend to avoid headaches caused by overindulgence … those ones you’re just going to have to wear.
From: http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/archives/the_sweet_life/006279.html