I love to travel. I’m the person that gets a pit of excitement in my stomach, knowing I’m hours away from getting on an airplane. Once in the air, I’m happy to pass the hours, reading, watching a movie, or just looking at the clouds below.

While I’ve never associated the two, I also love wine, but understand that the wine served tens of thousands of feet above the ground–in coach class, that is–in those mini twist-off bottles is simply drinkable, at best, and nothing more. I’ll rarely spring the 5 bucks for a mediocre, miniature bottle of wine.

Part of the investment for first and business-class passengers must be the wine, because they are drinking a whole different calibre of beverage (full disclosure: I’ve been one of those passengers on two occasions. It’s really nice up there.) Chosen from a selection of several reds and whites, business class wine is poured from a traditional 750 ml bottle. No twist offs for those folks.

As a matter of fact, the wine chosen for business class passengers has become such big business that there are awards for the category–the Wines on the Wing Airline Wine Competition. According to Global Traveler, a magazine for business and luxury travelers, in the most recent competition, 26 airlines submitted 46 white wines, 49 red wines, and 23 champagne or sparkling wines currently on their international Business Class and North American premium class wine lists for a blind taste test. Global Traveler is the only U.S.-based publication to conduct such a survey in the United States (see 2011 competition results here).

But things are looking up for domestic-flying wine drinkers in economy class. Airlines have recently begun offering more interesting selections, as listed on the Bottlenotes blog. And if you’re really particular about your vineyard and vintage, bring your own on board. You’ll cruise right through security with your own 50 ml (1.7 oz) bottles from the TastingRoom’s wine samplers.

Cheers. And safe travels.

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There is an answer to this question, but you’ll have to read on to find the answer (don’t cheat)…

Needless to say, the glass wine bottle reigns supreme. There has, however, been an increase in the types of containers storing wine in recent years. And it keeps on evolving.

For a long time, boxed wine has been looked down upon. But the quality of the wine has recently risen. Eric Asimov of the NYT explains the reasons in his piece, ”Reconsidering Boxed Wine.” Greater acceptance of the boxed wine notion is also good news if you’re counting carbon footprints–according to the Journal of Wine Research, shipping boxed wine produces half as many gas emissions as transporting heavier glass bottles.

Along with boxes, came the can. In a recent article on nytimes.com, “Cans of Wine Join the Boxed Set,” Bonnie Tsui provides great information on some of the newer, and finer, wines–drinkable not from a Bordeaux or Burgundy-shaped bottle, but rather from a specially-lined aluminum can.

Wine in a can isn’t entirely new, Tsui points out, and was “first sold by Barokes Wines, an Australian winemaker that invented a patented process called Vinsafe, which lines the aluminum to prevent any reaction that would impart flavors to the wine or degrade the container. The techniques are similar to what some craft brewers have been using, but wine’s high acidity and alcohol levels require a thicker lining.”

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Francis Ford Coppola was the first American winemaker to sell wine in a can–small, pink ones housing Sofia Blanc de Blancs, named for his daughter.

Wines on tap at Colicchio & Sons

I was surprised, however, when I ate recently at the latest of chef Tom Colicchio’s New York restaurants, Colicchio & Sons. The bar had an extensive selection of craft beers, as well as five “eco-friendly” wines…on tap. That’s right. On tap.

I’ve since learned that there are several advantages for serving wine on tap:

-Better for the environment. While bottles are recycled, wine served on tap is stored in environmentally friendly, air tight mini tanks that are reused.

-Cost-effective. Producers aren’t adding on the cost of the bottle, the cork, the carton and the transportation it comes in, so the restaurant owner pays less and so does the consumer.

-Freshness. Wine left over in a bottle used to pour wines by the glass is often discarded as it doesn’t last for more than a couple of days at most. Wine served on tap always tastes fresh, lasting for up to 60 days.

So I guess that’s what’s next…

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There’s no doubt that grapes have the monopoly on the moniker, “fruit of the vine.” Once they are picked, crushed, fermented and aged, they are bottled and enjoyed in a myriad of flavors and colors–pink and red, white and orange.

Well, speaking of orange–today, on Halloween, when pumpkins represent all things autumn and we enjoy them in foods like soup and pie, why not try some pumpkin wine?

In fact, you can take this giant orange squash, roll up your sleeves and make some wine yourself. Needing only eight ingredients, pumpkin wine can turn out dry or sweet depending on your preference and some added ingredients like ginger, clove and cinnamon sticks. Here’s a recipe from the blog, Washington Winemaker.

If your focus today, however, is costumes and candy and you’d rather not be the winemaker, you can go to Wisconsin’s Three Lakes Winery website, where a bottle of pumpkin wine will only set you back $10.

Who knows–you may really like it, and then perhaps it’ll be an add-on to your Thanksgiving menu.

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A few times a month, we invite friends to our house for dinner. The hours pass as we linger over the meal, sometimes followed by a game of Scrabble or a moonlit walk. By the end of the night, clean up often involves picking up the collection of empty bottles. At least two, sometimes more.

Although we recycle the bottles, I’d feel a whole lot better if I knew that my drinking their contents was somehow contributing to a greater purpose–other than as an accompaniment to the food or a lovely buzz. Well, now I’ve discovered a way to do that.

Launched three years ago by a group of eight friends, ONEHOPE began initially as a personal mission for the group to help a friend who was waging a fight against cancer. Working from their living rooms and selling wine out of the back of their trunks, the friends turned their efforts into a thriving business which is founded on a basic, but compelling principle: giving back is good business. Since its inception in June 2007, the company has grown from 0 to well over 20,000 cases sold. To

date, ONEHOPE  Wine has raised over $400,000 for a wide range of charity organizations, and donates 50% of its profits to partner charities benefiting a variety of causes, including autism, cancer, the environment and AIDS (causes are listed here).

Another organization, Greater Purpose, sells a selection of wines from which  55% of profits give back to a greater cause. The current mission of Greater Purpose is to build and sustain villages for orphaned and abandoned children–providing food, water, shelter, clothing, and education. Check out their award-winning wines here.

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I was surprised to see a major ad campaign for wine aimed at pregnant women. Granted, the wine is nonalcoholic, but according to Eisberg, its UK manufacturer, it tastes just like the real thing! The problem with this is, how many pregnant women actually crave the real thing? The feeling of the wine, yes. The taste—at least for me—not so much.

I realize there’s plenty of debate about whether pregnant women can safely drink, but for me, it was a moot point.  Once I got pregnant, I was overcome with cravings and aversions. Apricots in every form and Ben & Jerry’s “Heath Bar Crunch” Ice Cream—yes. My formerly beloved wine—no. Instead of infusing my body with a warm glow, a sip of red or white felt sour in my stomach. Many pregnant women are averse to alcohol’s powerful bite, which may explain why even heavy drinkers report being able to give it up during pregnancy.

The UK winemaker is banking on pregnant women’s desire to relax, so much so that they’ve developed a pregnancy page on their website. In the coaxing “C’mon, try it!” tone of a teenager trying to convince a friend to do something she’s not sure she wants to do, the “pregnancy page” leads the reader through to the logical conclusion that, yes, she’ll want to be quaffing one of their faux cabernets, Rieslings, chardonnays, or roses.

“Pregnancy is one of the most exciting times of your life… You will be feeling a mixture of emotions – excited, scared, apprehensive – and possibly all three!

You will find that you are given conflicting and confusing advice from everyone from your neighbour to your hairdresser, on what, and what not to eat and drink.

Ultimately, you know that this is a time to take care of yourself and your precious bump.

We all know that a balanced, nutritional diet is best for you and bump, but what about those occasions when you really fancy a glass of wine?

Whether you have had a hard week at work, or are trying to keep the early stage of your pregnancy quiet, not drinking in a social situation can be the obvious giveaway – so what is the solution?

If you are fed up with being offered a steady flow of sugary, fizzy drinks and lukewarm fruit juice, then why not raise a glass of Eisberg alcohol free wine?”

It almost makes you want to give in—but then there’s that damned sour feeling in your stomach that sends you running to the Tums.

I’ll be curious to see how they do in the pregnancy market. And what about other markets for nonalcoholic wine? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d think it would be anathema for a recovering alcoholic to sip something that tasted like their formerly favorite drink.

So who’s the market for this? Methinks hormonal middle-aged women or men upwards of fifty who used to be able to hold their liquor but now tire after a glass or two.

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Miss Louisa Belle, a gigantic seven-year-old bloodhound, is more than just a pet to Australian winemakers Michelle Edwards and Daniel Fischl of Linnaea Vineyards. Inspired by bloodhounds who are trained to sniff out bombs, the winemakers decided to use the olfactory sense of this canine–dogs have 200 million olfactory receptors, while humans have 12 million– to detect the odors of any tainted batches of their wine.

TCA, or trichloranisole, is a chemical compound found in some corks that leaves a “musty” (read: corked) flavor in wine–white, red, and sparkling. Estimates of how many wines suffer from “cork taint” range from less than one percent up to five percent of wines.

“Most wineries rely on the human nose,” said Fischl, “but that is time-consuming, costly and nowhere near as reliable as Belle, whose nose is 2000 times more sensitive than ours.”

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Thanks to a publicist friend of mine, I recently learned about The Hairpin, a general interest website for women, by women. The notion in itself appealed to me. Seal Press, the publisher of our forthcoming book, Drinking Diaires: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up (Fall 2012), has a similar philosophy and publishes books by women, for women.

When I went onto the Hairpin site yesterday, there it was, a post titled “How to Enjoy Wine, or True Things vs. Total BS About Wine.”

The first few lines go like this: For some reason wine has become this thing. This huge inflated pompous thing that people have invented corny language around, jacked up costs for, and made intimidating as all hell. 

And then, the rest of the piece is divided among subheads: Care, Try Something New, Wine Comes from Grapes, Much like size, region matters. The year also matters.

The Hairpin’s take addresses questions like:

WTF does “dry” mean? It’s wet, ain’t it? I thought a “bouquet” was for flowers? Why do they keep saying that?

What about decanting? What’s up with that?

When the waiter pours a little into the glass, and looks at me all expectantly, what does he want from me?

Is more-expensive better?

Do I need to pair white with chicken and red with meat? What about rose? Or zinfandel?

No doubt, it cuts right to the heart of what many of us have thought at one time or another. It’s about what we like and nothing else really matters.

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It’s amazing how inventive some people are. Where would we be without windshield wipers? Sticky notes? Bubble bath?

Well now, some creative minds have come up with a few interesting wine accessories—the type that make drinking and sharing it just a little more interesting.

Designed with gift giving in mind, WINEnot stickers are a tongue-in-cheek way to personalize the wine drinking experience. Messages like “Wine: Cheaper than Therapy” and “Love the Wine You’re With” and my personal favorite, “Wine improves with age. I improve with wine,” can adorn any bottle, and bring the importance not to what’s inside, but to whom you’re sharing it with.

Ever suffered from wine teeth? Well if you drink red wine, regularly, it’s not unusual to have that lovely purple tint develop on those once pearly whites. Wine Erase to the rescue. These individually packed, towlette-like wipes leave teeth clean—that is, after the strangely salty flavor fades (which it quickly does). Ahhhh, the price for beauty.

We already know that wine and chocolate make beautiful harmony. But Cheryl Sher decided not only to pair the two, but also to dip the bottles of wine themselves in chocolate. With their rich, creamy Belgian chocolate recipe—used for three generations of her family—Sher literally produces “Bliss in a Bottle.”

One of Sher’s favorite pairings: Dashe Cellars Late Harvest Zinfandel covered in milk chocolate with dried cherries, or Côtes du Rhône red wine dipped in dark chocolate. Yum.

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It seems there’s an app for everything these days. So it’s no big surprise that there’s a growing number of iPhone, iPad, and Android apps for wine lovers–both novices and experts–and those who simply like to eat and drink.

For wine collectors and buyers, there are apps like  Cor.kz, Vintage Cart and Wine Searcher. Cooks and gourmands who want to pair wine with food can turn to Pair It!, Hello Vino, and Natalie MacLean’s Wine Picks & Pairings. (Drinking Diaries was proud to feature Natalie’s essay, The Making of a Wine Lover, in 2009.)

But apps are not simply popping up for pairing and buying wines, there are also apps for wine tastings and festivals, such as LocalWineEvents.com. And for the music and wine lover, there’s the WineDJ app. As the description reads: “The perfect wine deserves the perfect playlist. Discover music to match your mood and spirits with the Wine DJ app by Liberty School Wines…”

At this rate, smart phone users now have one more reason to break out their handheld in the liquor store, at the wine auction, with the restaurant wine list, and most certainly when opening up Itunes.

A votre santé!

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Last weekend, I spent the evening with extended family on the pristine grounds at Tanglewood, the summer residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshire mountains. While children tossed balls and frisbees along the edge of the sprawling lawn, picnickers sat on blankets and chairs enjoying the summer night before the 8:30 concert–a performance of Berlioz’s Requiem–began.

In need of a match to light a bug-repelling candle, I wandered around in search, veering toward a table that had four votives twinkling. When I arrived in front of the table–covered in a white cloth–and asked for a light, I couldn’t help but notice that the couple who sat in front of the table was sipping their sparkling wine from crystal flutes, the bottle of bubbly was sitting in a silver ice bucket amid the votives, and there was even a candle snuffer waiting to do its job.

I went back to our much less formal spread, sat on a cozy blanket and sipped an Alexander Valley cabernet sauvignon. I’m not particularly a great fan of choral music, but as the concert went on, I became increasingly focused on the voices and truly enjoyed the music to my ears. It was a nearly perfect night (my kids’ presence would have made it completely perfect), and it made me wonder about the connection of drinking wine and listening to music. Can music actually influence how we taste wine?

According to some sources, yes it can. A joint study conducted by Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University and wine company Montes claims that music can alter the taste of wine.

The research was conducted with 250 adults. In return for a glass of wine, a group of five people were played the four pieces of music and asked to try to match each of these to one of the four perceptions investigated by the research, namely ‘powerful and heavy’, ‘subtle and refined’, ‘zingy and refreshing’, and ‘mellow and soft’

The study’s conclusion reads: Background music influences the taste of wine. The specific taste of the wine was influenced in a manner consistent with the mood evoked by the music. If the background music was powerful and heavy then the wine was perceived as more powerful and heavy than when no background music was played. If the background music was subtle and refined then the wine was perceived as more subtle and refined than when no background music was played. If the background music was zingy and refreshing then the wine was perceived as more zingy and refreshing than when no background music was played. If the background music was mellow and soft then the wine was perceived as more mellow and soft than when no background music was played. The magnitude of these effects was not insubstantial, and they were stronger for red wine than for white.

Next time you are listening to music and sipping wine, perhaps you’ll give some extra thought to the musical notes and whether or not they enhancing the taste of what’s in your glass…

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First, there was Chanel Number 5. Now there’s Mazetti d’Altavilla Essentia Vitae number 4, number 6 and number 8. Perfume?

No.  Wine. Three new varieties, from Italy. In jasmine, rose and violet scents. Packaged in bottles made to look like perfume.

One British company, Datamonitor, selected the bottles as the packaging “Innovation of the Week.” Tom Vierhile, director of the company’s product launch division, said: “While perfume-inspired wine may be an acquired taste, Essentia Vitae goes further than most to connect with female consumers. Its perfume-like packaging should break through the crowded product assortments that can often confound shoppers.”

I don’t know about you, but I personally am more confounded by wine in perfume bottles than wine in wine bottles. Jasmine-scented wine? It’s like waving flowers under your nose while eating sushi—completely boggling to the senses.

Perfume-scented wine is a fun marketing gimmick—like green foods for kids! But after the thrill of buying the nifty bottles wears off, who wants to drink it?

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When wet spring days begin to morph into warm summer ones, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as a glass of rosé wine. I’m not referring to the sugared liquid once consumed in great volume in the 1980s–aka white zinfandel–but rather the drier version, crisp and with a hint of berry.

Rosé wine has always been a staple in France’s Provence region, but delicious roses now stem from Italy and Spain, Long Island and Napa. People are sometimes confused with the method of making rosé, assuming it’s the skin that produces the color, or perhaps a blend of both white and red to produce the result. Well…it turns out that depending on the vineyard and region, both may be right.

In a recent article titled “Think Pink,” the Bottlenotes blog explains how rosé wine is made–the methods, the grapes, and the styles. I’m looking forward to the next few months, when I can toast the long-awaited warm weather, accompanied by a glass of pink.

A votre santé!

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By Leah Odze Epstein

I always feel slightly sheepish when I order pink wine out in public, like I’m a lightweight or something. A girly girl who can’t hold her liquor. Still, I can’t resist. The color makes me happy. It makes me think of the sunset club on the Greek Island, Ios (yes, there was a sunset club, and yes, the sunsets were pink against a blue sky. No. I did not drink rose. I drank an obscenely delicious chocolate-milky concoction called an Ios Kiss, that involved lots of Bailey’s Irish Crème, but that’s another story that involves a twenty-pound weight gain). Pink wine reminds me of summer. Pink wine feels light and playful. It transports me back to the days of pretend tea parties. All this is to say, it ain’t that macho. And sometimes, when I drink, I like to be macho (in a womanly sort of way).

Pink wine is not to be confused with zinfandel, that sickly-sweet scourge of the 80s that, I have to admit, got me through my early wine-drinking days and was the perfect transition from wine coolers—wine with training wheels.

The pink wine I’m talking about–the pink wine I’m not ashamed to say I love–is rosé. And I’m not the only one. A Forbes piece on rosé declared that it “is no longer the pink-headed stepchild of the wine shop,” and cited this statistic from the Wine Market Council: “Of those Americans who drink at least one glass of wine each week, 18% of the time they drink pink.”  Still, it’s clear that rosé has a long way to go. New Zealand winemaker Kim Crawford makes a rosé called Pansy! which is, according to Forbes, “mostly marketed to the gay community.” Seriously?

Then call me a pansy.

The key to finding a great rosé—not too sweet—is educating yourself. Taste as many as you can, and see what’s good. Eric Asimov has some great suggestions in his New York Times column, The Pour, on drinking rosé in the winter.

Do you drink pine wine? If so, what’s your favorite?

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About 10 years ago, my husband and I were invited to our friends for dinner. We stopped at a local liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine for our hosts, and one in particular caught my husband’s eye. In big, block letters, the label read, “CHEAP WHITE WINE.” Our friend hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

Now, it seems the people who once put out those Swanson TV dinners (how I enjoyed those when I was a kid and my parents went out for dinner!) have put their money into wine AND labels. Frozen food trays have thankfully morphed

into Swanson Vineyards, makers of a fine, flavorful Cab-Merlot blend.

Developed by the winery’s creative director, with some help from Andy Spade (husband of Kate), the bottles have a unique sense of taste and style. While the wine inside each bottle is the same, the labels come with a message–”Mazel Tov,” “Lucky Night,” and “Merci,” just to name a few. So if you need a hostess gift, or just a reason to say, “Thrilled For You,” it may be worth checking out.

I remember being surprised when my mother—a recovered alcoholic—told me that even in her darkest days, she just drank wine. Really? That’s it? I thought. Surely, she’d hidden vodka bottles all over the house, like Meg Ryan in “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Nope. She drank just wine. Mostly Sangria. Sangria! It all sounded so harmless, so celebratory. So safe.

Wine gets kind of sickly sweet after a few glasses, so it’s not the first drink that comes to mind when I picture a hard-drinking woman.

Wine is the woman many of us want to be: feminine, yet sexy and strong. Think of all the adjectives used to describe a nice glass of red: Full-bodied, never weak. Velvety. Oaky. Smooth.

Wine is not a broken-down alcoholic, or even an embarrassing drunk. Wine is for bonding. Wine is women at a book club, sipping as they chat about their latest pick. Wine is cheese and crackers. Wine is Meryl Streep in “It’s Complicated”—a high-earning, put together professional dishing with her glowy friends, letting loose, but only just enough to be in on the shared joked.

Wine is not a college-girl with her pissy beer and her weak mixed drinks. Wine is all grown up. Wine is snobby. If we don’t like it, we send it back. Wine is red and white, never black and blue.

At this point, when I drink, I drink wine. Only occasionally, do I have one too many glasses. Usually, my limit is two, but it depends.

Recently, I spent the night in the city with my sister. We went out for a pre-dinner drink (for me, a glass of Pinot Grigio at a rooftop bar). Then, during dinner, I had another glass of white (or two—I can’t quite remember). After dinner, at a club, I had one more glass of white wine before I switched to seltzer.

The next day, I was as hung over as I’d ever been, which really surprised me. Was I such a lightweight that 3-4 glasses of wine could flatten me the next day?

Depends on how big the glass.

With all this in my mind, Sarah Allen Benton’s recent Psychology Today blog post, “The Great Wine Myth…does it count?“ got me thinking. She reminds us that: “Alcohol is alcohol- it does not matter if you are sipping on Chardonnay or chugging a 40-ounce beer in a paper bag, it is all the same drug and it will give you the same effect. However, society views people and their drinking habits differently sometimes based on the type of alcohol that they drink or because of the places that they drink in.”

Benton also points out that most people don’t realize just how small an actual standard glass of wine—5 ounces—is. It’s “4 fingers placed from the stem of the glass,which may appear like a ‘cheap’ pour when at a restaurant.” Most people, she says, are having double the amount of wine they think they’re having.

That may have been what happened to me on my night in the city.

To hear more women angsting about wine, head on over to Urban Baby, where I found an intense discussion, after the following question was asked: “How much wine do you drink each night? After having second DB, I drink every night, about 2-3 glasses. Sometimes this worries me, sometimes I figure f*ck I deserve it. I survived another day.”

What’s your attitude toward wine? Do you treat it just like any other alcoholic beverage, or does it somehow seem safer, more sophisticated, like another thing altogether? We’d love to hear from you.

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