WCI here again!

How’d you like to have snagged “wine.com” when the whole Internet thing started? Yeah, me too.

Well, www.Wine.com is a pretty cool site, though I hope they do even more with it over the next while… with a name like that, you’ve got to be the best, right?

Anyway, one of the things they do as well as anyone is organize their wines in their online “store,” and then offer you a truly amazing selection!

They are big on “name” wines… wine’s you’ve probably heard of, which is always a help when you’re not able to spend a lot of time perusing and tasting many of the smaller (Many excellent, some not!) production houses.

They have an excellent “Collectibles” section, where you can get your Silver Oak, your Caymus, your Chateauneuf-du-Pape, your top Barolos and the equivalent. Their prices are very comparable, and they have some oft-changing specials which are great deals. For example, right now, they have the highly acclaimed 2005 Concha y Toro “Don Melchor” Cab from Chile for only $59 per bottle, and the awesome 1995 Charles Heidsieck “Blanc de Millenairres Brut” for only $99, and this is an awesome bubbly, let me tell you! I’m actually thinking of serving it for our Christmas dinner this year.

Wine.com also has a variety of wine clubs, and though they are based on the seemingly-obligatory three levels system, the thing they do better than most is offer you almost guaranteed “No Miss” wines… Everything they send out has been judged and awarded high scores by a number of “reputable” (or at least famous!) wine critics. Now, there are lots of arguments, pro and con, about this system, and we’ll get into them over the next few weeks, but for all of the potential problems, they provide at least a fairly common ground for conversation, and even if, like me, you have never detected “the essence of underbrush with a tar finish,” you know the big boys won’t give a good grade to “plonk.”

Wine.com’s “90+ rated” club really has the good stuff, including the Jim Barry 2004 McRae Wood Shiraz (95 pts James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion), Clos Pegase 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon (92 pts, Wine Enthusiast), Valdisanti 2004 Toscana (91 pts, Wine Spectator) and Parson’s Flat 2004 Cabernet/Shiraz (93 pts, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate) as examples.

Also, if you act quick, they have “1 penny” shipping on orders over $99… a perfect combination for the wine lover on your list!

See you down the dusty wine roads!

Cheers,

WCI

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