Would you like to make your own wine, free, with the help of experts? Crushpad, the world’s leading small-lot, custom crush facility, has launched a new contest that will allow one wine lover the chance to make their own wine, create their own brand and in the process win one barrel (25 cases) of extraordinary, luxury-class wine. The total value of the prize is worth between $8,000 and $12,000.

To enter, just click on the contest link at www.facebook.com/crushpad and fill out a simple form that asks for the basic details of your wine project including brand name, wine style (region, varieties, type of oak), target audience and how you will market and sell your wine.

After filling out the simple forms, you need to get your peers, associates, friends and family to vote for your wine brand plan on Facebook. The voting closes on March 31, 2012. The top 10 vote getters will move on to the final round where they will be interviewed by phone and Skype by a panel of industry experts who will select the grand prize winner based on originality, creativity and chance of success for the brand. The award will be announced on April 25, 2012.

The winner will work with Crushpad’s top-flight winemaking and graphic design teams to ensure the wine is being made to their specifications and packaged to meet their criteria. After the wine is aged and bottled the winner can either keep the 25 cases or work with Crushpad to market and sell the wine.

To come up with your plan, you have not only the facilities of Crushpad to work with, you can plan around their grapes. Crushpad has a range of red wine varieties available including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir and Petite Sirah. You can even designate fruit sourcing from the company’s amazing portfolio of California’s most celebrated vineyards including Doctor’s (Santa Lucia Highlands), Stagecoach (Napa), Konrad (Mt. Veeder), White Hawk (Santa Barbara), Teldeschi (Dry Creek), Eaglepoint Ranch (Mendocino), Durell (Sonoma Valley) and Saralee’s (Russian River).

To learn more about Crushpad, click here.

Online wine can be a bit of a grab bag. You read the description, any reviews they post or that you can find, buy and then hope for good shipping conditions.

Now there’s Vitis.com. It’s just a couple of months old but the folks picking the wines have great credentials! The wines are chosen, tasted and vetted by their expert wine tasting panel comprised of two Masters of Wine and a WSET Diploma holder making it, according their their website “one of the most accomplished panels in the world!”

According to their blog, “Vitis.com is the only daily deal wine site where you can set your email preferences so that you ONLY receive deals based on your interests and even store wine in our personal temperature-controlled cellar that we can pack and ship for you when you’re ready to drink!”

One thing I particularly like about the site is that Vitis bases the best online price on results for that wine as it appeared on Wine-Searcher Pro the previous day and factors in that store’s cost of shipping per bottle to give users a clear idea of the real cost of purchasing the wine and their minimum purchase for free shipping is low. Often at other sites you can find a good price, but shipping is expensive and sites may make you buy a lot to get free shipping.

You’ll need to sign-up to see their full site. To check it out, click here.

To check out a review of daily wine deal sites and online wine sites in general, follow this link.

If you bought bottles of Pinot Noir under the Gallo and Constellation brand names of Red Bicyclette, Talus, Redwood Creek, Farallon, Rex Goliath and Woodbridge between 2005 and 2008, you are entitled to a refund.

It’s not much money unless you keep your receipts for years; without proof the award tops out at $21. Still…it’s something.

It’s all because a dozen Frenchmen were convicted of selling fake Pinot Noir to the two companies, who then bottled it under various brands and sold it in the United States. French customs officials uncovered the massive scam to sell more than 18 million bottles of fake Pinot Noir when they realized the region was exporting much more of the grape than it could grow. The dirty dozen made about $10 million selling the juice of inferior grapes as Pinot Noir before being caught.

Three people brought suit in a California court, and now a California judge has tentatively approved a class-action settlement. Under the settlement, the companies will set up a $2.1 million pool to be divided among anyone in the United States of legal drinking age who files a claim. The people who filed the lawsuit stand to split about $58,000 while their lawyers will take home a cool $400,000.

Full details of the settlement will be available at a website – www.FrenchPinotNoirSettlement.com – for no more than 180 days after the settlement is finalized. The judge is expected to approve the final agreement in April.

For more details on this story, click here.

If you watch the ABC show The Bachelor, you know that this season’s bachelor is Ben Flajnik, co-owner of Envolve Winery in Sonoma County. The winery opened in 2008, and they make both Envolve Wines and Epilogue Wines.

Because he’s a Sonoma boy, he wanted his season of the show set there. The place they picked is Vineyard Knoll, which is a vacation rental held by the company BeautifulPlaces, Inc. It’s located in the small town of Glen Ellen.

The 6-bedroom, 4.5-bath Vineyard Knoll Estate is a ranch-style home located just two miles outside Glen Ellen with views of the valley and surrounding vineyards. The main house and guest house surround a large central courtyard featuring manicured grounds and pool and hot tub.

With 4,800 square feet of living space, the home sleeps 12 comfortably and includes a formal living room with baby grand piano, family room and kitchen that each open out onto the courtyard, as well as a library and dining room.

If you’d like the spend the night there, you won’t get Ben or his Bachelorettes–but the Sonoma County estate can be rented for $2,100 per night, $13,225 for a week and $35,225 for a month.

To see more about renting, click here.

There are 54 wineries in New Jersey and all of them are small, producing 250,000 gallons or less per year. Right now and up until May 1, 2012 they are only able to sell their wine to people who visit their winery. They can also sell them to distributors who will sell them to retailers, but only if they could find a distributor that wants to handle their small output. For small wineries, the current law has been a big stumbling block.

Now the straight-talking New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, has signed a law that allows small wineries from New Jersey or any other state to ship directly to customers. They can also purchase a permit to distribute their wine to retailers. Many new wineries are now expected to open.

The argument against it, made for years by the powerful liquor industry lobby in New Jersey, was that the law would undermine the existing three-tier system in which producers sell to distributors, who sell to retailers, who alone sell to consumers. If retailers and consumers can bypass distributors, they argued, people like salesmen and drivers, would be out of work.

The case was argued in court. With this bill, New Jersey becomes the 39th state to allow direct shipping to consumers.

For more details on this story, follow this link.

A lot of states are debating whether they should allow wine on grocery store shelves. In states like Pennsylvania and New York, you can only purchase wine at a state approved liquor retailer. Now comes a study that says wine drinkers are less likely to be involved in fatal traffic accidents–it’s the beer drinkers who are in more danger.

The study by Teevrat Garg, Graduate Student at Cornell University in New York state, found that states with higher levels of total alcohol consumption do have higher traffic fatality rates. He also deduced that, if you keep the amount of alcohol consumed steady, a higher share of wine correlates with lower traffic fatality rates, while the opposite is true for beer. Spirits are more strongly associated to traffic fatalities than wine, but less than beer.

The study was published by the American Association of Wine Economists, and includes data between 1982 and 2000 which proves that states which sell a greater proportion of beers and spirits have a higher rate of traffic fatalities.

To read Garg’s detailed study, follow this link.

ABC has had a long running series on their news about how it would save jobs if we purchased only things made in America. But that’s a lot harder than it looks; even the items in the giftshop at the Smithsonian were all foreign made.

But, if you buy a bottle of wine to drink, chances are it will be made in America! We drink nearly three times as many bottles of the American stuff as we do imported wine, according to an AC Nielsen study in 2010. And as Americans, bigger is likely to be cheaper so that wine will probably come from a really big winery; in fact two percent of wineries account for 84 percent of all American wine production.

If you are going for an imported wine, it’s probably Italian or Australian in origin. Italy and Australia are #1 and #2 respectively in sales. France has fallen to #4, a mere $15 million behind Chile. Argentina and New Zealand make the cut here (Spain did not!) In fact, Italy sells more wine in the U.S. than Chile, France, Argentina and the Kiwis combined.

Nielsen also found that, despite the myriad health benefits touted for red wine and resveratrol, people still prefer Chardonnay. It’s the number one choice over Cabernet Sauvignon by 5 to 3. Number four is Pinot Grigio and two of the rising hot varietals are also whites: Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc.

There are still lots of red wine lovers among us. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Pinot Noir are in the top five for overall sales and Sangiovese made the list of hot varietals, with sales up nearly 9 percent.

For more sales and consumption statistics, click here.

But remember–figures lie, and liars figure–so never take a statistic as the final truth!

We keep hearing about the danger of pieces of debris falling from space. But there’s a good side to space junk.

One winemaker in Chile has added a meteorite to a barrel of his wine, putting the grape juice in contact with some serious time travel. The 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite from the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert in northern Chile around 6,000 years ago.

Ian Hutcheon is a British winemaker who’s making wine in Chile–with grapes planted on the site of an old gold mine no less. He blended the “meteoric” barrel with the rest of the year’s batch. Hutcheon believes the meteorite gives the wine a “livelier taste.”

Meteorito is currently only sold at the Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua – an observatory launched by Hutcheon in 2007, but the winemaker is anxious to export it to other countries, including the UK.

For more on this story, click here.

There are wineries in every state in the union. California is the giant, with nearly 3000 wineries which is about 90 percent of all wineries in the country. They far outstrip the number two state–Washington–which has around 700.

Surprisingly, it’s a little hard to find out which states have the fewest wineries. WineAmerica published a list in 2010 drawn from government data. It showed Wyoming with three wineries, although research only turned up two wineries open to the public. The state is just a little east of the major western wine regions and a bit too far north for many grape varieties with cold winters and hot summers.

Advanced growing techniques and grape varieties bred for cold weather are starting to make adventurous Wyoming farmers think about grape growing and wine making. The more hardy wine grape varieties used in Wyoming include Elvira, Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, Marcheal Foch, Marquette, and Valiant.

Established in 2004, Table Mountain Vineyards is Wyoming’s premier winery, according to their website. The winery produces hand crafted wines from 100% Wyoming grapes, raspberries, honey and agricultural products. The other winery in Wyoming is Irvin Cellar Winery.

According to the WineAmerica data, the other states at the bottom of the list with the fewest wineries are Mississippi and Delaware.

It’s not really too surprising that Mississip lags for a couple of reasons. Mississippi’s sultry climate makes it almost impossible to grow vinifera vines or even hybrids. The other reason is that Prohibition was not repealed statewide until 1966 and, in the tradition of the south, half of the jurisdictions remain dry to this day.

To adapt to this climatic challenge, Mississippi grapegrowers have turned to Muscadine grapes, which thrive in the state’s hot, humid lowlands and are widely cultivated. The sweet, highly-productive fruit is commonly used for juice and jellies, as well as wine. It is an uphill battle for Mississippi wineries, which have faced one obstacle after another. Today, the state is home to only three dedicated wineries.

Delaware also has three wineries that the public can tour, even though the 2010 data shows there are only two. Wines were a late arrival in Delaware. The state’s laws prohibited farm wineries until 1991, after Peg Raley drafted legislation and lobbied the Delaware General Assembly to create Farm Winery legislation for the state. The Raley’s opened Nassau Valley Vineyards in October of 1993.

Nassau Valley Vineyards, which bills itself as the state’s only award winning winery, has an array of wines from Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. They use other regionally grown fruit to produce the 14 wines in their product line. Both grape and fruit wines are also available at the other two wineries in the state, Fenwick Wine Cellars and Pizzadili Winery and Vineyard.

For an excellent link to information about wineries in every state, follow this link.

For the list on which state has how many wineries, click here.

If you’re like me, you probably think of things like Fraternity parties and sports fans at tailgate parties when you think of binge drinkers. Surprise, YOU may actually meet the criteria for a binge drinker. For women, it means more than four drinks on one occasion, for men, more than five drinks. A single bottle of wine has about five drinks.

How bad is it? The Center for Disease Control released a new study that found that more than 38 million Americans binge drink more than four times a month, resulting in more than 80,000 deaths a year.

“Alcohol is addictive,” said Dr. Manny Alvarez. “It’s attached to depression and anxiety. Now that you have people drinking excessively very frequently – these are high income people making $75,000 or above – this is setting a bad example for young people.”

As we might have expcted, the study noted that those in the 18 to 34-year-old bracket make up the bulk of those who binge drink. But for those of us past (or well past) that age group–we’re not in the clear. Only about 4 percent of people 65 and older binge drink, far fewer than adults in other age groups. But they do it more often — five times a month, on average. Younger adults average closer to four episodes per month.

For more on this story, follow this link.