To those of you that have kept up with us, we appreciate your readership and support. Everything has been invaluable for a couple young guys trying to start something up. As a marketing company, we’ve been able to grab a few clients and expand our online marketing ability. It’s all about developing a knack for what’s interesting or cool or fresh. It’s been a fun experience not only growing, but keeping ourselves fed… and a little buzzd too.

However, we all have the big visions and the projects we’re working on and we’re still trying to figure out exactly what to do with Tastevine — we were caught up in the wine 2.0 euphoria of ‘07 and put out a wine community and recommendation engine that had some value. However, every time people saw us as the Facebook of wine, we knew that something was off. We realized that in the effort of creating something that would make wine fun, sexy and fluid, we actually found ourselves not even using what we created!

Why is this? Probably because the only type of people that were attracted to a wine community are winos themselves. Not people like us that don’t know anything about wine. People that are young want a sexy brand that brings in new wines from around the world that actually taste GOOD — young palettes like ours are picky and we need something subtle, sweet, but yet still sophisticated. After we find a brand with these type of wines, we’d love to use them to develop our taste and get involved in an online system that helps us find new recommendations.

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You may have noticed that the front page of Tastevine has undergone some changes over the past few weeks. One of the things we were/are focusing on in User Experience, is making your life easier through the searching feature on our site. Now, instead of having to type in the words, you can easily just select a few of the tags that describe the wine you want.

Currently, the tags represented are based on the most popular searches that have been made on Tastevine.com. We hope to tweak these regularly based on your feedback, to make sure they stay relevant to what you are looking for. If you feel that we left off something that would make your searches easier, just comment here or drop us a line. Thanks again for all of your suggestions, and we are working hard to implement all of them.

Cheers !

After a lengthy evening of sipping (and sometimes chugging) champagne, and fun filled conversation, it is now officially 2008. Someone pointed out last night that it will be extremely easy to turn the accidental 2007 into a 2008, which further brightened my excitement for the coming year and a common problem of mine.

Someone else also pointed out the chip dip was AMAZING. I took some photos during the easy 5 step process of making it to share with you, as we did a little tweaking to the recipe.

Step 1 - Get it together

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When buying a bottle of Champagne, if the label says from “Champagne, France“,“methode traditionelle”, or “Méthode Champenoise”, the wine is in fact truly a “Champagne“. All other wines are “Sparkling Wine”. While this does sound somewhat snobbish and aristocratic, it does serve a good purpose in protecting the brand of the area. Another example of this type of “rule” that you may be more familiar with is the Vidalia Onion, which you can easily cook with champagne, or sparkling wine, to create some great hors d’oeuvres for this New Year.

You have to check out these Champagne Onion recipes we found over at The Gilded Fork. I’m going to make them tomorrow, and have a good idea at the different flavors I can create by using different combinations of sparkling wine and onions.

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The press release below was brought to our attention today, and with our love of music and wine, we wanted to share. I’d also like to point out, that in reading Josh’s website , it appears he has done several things for charity, including a recent donation of a song to the WHY Foundation, founded by Harry Chapin. The foundation released an album “All-Star Charity CD SERVE2: FIGHTING HUNGER AND POVERTY”, featuring tracks from many great musicians, Bruce Springsteen, OAR, Citizen Cope, and Natasha Bedingfield just to name a few.

A MÉNAGE À TROIS WITH JOSH ROUSE AT CARNEGIE HALL
NEW YORK-November 28, 2007- Fresh from Spain, Josh Rouse comes back to delight fans and make some new ones with his latest release, Country Mouse, City House. His seventh proper full-length album on his imprint label Bedroom Classics (through Nettwerk Music Group) was released this past summer.

Following the release, Josh has partnered with Ménage à Trois wines in a new marketing venture. The promotion, which starts November 1st, will display a hang tag or tear pad with Josh Rouse information (tag line, URL, and code for downloads) on over 2 million bottles of Ménage à Trois wines, inviting them to download samplings of Josh’s music. Fans can also enter to win a trip to see Josh perform live at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The winning fan will receive all expenses paid trip to New York for two to see Josh’s concert on April 18, 2008 - plus receive $1,000 in spending money. Fans can find bottles of wine to purchase in major supermarkets. In addition to the sweepstakes, a free song preview off the new album is available at menageatroiswines.com. Read the rest of this entry »