The growing horrors emerging from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina prompt another brief digression from our usual talk about wine today, but this digression has a wine-related twist.

Allow me to introduce my friend Dale Williams, a New York wine lover who posted this challenge on our Wine Lovers' Discussion Group forum today:

I'm sure we're all appalled and dismayed by the situation in New Orleans and the Gulf. Betsy and I have made some donations to Katrina relief - all that we can afford monetarily at the moment. But I have more wine than I can say I truly need. So I'd like to ... offer a little raffle to spur those of you who want to do something but aren't sure what.

I'll put up three bottles of Chateau Meyney - the 1986, the '89 and the '90 (all excellent wines, from Meyney's overachiever period). This mini-vertical, (plus a 1990 Chateau Chateau l'Angelus and 1990 Chateau Pichon Longueville Baron donated by Dr. Randy Buckner, and a 1999 J. L. Chave Hermitage contributed by yours truly) will go to individuals selected at random from the first 50 people who do the following:

• Go to Network for Good - Katrina, a network of links that facilitate immediate, secure online donations to any of about 50 screened, reputable organizations:
  http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/animal_environ/hurricanes/
• Choose the charity of your choice to help the relief effort, and make a donation of $50 or more. Network for Good allows one to choose from a variety of relief groups, including the ARC, Habitat for Humanity, Americares, various sectarian relief groups and ecumenical groups like Church World Service.
• To confirm your donation, send me a copy of your E-receipt at wine@wineloverspage.com.
• Then click the following link to go to Dale's forum discussion, "Help Katrina victims, and maybe drink good Bdx."
  http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/index.phtml?fn=1&tid=65804&mid=565928
  Choose a number between 1 and 50 (please copy the previous responses, so the entire list shows and the next person won't need to go through each response to find out which numbers are taken).
• Once all the numbers are taken, I will choose the winning numbers by computer random generation, we'll reveal the winners, and we'll ship the wine to any winner in the U.S. or Canada once the weather cools. If you are in a state that prohibits shipping or live in another part of the world, we'll find a way to use the WLDG community to get the wine to you.

Finally, if you want to participate but don't feel comfortable using the forum software to post your number, E-mail me at wine@wineloverspage.com and I'll take care of it for you.

Thanks for your indulgence ... I thought this was a break worth taking. We'll get back to the wine talk on Monday.

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Friday, Sept. 2, 2005
Copyright 2005 by Robin Garr. All rights reserved.