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30 Second Wine Tasting Tip:
Link: Supply, demand and WineReleaseDate.com

"Defy the Law of Supply and Demand:" That's the motto of WineReleaseDate.com, today's featured Website; and for wine lovers who enjoy the thrill of the chase for small-production and hard-to-find North American wines, it's a must-bookmark site.

WineReleaseDate.com, published in California by Neil Monnens, operates on a simple premise: Monnens gathers information from more than 500 wineries about the wines they will be putting on the market soon, with the specific date of release. He assembles the data and makes it available to wine enthusiasts, onsite and in a monthly E-mail newsletter. (Wineries are predominantly from California but cover the entire U.S. and Canada.)

"Wine buyers previously had no free, centralized place to get release information," Monnens wrote in a statement marking the year-old site's 500-winery milestone. "Whether you order straight from the winery or your local shop, going to WineReleaseDate.com enables viewers to know exactly when their favorite wines are available and buy them before they're sold out," he said.

Simple and easily navigated, WineReleaseDate.com offers other features of interest, even if you're not immediately in the market for a specific new wine. Its winery list, for example, offers a quick and simple way to look up winery information, with hotlinks to info pages on 500 wineries including clickable links to each winery's Website (if it has one), plus links to Google.com for additional sites that reference the winery by name.

You'll find all this at http://www.WineReleaseDate.com.

In another attractive feature, this site also offers one of the most useful short articles I've seen on the subject of organizing a wine-tasting party, with clear, one-sentence tips on every aspect from setting a budget to keeping score to choosing wine-friendly food. It's worth a separate bookmark at http://www.winereleasedate.com/Other/WineTasting/Winetasting.html.

WineReleaseDate.com is a member of WineFederation, a coalition offering advertising opportunities to established wine-related businesses on 10 of the world's market-leading wine Websites (including WineLoversPage.com). For more information, see www.WineFederation.com or write me at http://www.wineloverspage.com/ask_a_question.phtml.

Follow-up: Yesterday's Port
In yesterday's tasting report on Noval 1996 Unfiltered Late Bottled Vintage Porto, I neglected to mention a couple of points of interest: It is unfiltered, and it was bottled in 2000 after four years of wood aging, the minimum permitted for Late Bottled Vintage Port.

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We welcome feedback, suggestions, and ideas for future columns. We do not use this list for any other purpose and will never give or sell your name or E-mail to anyone.

All the wine-tasting reports posted here are consumer-oriented. In order to maintain objectivity and avoid conflicts of interest, I purchase all the wines I rate at my own expense in retail stores and accept no samples, gifts or other gratuities from the wine industry.

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Robin Garr. All rights reserved.

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