• Gold medal $10 wines: There were plenty of them at the prestigious Dallas Morning News Wine Competition this year, including labels that will probably surprise quite a few people. Among the golds were Barefoot zinfandel, Smoking Loon cabernet sauvignon, and Banrock Station and Black Box merlots. The complete list is here, in a searchable database.
• Maryland strikes out: Residents of the crab cake state won’t be able to order wine from out of state (and a tip ‘o the Curmudgeon fedora to Adam Borden, executive director of Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws, for passing this along). The legislature recently killed a direct wine shipping bill, no doubt terrified by the thought of consumers being able to buy wine like the adults they are. Borden says, though, that much progress was made, and is optimistic about getting a bill passed in 2010.
• Virtual wine tastings: Kendall Jackson is offering wine writers and wine critics the chance to do tastings over the Internet, which it hopes will be easier for the wine writers than one of the usual dinners or tastings. It will also save the cash-strapped company, which did layoffs earlier this year, a bunch of money. I was asked to do one, but turned it down. It doesn’t seem quite wine-friendly enough.
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