McLaren Vale, the home of the Curtis Family Vineyards, is just 45 minutes’ drive south of South Australia’s capital of Adelaide, has been making wine for one and a half centuries. That’s not as long as wine has been made in Italy, but the results are just as encouraging. And how a family with its ancestry dating back to the 15th Century has brought its expertise to McLaren vale with a new range of wines with an impressive European lineage.

If you reside within the United States and you would like to experience the world of wine tasting, then you’ll see that you do not have to travel to France or Spain to experience wine tasting. By just going to California, you will be able to get a taste of one of the best wines in the nation.

The vine has a long history in Southern Italy. Oenotria, the land of vines, is what the Greeks affectionately called the modern ‘Mezzogiorno,’ the southern part of the Italian boot as well as Sicily. Southern Italy was a Greek colony in the centuries before Christ, so much so, the South was known as ‘Magna Graecia,’ literally ‘Greater Greece.’ When the Greeks colonized Southern Italy they brought with them one of the markers of civilization: the vine.

A gift of wine is a lovely gift for any occasion and suitable for nearly anybody. Even though French wine is regarded as supreme, many can be out of reach for the typical gift budget. California wines are a great option, both in price and quality.

As a wine afficionado and writer I often hear from women who love to make wine from wine kits. In fact, I recently attended a fabulous wine tasting get-together put on by a group of women who have developed a dynamic wine club and are making fantastic wines from wine kits.

It is called Syrah in its country of origin, France, as well as in the rest of Europe, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, Uruguay and most of the United States. The name Shiraz became popular for this grape variety in Australia, where it has long been established as the most grown dark-skinned variety. In Australia it was also commonly called Hermitage up to the late 1980s, but since that name is also a French Protected designation of origin, this naming practice caused a problem in some export markets and was dropped.

McLaren Vale, the home of the Curtis Family Vineyards, is just 45 minutes’ drive south of South Australia’s capital of Adelaide, has been making wine for one and a half centuries. That’s not as long as wine has been made in Italy, but the results are just as encouraging. And how a family with its ancestry dating back to the 15th Century has brought its expertise to McLaren vale with a new range of wines with an impressive European lineage.

Select wine merchants Buying wine online is a useful and convenient way to source wines from unusual wine varieties. There are many advantages, and a couple of pitfalls to buying wine online.

Email advertising is a tool that is highly undervalued and underused by internet retailers. It is a tool that can also be used by traditional retailers but hardly ever is. The main advantage with this form of marketing and advertising is that it is free.

Over the years, American home brewing has changed with the times. It used to be illegal to brew beer at home, then America was the top producer of beer worldwide, and now the recession has hit hard forcing many companies to shut shop. Now we all know as times get tough, people turn to the bottle for comfort… but the brutality off the recession has forced many people to reconsider their chosen drinking hole and replace it with a rewarding and extremely tasty hobby that goes by the name of “home beer brewing”.