Let’s explore some wines in a higher price range, but not bottles that are totally out of your reach. The most expensive wine here is $35, which is more than I pay for a “weekday wine,” but something I’d spend on a gift for a friend. There are some good gift ideas here. We were sent these wines for review.

The Climber Chardonnay, Clif Family Winery, Calif. ($16.99 per 1.5L box) –
Yes, this is a boxed wine. And a pretty good one, too. This is unoaked chardonnay packaged in an environmentally friendly package. It’s really a white bag of white wine, with holes along the top for both fingers and thumb. It could be hooked from your belt as you ascend the nearest, um, hill in Florida (hence the name Climber), but really just plop it on your fridge’s top shelf and enjoy this wine. The nose is a light citrus, and on taste it’s also light and refreshing with some tropical tinges of grapefruit and a little lemon.

2008 Walter Clore Private Reserve, Columbia-Crest ($35 online) –
This big wine is aged for 30 months in French and American oak, and is made from merlot (57 percent), cabernet sauvignon (32 percent), cabernet franc (8 percent) and malbec (3 percent). It’s got a great big nose of cherry pie and earthy, ripe fruits. On taste it’s big, too, with blackberries and dark cherries and a whole dark-fruit cocktail going on. I paired it with linguine and a red sauce of sausages and onions and it was a terrific meal.

2009 Incognito, Michael David Winery, Lodi, Calif. ($16.99, Total Wine) –
This red wine blend has syrah, cinsault, carignan, mourvedre, petitie sirah, Grenache and tannat in it, so it’s more of a United Nations of wine. All those varietals mixed together resulted in a very pretty, very berry nose. I shared it with a fairly large group of wine drinkers and they tasted lots of berry, slight spice and earthy tones. One person commented it tasted mostly like a shiraz, and the bottle’s logo received some thumbs-up vote for “nifty.” I don’t think the taste knocked our socks off, despite it having seven different grapes inside.

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Here’s a February present – some red wines that, for the most part, are worth buying, trying and buying again. These were all sent to us for review, and you won’t break the bank with this bunch.

2010 McManis Family Vineyards Petite Sirah ($9.99, Total Wine) –
This isn’t just a Bold wine, it’s a deep wine: deep color, deep nose, deep palate. In other words, I liked it. It’s a purple-black wine, very dark, with a nose of fragrant, dark fruits. One of my sighworthy wines. On taste, it’s big cherry pop, licorice, a little smoky and some root beer (really). It’s a full-boded wine with a long finish that paired very well with high-quality burgers.

2010 Casa Silva Reserva Pinot Noir, Colchagua Valley, Chile ($12 online) –
This is a light-bodied pinot noir that smells of sour cherries (in a good way) and pretty, pink raspberries. On taste, it reminded me of cherry candies; a little too light for my taste in pinot noir. It would be a good wine for someone who is trying to learn about red wines, because it’s not too expensive, big or heavy and would probably be just right for a big white wine drinker.

2007 Hobnob Vineyards Shiraz, France ($9.99 online) –
This wine turned out to be the perfect antidote for a long day at the office. I went home, opened this, took a deep breath and found full cherries and a little earth. Then I took a sip and found cinnamon, a little spice, some more cherries and a nice-bodied wine with a medium finish. This was the first vintage for U.S. sales from this winery and it’s aimed at the young, hip crowd. It’s not too shabby after work for any age! It’s on my “buy again” list.

2009 Mandolin Syrah, Central Coast, Calif. ($11 online) –
A deep purple wine, with a deep nose of brambles and blackberries, this was just terrific with burgers. In fact, I used some of this wine when I made the burgers and it elevated those to a really yummy place. My notes say it’s a serene wine that has unity. On taste, it reflects the nose, very cherry with a smooth mouthfeel. A really, very nice wine. This is on my “you can give this to me as a gift anytime” list. Anyone listening? And you can’t beat the price.

2009 Caldora Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Italy ($9 online) –
Here’s a food-friendly wine that’s also under $10 – what’s not to like? This Italian red blend has a light bouquet with faint cherry and a little cocoa on the nose. Sipping brings an off-dry, red fruit taste, specifically sour cherries, light currants and a little cola. It’s great with cheeses or pizza or red-sauce pasta dishes. If you get a chance, I’d recommend trying this medium-bodied wine.

2009 Tamas Estates Double Decker Red, Central Coast, Calif. ($8.99 ABC Wines) –
This blend of cabernet sauvignon, petite sirah and barbera (it was a Bold blend for sure) had a light cherry nose, so I wasn’t sure it would live up to Bold billing. On taste, it had some zippy spice, and proved to be a good, casual sipping wine. It’s comparable to a good house red in Italy or France, as it was good with food, too. It’s a medium-bodied wine that’s not pretentious and, for the price, you can’t go wrong with this one.

One thing the Swirl Girls take seriously is lending a hand to help others. And, when it’s helping provide a home for families whose children are receiving medical treatment in Palm Beach County, and that’s combined with great wine and wonderful food, we call that serendipity.

It’s also known as the Taste of Compassion event, Monday at CityPlace’s Harriet Himmel Theater, which benefits the Quantum House. We will be there with some yummy vino to pair with food from some well-known area restaurants, such as Paddy Mac’s, Verdea, The Breakers, Talay Thai, Sailfish Point Country Club, Hoffman’s Chocolates and more.

This is one of our favorite events, because of the quality of the wine, the food, the cause and yes, the people. Stop by, say “hello,” and discover what wines we’re pouring. We’ll be dipping into some great-tasting wines: Eroica Riesling, Ruffino Prosecco, Coppola Director’s Cut Chardonnay, Erath Pinot Noir, Coppola Director’s Cut Cabernet Sauvignon and the Antinori Toscana Red.

Join us for either early VIP admission ($125 ticket, starting at 6 p.m., gives you one hour early with special wine/food pairing) or general admission ($75 ticket, starting at 7 p.m.) and stick around for the silent and live auctions and raffle. Tickets are sold at www.quantumhouse.org. For more info, call (561) 494-0515.

If your holidays were anything like the Swirl Girls’, you probably drank your share of good wine, including some glasses of sparkling or Champagne.

I hope you found some new favorites, but if you didn’t, here goes: It’s a new year, people, and that means new opportunities in the big, wide world of wine!

This list of five New Year wine resolutions is for you, and me, too.

I’m going to adopt all of them and if you do, too, by next December, we both will have learned a lot and had fun doing it.

Wine resolution No. 1: Pair wines with specific foods

This means thinking about what you’ll make for dinner by starting with what kind of wine you want to serve. Not what kind you have in the house (that’s no fun), but what kind you’d like to have if you could choose from many varietals.

Then research what foods go with the wine (two good websites for this are www.foodandwinepairing.org and www.matchingfoodandwine.com) . I like this approach because it usually solves the problem of, "What are we eating tonight?" My answer is given to me when I choose the wine first.

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From Food & Wine magazine come these tips on how to get the best wine deal during the holidays. The secret is 1) do a little homework, and 2) ask store employees for help with a few things.

Tip 1 – Look for sales on Champagne from Thanksgiving into the first two weeks of December. After that, the discounts disappear.

Tip 2 – Popular wines, like California chardonnays, rarely go on sale. Head to less-well-known regions instead, like Abruzzo or Alsace.

Tip 3 – If a wine from an unsung region isn’t on sale, the store might be flexible about pricing; ask if you can get a discount.

Tip 4 – The best deals right now on under-$25 cabernets are from Washington state. Plus, the 2008 vintage is extremely good.

Tip 5 – Beaujolais is enormously popular for Thanksgiving, so it will probably go on sale after the holiday has passed.

You’re planning your wedding, and all of the little details are just driving you crazy.

The dress, the venue, the invitations, will the groom wear a tux or a suit? We totally understand, so we tried to think of something to help out. Something to take the stress out of at least one part of the planning.

If you’ve got a bridesmaids’ brunch, or a girls’ night out, or need something beautiful and yummy and different when it comes to serving drinks or sparkling wines/champagne, we’ve done that work for you.

The Swirl Girls’ Guide to Sassy Sparkling Drinks is at your fingertips. You can try them all out – it’s a great excuse for a girls’ night out with your favorite women – or just pick one and run with it. They all look fabulous, and they all taste terrific. The other must-do is to attend The Palm Beach Post’s awesome Bridal Show on Sept. 25 in the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Our rules were simple: Start with champagne or a sparkling wine, add something different to the glass and make sure it looks as good as it tastes. Here are results from Bold, Earthy and Sweet (Dry was somewhere in France tasting fine wines).

From (Bold):I chose Chateau St. Michelle Brut, one of my favorite sparkling wines (it’s inexpensive and beat out Dom Perignon across the country in taste tests!) to pair with colorful, tasty liquids.
It’s a fairly dry sparkling wine, so I wanted to pair some sweet things with it. I tried Ty-Ku, a sake-based light green liqueur (pretty light green, but the taste was more like mouthwash), then Midori melon (beautiful neon green, like a Christmas ornament – taste was better, but not great), then limoncello (taste was great, color was horrible), then brandy (not a good idea all the way around). Read the full story

When wine tasting and social media meet, it’s called TasteLive. The Swirl Girls call it a sweet match.

The four of us have been a part of multiple TasteLive tastings www.TasteLive.com for about a year now. Here’s how it works: The organizers of this “real-time, event-based social network…for presenting products with taste” ask for participants to pair with certain wineries. If we accept, then we’re sent a number of wines the day before, or the day of, the live Twitter tasting.

At 9 p.m., we gather and uncork the wines, pass out glasses, rev up the computer and begin. On the TasteLive web site, we are one of several spots in the country all tasting the same wines at the same moment. It works pretty darn well. The TasteLive organizers are energetic, fun and totally professional about the groups they gather together.

The wineries are on Twitter during the tastings, too, and answer questions about wine composition, wine price, bottling or anything else we ask them. It’s a good chance for interaction with winemakers; their stories are fascinating and the wines are usually pretty terrific.

So it was a couple of weeks ago, when we lined up with Sonoma’s Benziger wines at a TasteLive event. There was a real-time video interview with Mike Benziger, along with the real-time Tweeting. We had six different wines to taste, including two vertical tastings (same wine, different year). There were eight tastings going on all over the country.

I visited the biodynamic Benziger winery in 2009, on a trip to Sonoma and Napa. The winery is in a gorgeous hillside setting, with oak barrels stacked in caves, and offers a nice tram tour and tasting in the pretty white compound of buildings. I was impressed with the whole tour and definitely the tastings – Benziger turns out some fantastic wine.
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It’s not your everyday Moet. Not that you have Moet every day, mind you. But here’s a bright, white-foil-wrapped, gold-lettered bottle of Moet & Chandon Ice Imperial Champagne. The bottle looks cool to the touch. Then, all around the bottle are words you don’t usually see on Champagnes: Drink on ice.

Really?

Yes, this is the sunnier, lighter, fizzy side of Moet. At about $60 a bottle.

It’s a new product from the famous French company, meant to be served over ice. Because Champagne flutes aren’t meant to have any ice in them at all, I served this Moet in smaller wine glasses, with a couple of ice cubes per glass.

Joining me in the holiday weekend tasting (if it’s a holiday, it means Moet!) were my husband, my brother (a restaurateur) and my sister-in-law. This sparkler is a pretty, pale peach and light orangeade-colored blend of pinot noir (40-50 percent), pinot meunier (30-40 percent) and chardonnay (10 to 20 percent), which makes it a bit off-dry.

On the nose, it’s light and smells faintly of peaches, too. It’s got a slight tropical hint to it, and reminded us of a Champagne spritzer with a little oomph to it.
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Wine Spectator has just handed out its 30th year of wine program awards, listing the world’s “3,734 restaurants wine lovers need to know.” As you might expect, Florida and California have huge lists in the U.S. We are very lucky, indeed – we have 35 restaurants in Palm Beach County (34) and Stuart (1) on the list.

There are three tiers of awards: Grand Awards, Best of Award of Excellence and Award of Excellence. The Grand Awards were given to only 74 restaurants in the world. Two are in Florida; both are also on the list of only four that have been given Grand Awards every year since 1981: Bern’s in Tampa, and L’Escalier at the Breakers. Unfortunately, The Breakers announced earlier this year that L’Escalier was closing, to reopen in another capacity at some point.
To enter the 2012 Wine Spectator Restaurant Wine List Awards program, restaurants need to send copies of currents wine lists, menus and wine programs. There’s a processing fee of $250, and award winners are required to renew their awards each year.
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As we head into summer, the Swirl Girls dove into our wine cabinets and tasted our little tastebuds off trying these wines for you. These bottles were all sent to us for review. Enjoy!

From Bold:

2009 Flip Flop Riesling, Washington ($5.49, Total Wine)
This is a nice, inexpensive wine with a nose of melon and pineapple. It tastes on first sip as if it has a slight carbonation to it, though there are no bubbles. Also on taste is some peach and a little apple. It’s a sweeter riesling, though not the sweetest I’ve had by far. It went well with a seafood dish, and was still enjoyable the next day, too. For the price, this is a nice, medium-bodied wine.

2009 Kim Crawford Marlborough Pinot Noir ($15.99 ABC; $17.99 Total Wine)
This pinot noir, aged in a mixture of oak barrels and tanks for 7 months, started with a quiet, pretty nose of light sour cherries and a faint hint of earth. As it opened, it became a bigger pretty nose with a lot more dark fruit than I expected. It’s a beautiful ruby color (I think I’d like this color on my walls!) and tastes of dark cherries, with a hint of clove. It has a smooth mouthfeel and went on my good-sipping-wine list. But I have to say it’s terrific with food, so buy a bottle of this as a gift for the next dinner party you’re invited to – just make sure they open your gift for the dinner, so you can enjoy it, too.

2008 Vale do Bomfim Douro D.O.C., Portugal ($12 online)
On the nose, this dark, garnet-colored wine was very berry, big and promising. It followed up in taste with black cherry, a slight spice and some zing. I paired it with sausage in red sauce over linguine and it was a beautiful pairing. This is a good everyday wine, and I’d definitely buy it again.
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