Man, I hope this tainted association does not ruin the good name of one of nature's greatest beverages: "The rock band Train, known for 'Hey, Soul Sister' and other hit songs, has started a wine club, too. The Train Wine Club lives on a Web site where visitors can join the club, read blog posts, listen to music, find out about the 'wine of the month,' enter contests to win concert tickets, sign up for mobile applications and be connected to the band’s official Web site, Facebook pageand Twitter feed."

Close to home, in and around Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, is where Starbucks conducts its experiments. It's the home not only of their public test lab, "Olive Way," there's also the matter of those liquor licenses filed in the last year, and of the "Starbucks-inspired" 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea locations. Most media coverage still seems more concerned with the fancy new coffee machines and the slimmer-profile barista counters than the white elephant in the room: now Starbucks sells booze.

You'd never think of this elsewhere in the country, but the megatronic coffee company sells wine and beer, which feels to me about as likely as Ahab [...]

Here is of those moments when the internet shows you that there are other people who pretty much know exactly how your dumb brain operates, either because their brains operate the same dumb way, or, more frighteningly, because their brains are smarter and they're hoping to somehow profit off this fact. Even worse, they work faster than you: I read a story at Discovery this morning about how South African wineries have been having a problem with baboons sneaking into their vineyards and eating the grapes.

"The ads promote HobNob as just the right wine to go along with the busy, casual lives, filled with friends and entertainment, of the members of the generation known as millennials, Generation Y or echo boomers." —Enjoy your millennial wine.

Pennsylvania, home to some of the most bizarre liquor laws in the country, is now offering its residents the opportunity to purchase wine from grocery store vending machines. "Customers provide identification, look into a camera so an actual, real live person in a call center can confirm that they match their ID, and blow into a breathalyzer to prove they are not already drunk." Okay!

News you can use about alcohol: "It seems wine is less likely to be ruined by molecules that add an unwanted green vegetable taste if sold in cartons sealed with a thin layer of aluminium. The bad taste – known as the 'ladybug taint' – is caused by chemicals called alkyl-methoxypyrazines that accumulate in wine both from grapes themselves and from remains of ladybug beetles crushed when grapes are processed." The piece does go on to note-correctly-that boxes are good for wine only up to a certain level of quality (in my experience, $4), but really, the whole point of putting this up was to get wider acceptance for [...]

It was my first "fine dining" experience-somewhere between 10 and 20 courses with a bottle of wine for each. We were celebrating, thanks to the gracious manager of a boutique wine shop where I once worked. The meal was at one of my favorite restaurants in the world. I'd picked a hell of a time to be a vegetarian. I was that vegetarian, and I sat across from a cured meat expert who ate prosciutto by laying it flat on his face like a hot shave towel so the lardo could melt into his bottom lip. He didn't just eat meat, he infused it like a tab of acid [...]

The more you run, the more it's gonna chase you. And odds are you look pretty ugly when you run. So quit being afraid of wine!

Remember Franzia? Night Train? Boone's "What Exactly Grows on This" Farm? Remember the winos in your back alley? There's a reason they were called that. They drank more wine than anybody. The stuff that the guy who thought his trucker hat was a salt shaker slurped with the leftover Italian beef you gave him twice a week for lunch. Seemed like he had all the answers. So what happened to you?