It’s been a while since we’ve done a giveaway, and so when I was contacted by Fibers.com to potentially partner up and give away one of their wine-themed t-shirts I couldn’t resist.

This is primarily because they combine wine with one of my closet indulgences: slogans so bad that they become fantastic. I’m not at all religious, but I’ve long been fascinated with the epically, awesomely terrible slogans posted on church billboards; they are just so heinously good (if that makes sense). For example, some gems that I’ve encountered during my driving travels:

“If you give the devil a ride, sooner or later he’s gonna want to drive.”

“God doesn’t want shares of your life; He wants controlling interest!”

“God answers ‘Knee Mail’”

That last one is sooooo wonderfully terrible!

Anyway, you’ve got a chance to win a free, customizable wine t-shirt from Fibers.com just by commenting on this here post! To maximize the fun (for me, anyway!), to become eligible you need only comment here with your favorite terribly awesome wine slogan. Ideally, you’ll come up with puns as wonderfully bad as the ones those churches are able to churn out, only wine-related.

I’m thinking along the lines of “Making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art; unless your name is Rudy Kurniawan, in which case it’s probably a federal offense!” or “I once had budding career in wine growing, but the bad economy green-harvested it.” You gotta admit, those are so bad that they could become endearing… anyway…

In one week I will randomly select a winner from the commenters, and contact them via email with the details on how to claim their Tee.

So get commentin’ and show off your creative side!

Cheers – and good luck!

With the buzz happening around the Weekly Wine Quiz, I’ve got wine trivia on the (vino-soaked) brain lately. So it seemed serendipitous that I was contacted by the folks at Trivia Knows to try out their new cross-platform mobile wine trivia game, Wine Knows Trivia.

They invited me to take a sample test rive of the game on the iPhone, and I can say that I am fairly impressed – the interface is slick, there’s a bit of game-addiction action as you rack up bottles that measure your winnings/progress (which you can then share via twitter, Google+ and Facebook for bragging rights among your social circle as to who has the most wine smarties). And we all know that wine knowledge makes you appear sexier to your potential amorous pursuits (just sayin’).

And now YOU have a chance to win a copy of Wine Knows Trivia for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, because we’re giving away a redemption code for the app to THREE lucky commenters this week!  Here’s the deal: you comment on this post, and at 9PM ET on Friday, January 27th I will randomly select three winners from the comments who will receive a redemption code via e-mail (if you win, you need to act fast – after February 3rd, the codes evaporate into the ether, never to be seen again!). Comment discussion topic coming after the jump.

Some of the questions in the Wine Knows trivia game are pretty friggin’ difficult – I found a few that rivaled those posed within the exams of the certifications for which I sat over the years. so it should keep all but the most die-hard wine geeks entertained…

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The first thing most people over the age of twenty-five think of when you ask them to name a song about wine is probably UB40’s Red Red Wine, which is ironic because they’re all totally drinking beer in the vid for that tune.

In a similarly ironic case of music-meets-wine creative worlds colliding, the band I’ve been playing in for… well… for a long time (some of you will remember us as the dudes who recorded a rock version of the Snow Miser/Heat Miser song, and a reggae/dub take on the Oompa Loompa Theme – we’re kinda into the holidays), has just released a video (available for your viewing pleasure below, after the jump) for a tune titled Wine Kissing Days.

The ironic part: the song is about the social pleasures of sharing wine (a near-constant theme among these virtual pages), was filmed in part at local PA producer Chaddsford Winery (which has been profiled here) BUT… apart from playing bass on the tune I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. More on that in a minute or two. Also, since we know that the music played during wine tasting impacts the qualities that people recall about the wine, if I were a tasting room manager I’d buy a few copies (you know, like, 10,000 or so) of this song. Just sayin’.

Anyway, you can hit up iTunes to grab the tune (and the album from which it comes, “Tricky, Seabass & the Hun” – and damn, it sure makes me feel old to even talk about the conceit of an album at this point), but I’m giving away a copy of the new Steve Liberace Band CD (another near-ancient conceit!) to three lucky randomly-selected commenters!…

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Wow!

You people sure do like your ZAP. Or you sure do like your Zinfandel. Or both, probably.

Between the comments, retweets, Facebook Likes, e-mails, and other versions of time-sucking on-line virtual social water-cooler spots, my giveaway of tickets to some of the ZAP 2012 events generated a few hundred reactions (with over 100 coming in the form of comments alone). That is, by far, the the biggest response to a giveaway in 1WD history! A huge THANK YOU to all of you who made the giveaway so awesome – a special shout-out to reader Leilani Carrara who put us over the 100 comment mark, and in doing so was awarded an impromptu prize (in the form of a free copy of the 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide ebook).

For those who have been playing along at home, you know that the giveaway also determined at least two Zinfandels that I will now be on the hook to review – not necessarily an easy task, since I live in the Communistwealth of PA and so do not necessarily have easy access to the wines demanded by the giveaway winners (attention PR folk: if you have samples of any of these winners, I’m willing to talk!).

And so… the winners of tix for two to a pair of way-cool ZAP 2012 events… aaaaaand their Zin picks, which I now need to get my grubby little hands on to review, are…

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