So… it’s Valentine’s Day… 8AM ET on that day, when this post will first hit the virtual airwaves…

Are you sick enough of all of the bubbly and pink wine recommendations to want to rip off your own skull yet? My strong suspicion is “Yes” [ Editor’s Note: please do NOT rip off your own skull ].

Around this time every year, we get bombarded with coverage of V-Day wine picks, mostly spurred on by PR types pushing sparkling and pink (and, preferably to them, sparkling-that-is-pink) wine recommendations for their clients. I love pink, and I love bubbly, and I love pink bubbly – but right now, I don’t even want to look at a bottle of pink sparkling wine. Hey, it’s okay to call me a contrarian, because I am, in fact, a contrarian.

And so it’s with a nod to my contrarian streak that I offer you a wine recommendation based not on the pink-or-bubbly-or-better-yet-pink-and-bubbly annual publicity onslaught, but rather based on evidence suggested by statistical data. My guess is that my take stands a better chance of actually getting you a happy ending to your romantic evening, given the following deemed-important-by-no-one-but-me tidbits:

a) It’s based on real world evidence and not a press release liberally sprinkled with the words “romantic,” “special,” and “pink,”

b) I write for Playboy.com, which superficially links me to sexiness and so maybe makes me slightly more qualified to pronounce upon a wine’s sexiness (okay, that’s a stretch…), and

c) Mrs. Dudette is waaaay hotter than I deserve (empirical evidence!), so I might know something about the wooing of beautiful ladies with vino (more likely, I simply got lucky when she said Yes… look, stop raining on my parade and just go with this, it will be fun…).

So if you at least agree that statistical data is potentially better than press releases, you can safely ignore the tongue in cheek b) and c) justifications above, and read on about increasing the chances of getting your tongue in someone else’s cheek tonight…

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In what has become an annual tradition within a tradition (which I suppose makes it some sort of Postmodern meta-tradition?), I’ve once again used my band’s appearance at the annual Summer Solstice music festival as an excuse to sneak in some “work.”

The work, such as it is, involves grabbing samples of wine in alternative packaging (bag-in-box, pouches, tetra-pack cartons, etc.), throwing them in a cooler, and sampling them the way that normal people do for wines built for on-the-go drinking; namely, drinking those wines under the bright sun, straight out of the cooler and poured into plastic cups and glasses, on the lawn, with picnic fare.

Seemed a perfect match for the 4th of July, anyway! Wish I could scream “queue the fireworks!” but by-and-large the wines I tried are best described as more capable than cause for celebration. The look on my face in the inset pic (taken by our singer/songwriter/guitarist Steve Liberace) can be used as a short-hand version of how I felt overall about this year’s alt packaging round up…

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It’s Easter, and therefore the advent of Springtime in the U.S. (or is that the other way around?), and whether or not you celebrate today’s holiday, chances are that you’ll now be inundated with wine recommendations imploring you to drink rosé. If you weren’t already, I mean.

Those recommendations turn up at higher quantities this time of year than tulips and mulch in a gated community.

I’m not going to jump on the rosé wine reco tip (despite the fact that rosé is very likely what I’ll be drinking today), not because it doesn’t fit the season (it does) but because I really can’t think of any reason not to drink rosé all year long. Seriously – ever had a dry rosé with grilled salmon burgers (in the Summer)? That pairing is totally lights-out.

Having nothing really to do with springtime or rosé, I wanted to also mention that yesterday I was a guest on WBAL’s The Sipping Point with The Wine Coach (a.k.a. wine educator Laurie Forster, with whom I share a passion to inject as much fun into wine as possible before the wine biz thoroughly drains it of all awesomeness). We talked about some exciting upcoming projects that I have going on (so now you can stop giving me crap about not telling you what those are!), and riffed on the theme of whether or not wine “experts” actually taste wine differently than regular Janes and Joes. They edited out all of my GO STEELERS! crap at the end – but hey, it’s for Baltimore radio so you kind of have to expect it, right?

An excerpt from the show is embedded below for your listening pleasure. You can (and should!) subscribe to The Sipping Point podcast on iTunes.

The Sipping Point Radio: April 7, 2012

Cheers – and have a safe and happy (hoppy?) egg hunt today!

For Valentine’s Day, I subject myself to the much-dreaded and (in my view not unfairly) oft-maligned dry-red-wine-with-chocolate food pairing, so that you don’t have to (you can thank me later).

Mentioned in this episode:

• Brix Chocolate (specially formulated to complement wine) – Pretty tasty on its own, especially the medium dark variety
• 2009 V. Sattui Black Sears Vineyard Zinfandel (Howell Mountain) $42 – Damn sexy, with nice plummy fruit and enticing peppery, spicy notes.

Cheers!