Well, perhaps “fraud” is too strong a word. “Misleading information” is probably more accurate, albeit long winded. Put simply, there’s a hell of a lot of information on the average wine label that is completely meaningless and absolutely misleading. These are terms that make you think the wine must have achieved some measurable level of quality, yet is really the same as labeling the bottle “Super Delicious Yummy Good Wine”. It’s a marketing ploy, pure and simple, and you should be wary of it.

Here are some of the most common examples – if you see these terms on the label, know that they have no standardized, agreed-upon, or legally enforced definition, so they do not indicate anything about the wine’s quality:

• Old Vines: This is especially common on Zinfandel from the U.S. While there are pockets of very old Zinfandel vines throughout California (usually in vineyards that were abandoned during Prohibition and recently rediscovered), wines made from these grapevines will be expensive because the older a vine gets, the less fruit it produces. The average age of the vines used to make cheaper bottles of wine probably isn’t more than 10 to 20 – and given that vines can live as long as 120 years, that’s really not very old at all, is it?

Those quotation marks say it all - "Old Vines" indeed, *wink wink*

• Reserve & Private Reserve: Once upon a time winemakers would save, or “reserve”, their best wines and cellar them for a while longer, rather than sell them immediately. They were labeled as Reserve wines to indicate this higher quality. While many contemporary wine producers certainly follow this practice, unfortunately almost anyone can slap this term on any old bottle of hooch – with the exception of producers in Spain and Italy. If you see the word “Reserva” or “Riserva” on a wine from one of those countries, it has to have met some additional aging requirements. (Though, it still technically doesn’t mean the wine is better; just aged longer before bottling.) Generally speaking, if the wine truly qualifies as a Reserve, and is therefore among the producer’s better quality wines, it isn’t going to cost $10 a bottle – and yet so many of those cheap wines bear this term. Tread cautiously.

They're just putting those words on anything these days, aren't they?

• Barrel Select: Technically this term should mean that the producer took a portion of wine from the best barrels and bottled them separately, very similar to the proper usage of “Reserve”. However, in reality this term also doesn’t mean anything – and a lot of wines labeled “Barrel Select” have never even seen the inside of a barrel.

The fact that it also appears on bottles of rye should not be encouraging

• Bottle Aged: This term is obviously meaningless: as soon as a wine is poured into a bottle it starts bottle aging – so technically every single wine sold in a bottle format could be labeled as such. (Actually, so could anything else sold in a bottle.) By using this term, the company is trying to suggest that the wine has undergone additional aging, and as we’ve seen earlier with “Reserve” they like us to think that aging is synonymous with higher quality. But it really isn’t, and since the length of aging isn’t even specified, it’s a doubly useless term.

Hey look! Coke is bottle aged too!

• Proprietor’s Blend: Neither the term “proprietor” nor “blend” have legal definitions, so this phrase means precisely nothing. Plus I can assure you that except for really small winery operations, the proprietor is definitely not the one actually making the wine or passing decisions about the composition of the wine; on most of the bottles bearing this phrase the “proprietor” is a business executive who only shows up at the winery for photo ops.

I kicked off the column with a cover story last week on wine fraud and the arrest of Rudy Kurniawan. It’s a scandalous, juicy tale that I promise is interesting reading no matter your interest in wine.

Enter Cono Sur Pinot Noir. This wine was one of the first great values I discovered as a wee wine shop lass, and it has stayed a great value for almost a decade now. It’s only 12 bucks and you can find it pretty much everywhere.

It’s a big glass of simple strawberry fruit and tangy acidity, with none of that earthy Pinot funk which I adore, but which I also don’t want to sniff every day.

Cono Sur Pinot, don’t ever change.

I had a wonderful time stomping around the Alberta badlands. I knit and drank wine every day, of course – but not nearly to the extent you might think. As it turns out, hanging around doing nothing all day long really eats up a lot of time.

I’ve still got a small menagerie of lovely knitted things to show you, as well as a delectable bottle or two. (Though, the theme of our trip was “value”, so I wasn’t exactly drinking Champagne out there.)

On to more pressing matters: it’s WTF Wednesday! In keeping with the spirit of vacations come and gone, I present you with this:

A wine spa.

This spa is located at the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun, a “hot springs amusement park and spa resort” in Hakone, Japan. The pool is filled with red wine, and though it doesn’t say what kind, the big bottle in the background is Beaujolais Nouveau, and these shots were taken in November 2009 to celebrate its launch.

What I really find both amusing and baffling is this picture below:

Judging by the little dude happily cavorting in the Nouveau, apparently they don’t check your ID before you enter the wine tub. Wine glasses also seem to be optional. (Though, at least they are drinking from a fresh bottle, and not just dipping into the tub. Because, gross.)

I can’t decide if this spa is awesome or repulsive. I suspect it’s a bit of both. And I think this guy’s expression captures that sentiment beautifully:

This week’s WTF is all about cars. Which is actually really strange for me, since I detest driving and all things related. I don’t even have my bloody licence.

But that doesn’t meant I can’t appreciate this: a life-sized knitted Ferrari, made by artist Lauren Porter:

Flashy red sports cars  pretty much top my list of Things I Hate About Driving and Everything Related to Driving, but when taken out of context like this suddenly I love them. Here’s a video interview with the artist, which also includes a fast motion clip of the car’s assembly:

And in keeping with the car theme, our wine WTF is this:

"Hey hun, watch the leather - daddy will kill me if it gets scuffed."

William and Kate’s wedding car, which was powered by biofuel made from leftover (British) wine. (Which some would say is the only thing British wine is good for, HA!)

The car actually belongs to Prince Charles (am I the only one who finds it funny that William borrowed his dad’s car to cruise around with his girl?), who had it converted to run on wine-derived biofuel back in 2008. Actually, this is a pretty great use of wine that would normally be dumped into the Thames, and with any luck it will catch on. (Though admittedly it is really expensive to retrofit your car like this. Still, if anyone can afford to do it, it’s the royal family.)

Now someone just needs to make a wine-powered knitted car, and I might actually be motivated to buy it and get on the road myself.

NV Zonin Special Cuvée Prosecco

It tastes like apples and pears. This is good.

And this is a very nice sock that  I finished knitting while drinking the aforementioned prosecco:

It looks like flowers and hours of work. This is good.

Actually, I was a bit surprised by how well I was able to manage the colourwork. I have dabbled in fair isle before, but hadn’t tackled anything major. I recently discovered the wondrous beauty that is Norwegian folk knitting, however, and couldn’t resist trying a traditional-type pattern.

There were some hiccups, of course – I’m not sure if Nordic women have extremely narrow feet or what, but the pattern called for a crazy amount of decreasing for the gusset and foot. Which is all the more amusing, given that I initially cast on for the medium size but the cuff was turning out way big, so I started over on the small – which has an even narrower foot.

So these socks are essentially the smallest size for the leg, and the largest size for the foot. Clearly mine are not Nordic feet.

Now I just need to remember all these changes when I knit its mate.

Despite how difficult, convoluted, and just plain incomprehensible the act of knitting may seem to the uninitiated (and indeed, even to the veteran knitter on a bad day), at its core knitting is always just a bunch of loops.

I shouldn’t be surprised, then, to see something like this come along: arm knitting and finger knitting, which replaces those sticks with your own arms/fingers.

I’ve had a similar thought in passing, while playing one of those “deserted island” games where you pick what you would absolutely and totally have to bring with you if you were stranded on a deserted island. My choices usually oscillate between boxes of wine and boxes of fibre. (I could settle for a 50/50 mix, probably.)

Interestingly, though I would certainly love to chuck in a set of Addi Turbo lace tip interchangeable needles, if I had to choose between those and a good stash of wool, I would invariably pick the wool. I figured that I could always just whittle some twigs into dpn’s, or even use my own fingers if things got really desperate.

Well, turns out that knitting with your fingers is no new thing – apparently it’s often taught to kids to teach them the basics of knitting. Click here for a great tutorial on finger knitting, or on the video below:

Australian fibre artist Teresa Dair has taken finger knitting one step further. In addition to creating some seriously cool and funky knit stuff that she sells in her shop, back in May 2011 she had an exhibit at the Craft and Quilt Fair in Perth where she demonstrated arm knitting.

It’s pretty cool, though obviously you end up with a seriously large garment. Good for funky scarves; not so good for socks. I’ll have to try this out sometime and report back.

I knew I would have to wait a season and examine the tree in full bloom to confirm its identity.

After watching it explode in a riot of pale pink flowers in May (sorry, no pictures – it was really pretty though!), and then seeing those flowers develop into little red berries all along the branches, I think I have it: Nanking Cherry.

The cherries are very sour, but quite tasty. Hopefully they’ll sweeten up a bit when they ripen fully.

I’ve read these make good jelly, and wine. Perhaps someone has found other good uses for them?

…after you’ve had too many pints and realized that a two-inch cuff of BLACK RIBBING is not compatible with knitting in the dark.

But dudes, I only made one mistake. And I was able to disguise it with duplicate stitch. My pride is unbounded.

(And yes, I knit in bars. All the time. Every time. I’d just be sitting there drinking, anyway – only the scenery differentiates it from a typical night at Chez CellarDoor.)

Anyone who stopped here over the past two months will know that CellarDoor has been on a bit of a hiatus. It was unplanned. It just kind of happened. Sorry ‘bout that.

Truth be told, I became a little weary of blogging, and simply needed a break; this weariness was directly correlated to a change in my drinking habits. (Funny enough, when I don’t drink booze, I’m not that motivated to write about it either.)

For some time now I’ve toyed with the idea of hijacking this self-styled wine blog and turning it into a part wine, part knitting blog.

Yes, you read that correctly: knitting. I am a knitter. I am intensely proud of this fact, and it has come to occupy an as intrinsic a part of my life and identity as wine has.

I realize that on the surface, wine and knitting don’t seem to go together. (To the non-knitters, that is – my fellow knitters are derisively spit-taking into their drinks right now.) However, I figure if there’s a wine and yarn bar out there in the world, there can damn well be a wine and yarn blog too.

So, I hereby declare that henceforth this blog shall be a venue for both of my life’s non-human passions. If anything, you’ll get to see a parade of finely crafted objects and tasty beverages.

let the knitterly parade begin!

Oh, and I’m not changing the name. Cellars aren’t just for storing wine, you know – any manner of wonderful things can be kept down there. Like pickles. And old Christmas decorations. And a magnificent stash of yarn.

(In the interest of full disclosure, way back when I first started this blog I did a couple knitting posts before I decided a should streamline it into a full-time booze blog. You can read those articles here and here, if you like.)