Many thanks to everyone who donated this year.

Over $86,000 have been raised so far; let’s see how close we can get to $100,000!

Thanks to all who have bid on my prize of 3 bottles of the Roussanne I’m making with the Winecast Crushpad group. If you want to try to get those bottles, just go here and make a donation referencing WB17 in the notes field. You best do this soon as there are only a few hours to go.

I also noticed no one has made a donation to win my lot of 3 bottles of our open-source Roussanne blend. For only $10 per chance you’ll get 3 of the first bottles off the line after it’s finished aging next summer. I’ll be happy to sign and/or personalize each bottle before shipping them to your door. They would make a great gift or complement your Thanksgiving table next year.

If you’d like to donate, make sure you use code WB17 for your chance to win this rare wine. It’s fast and easy, just click here to go to the page at Firstgiving. There are a bunch of other great wine prizes that need some love, as well.

That’s right, it’s time for another Menu For Hope fund drive and I’m pleased to again participate by donating a prize for the raffle. Between now and midnight December 21st, you can bid on many great wine and food prizes including my lot of 3 bottles of the open source Roussanne I’m making at Crushpad. This is from my personal allocation and I’ll be happy to sign and/or personalize each bottle for the winner. Given the various wine shipping laws, I can only offer to ship this lot within the United States.

This project will only produce about 50 cases of a Rhone-inspired white blend made mostly from Roussanne grown in the noted Westerly Vineyard in the Santa Ynez AVA. We’ve just finished fermentation and now will let the wine settle in for aging in neutral oak barrels (pictured to the right). Our group will decide the final blend this spring which will also likely include Marsanne and Viognier.

The only way to buy this wine is to join my Crushpad group which includes a 1 case allocation. If you want less than a case, here’s a way to get 3 bottles for as low as a $10 donation (the wine sells for $18 per bottle plus I’m covering the shipping cost to your door so this is over a $60 value). Just bid on code WB17 for your chance to win this rare wine.

Menu For Home started four years ago and all donations support the UN World Food Programme. Last year nearly $61,000 was raised to feed the hungry around the world. I encourage all readers and listeners to support this effort by buying raffle tickets for this and many other prizes listed at Chez Pim and Vinography.

Donation instructions:

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2007/12/menu-for-hope-4.html

2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope4 and make a donation.

3. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code. Remember the Winecast Roussanne prize code is WB17.

Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.

5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday January 9 for the results of the raffle. I will also post here when the results are announced.

Thank you for your support of this worthy cause.

A big thank you to all who donated this year and to Pim and Alder.

Happy Holidays!

WB07, WB09, WB10, WB15, WB22, WB08, WB12, WB14, WB16, WB17

For the decoder, click here. You’ve got about an hour from now…

$56,661.70 raised as of now; most excellent. Thanks!

You can check out the complete list here and I will be posting again in the morning with a buyers guide for each wine item. Donations close at 6pm Pacific time tomorrow night, so there is still time to support this worthy cause.

read more | digg story

Someone submitted “Menu for Hope III” at Digg (not sure why it’s in “Political News” but they don’t have a proper food & wine category). So if you are a Digger, please add your vote to raise this story to more people not in the food & wine blogosphere (my Digg is #2 as I blog this).

Just checked the donation page and we’re up to $8,360 already; w00t!

read more | digg story

Wine blogger extraordinaire Alder Yarrow of Vinography is hosting all the participating wine bloggers this year. You can check out all the great prizes offered at his site. Also be sure to check out the prizes offered by food bloggers, as well, over at Chez Pim. The campaign is open now and will close at midnight PST on December 22, 2006 with prize winners announced on January 15, 2007.

I pondered what the best prize from me might be, and considered wine books or accessories, but finally settled on a more personal prize, customized to the winner’s wishes…

Winecast Prize: Personal Wine Blog Feed

The winner of this raffle will receive their own personal blog (RSS) feed written by me each week for a year. There will be at least one post each week on the winner’s wine related subject(s) of choice. Also included is a phone call, instant messaging session or email exchange to better understand the winner’s interests in wine before starting. These posts can be read online, via an RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines or via an email subscription. You can also share this feed with friends and family, if you choose.

Examples of posts are personalized wine recommendations, food matching tips, wine events of interest, wine education subjects and perhaps a podcast or two. It will really depend upon what the winner would like to learn more about.

Want to know more about Rhone wines? The best restaurants in Napa and Sonoma valleys? What wines will age well for your child’s (or grandchild’s) 21st birthday? What red wines are best with eel? Whatever you would like that is wine related is fair-game.

So if you’ve always wanted to be my part-time editor here at Winecast, now is the time to act. This is also a great gift idea for the wine lover who has everything (I know, you could always get them more wine, but you get the idea

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

Make your donation today by clicking here and indicate you would like prize “WB08” in the comments field. Each $10 donation will give you one chance to win.

I hope the Winecast community will be generous this holiday season and support this worthy cause. I’ll keep you posted on the status of the campaign as it goes along.

Peace.