Now that party season is upon us, we all have to contemplate strategies for dealing with the “third hand&# problem: in order to eat some hors d’oeuvres, you need two hands, which means you can’t also hold a wine glass. Above are two commercial solutions, the plate on top of the wine glass or the glass in the plate. MORE >>

Jim Budd notes that he keeps a list of 60 merchants that he wouldn’t deal with and cited the £30 million a year figure. Wine investment fraud may run £30 million a year according to a source in a BBC investigative segment that aired last night. Perhaps he should have bought wines to drink, rather than ones for speculating on. MORE >>

So with a new, recurring feature on this site, we aim to help you order wine like with aplomb and find an excellent deal. Although regular wine markup in restaurants is 300 percent of the wholesale cost, many wine lists have hidden deals. But one deal that he doesn’t telegraph is what he calls “the nugget.&# MORE >>

But don’t be fooled, it’s the real deal and well worth the tariff. It’s National Pancake Week starting March 1–who knew? The timing coincides with the week before Mardi Gras, since pancakes have been a temptation worth avoiding during lent for 2,000 years now. Site reader John G. But perhaps you are more daring than I. MORE >>

Why should customers have to resort to smartphones to find the best deals in some wine stores? But I may give them a closer look since I learned that some retailers use these blasts to offer deals that are particularly attractive, indeed, too hot even to be listed online. He found it online for $47.99 MORE >>