Crave

Keeping the drinks cool and the mood warm.

(Credit: Drinkstuff)

Mood lighting is important in any situation. However, when a bottle of wine is opened the need is even more pronounced. It just calls for having the lights down low and some pleasant tunes on the hi-fi. Of course some friendly company is an agreeable accompaniment too.

But what of the times when the lights just aren't right? Too low or too bright, sometimes it's tricky to set the proper mood.

Enter the Drink Light Bottle Cooler. Or rather, turn it on.

This combination designed by Jorge Najera takes the lowly ice bucket and transforms it into something special. Weighing in at about 13 pounds and reaching up to about 2 1/2 feet, the freestanding ice bucket makes a great piece to have set up anywhere in the room. Just watch out for that power cable as it does, after all, light up.

In case you haven't noticed, the Drink Light Bottle Cooler is from across the pond. But don't let that stop you. If you have more than $400 (£274.99) to spend, you can get it shipped right on over. Of course at that price money might be an issue, so you may want to opt for the old-fashioned ice bucket and a candle instead.

(Via Appliancist)

Making champagne is by no means carbon neutral, as tree-hugging teetotalers might like to note. Carbon dioxide causes the bubbles, after all.

To be exact, champagne makers have determined that making each bottle of bubbly causes the release of 200 grams of carbon dioxide.

Cheers to carbon dioxide. More is involved in every bottle of bubbly than in other wines.

(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET)

Some champagne makers want to shrink emissions by 25 percent within 12 years and up to 75 percent by 2050. They announced the goals Tuesday at the Bordeaux Carbon Initiative, one of many recent events by vintners seeking to green their craft.

The figures do not include all sparkling wine, such as Spanish cava, made outside the Champagne region of France. The methode champenoise was born in Champagne, and only its sparkling wine can claim on the label to be true champagne.

The largest portion of that local industry's carbon emissions--39 percent--comes from bottling and packaging, with another 24 percent released in the process of making the wine, according to the champagne industry. And transportation of wine and workers makes up 13 percent, use of equipment comprise 11 percent, and products used in cellars and vines contribute another 8 percent of emissions.

The Champagne region of France releases 197,000 tons of CO2 each year--about the same as an average British city, according to Decanter Magazine.

Winemakers in Bordeaux, France, meanwhile are trying to tally the greenhouse gas emissions of grape growing, cultivating, packing, and shipping every type of wine. One Bordeaux winemaking family is harvesting sunflowers to make biofuel to power its tractors, according to the AFP.

In sunny California, winemakers are also pushing to reduce their carbon emissions. Last year Shafer Vineyards became the first to switch fully to solar power in Napa and Sonoma counties, where organic and biodynamic wine cultivation have been popular for decades. However, many oenephiles might point out that viticulture and viniculture around the world have been clean, green, and organic for centuries, if not millennia.

Sadly, my colleagues in Barcelona for the GSMA Mobile World Congress last week didn't learn more on the subject by catching the International Climate Change and Wine conference, where Al Gore keynoted.

Winemakers received access to their first tailor-made carbon footprint calculator in December.

Next-generation Web technologies are also enabling wine lovers to assemble virtual cellars and establish new communities. Web 2.0 tools for wine consumers include Snooth, Vinfolio, Bottletalk and Cork'd.

This tasty beverage can spell doom for some people.

(Credit: André Karwath via Wikipedia)

Red wine is a drink with a dark side. We praise it for its full body, long legs, and exquisite nose, but the bacchanalian beverage has long been accused of being particularly prone to giving people headaches. Some people have such a sensitivity to red wine that they can't drink it at all.

Now, the Associated Press has good news for all you wine lovers. Scientists have speculated that the chemical culprit in red wine might be biogenic amines, like histamines. And although that hasn't been proved for certain yet, a group of UC Berkeley researchers working on that hunch have created a device that can detect the level of those amines appearing in a glass of wine.

With a single drop, the device can determine how much of the nasties are in a glass of wine and, therefore, how likely an amine-sensitive person is to get a headache after a few drinks. Right now the device is the size of a briefcase, but the lead researcher and the start-up he co-founded are working to get that down to the size of a PDA.

Interestingly, the technology it's based on was developed by NASA to help detect life on Mars. Who says investing in NASA is a waste?

(Credit: Haunted Bay)

Making a Cylon Jack-o-Lantern will be a piece of cake--er, pie--with the Pumpkin Gutter, a $12 drill attachment that lets you zip through the sticky pumpkin prep stage and get right to carving. All you have to do is cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin, use the dishwasher-safe Pumpkin Gutter to loosen the strings and thin out the walls, and then dump the guts out. The tool even leaves the seeds intact for those who like to turn them into snacks.

We're always wary of seasonal gadgets, which often turn out to be a waste of money. But according to this review on Haunted Bay, the total time from raw pumpkin to simple jack-o-lantern was about 10 minutes, making the Pumpkin Gutter especially handy if you're preparing multiple pumpkins this season.

For a pumpkin-carving tool that might see the light of day at other times of the year, check out Sur La Table's serrated pumpkin carving knife (on sale!), which looks like it would be handy for all manner of thick-skinned fruits and vegetables.

And if you prefer eating pumpkins to carving them, Apartment Therapy: Kitchen has a guide to splitting the smaller, edible pumpkin varieties with a chef's knife, while Star Chefs has articles on pumpkin-friendly wines as well as wine pairings for pumpkin seeds, candy corn, caramel apples, and other Halloween treats.

I'd initially been skeptical about BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD), the Web site that just opened today (see previous coverage) in which you can remotely order drinks for your friends that they can redeem at participating bars by showing the bartender a code in a text message. It's available at about 40 bars in New York City and the surrounding area, and the company plans to gradually expand to other urban areas over the course of the year.

I'd been pretty confident that the site itself would work, but I hadn't been entirely positive that the bars involved would really have their act together. Rafe Needleman was very kind to use BYFAD to text me a few bucks so that I'd be able to try the service out, but going into it, I was fully expecting that I'd be greeted with a strange look when I tried to pay for libations with a code in a text message.

However, when CNET associate producer Wilson Tang and I rolled into the Mad Hatter Saloon, just a few blocks from our Manhattan bureau, we were pleasantly surprised. The bartender initially wasn't aware that BYFAD codes could be contained in text messages (she'd thought it would be in the form of an e-mail printout) but she was aware of the site and knew what to do. There was a bit of a delay while she entered the code into the bar's credit card system, but I think that's something that most people will be willing to accept.

The apple martini that I bought with a text message

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy)

It basically did work just like a gift certificate or promotional code. Our balance went slightly over the amount Rafe had sent, because there were two of us, but that went through quite smoothly--we just handed over the amount of cash required to settle the check. And I had a darned good apple martini (though not an iMartini). Thanks, Rafe!

So, I give BuyYourFriendADrink a thumbs-up. Sure, it's gimmicky, and it's still very limited. But now when I win bets with my West Coast-based colleagues, I don't have to wait until I'm traveling out there for my "you owe me a beer" agreements to be fulfilled.

How many times have you been IMing with a friend or co-worker across the country, placed a bet ("If that Sanjaya guy gets the boot tonight, you owe me a beer!"), completed said bet, but had no immediate way to fulfill it because the other person involved was miles away? Well, now there's a brand-new solution--but just for New Yorkers, for the time being.

BuyYourFriendADrink.com was launched today and announced on the New York edition of e-mail events service Thrillist. BuyYourFriendADrink, or BYFAD, is a way to purchase libations for your friends online, which they can then redeem at participating establishments with the help of a text message. If you owe a friend a drink, or just want to be nice, head on over to the BYFAD Web site and fill out the form--you'll need to have that friend's cell phone number on hand. You can opt to give them a dollar amount between $5 and $250, and there's a 99-cent processing fee. Then, your friend receives an e-mail and a text message alerting them of the yummy drinkable gift, along with a promotional code.

The recipient then, presumably, can look up BYFAD-participating bars, choose one of them, and head over there. Then, he or she can just show the text message at the bartender, and it's processed through the bar's credit card system. So, basically, it's like a gift certificate by text message--nothing really revolutionary in the technology, but as far as we know, this is the first company to give SMS gift certificates a quick, tech-savvy happy-hour slant. It sounds almost too easy, but then again, mobile commerce is gaining some real speed these days.

I called up BYFAD's CEO, Steven Cohn, to see about the site's future plans. Currently, there are deals with 46 bars in New York City and the surrounding metro area (Hoboken, NJ and Long Island), 38 of which are active. The remaining eight should be added over the next few weeks. As for expansion outside of New York City, Cohn told me that several other northeastern and mid-Atlantic cities--Boston, Philadelphia, and DC--will be rolled out over the next few months. Other cities, including San Francisco, should be added in the second half of 2007.

The big question is--does it work? We'll see! CNET's small but fun-loving NYC outpost will be giving BYFAD a test run this afternoon once it's a more, uh, appropriate hour for beer. If it runs smoothly, I think this shows real promise.

See also: Happy Hour 2.0.