It's not that you could ever be accused of running with the herd. However, when we're talking about the choices of several million people, and those choices concern several million bottles of wine, well, it couldn't hurt to lend one little ear to the vox populi.

The masses in questions are those ordering bottles from Wine.com, and after having tabulated the scores the site has released its Top 100 list for 8,000 different wines sold in 2009. You might be fatigued from the news that "value is clearly the running theme this year," but your offshore account will be glad of the fact that 75 of this year's wines slide in under $20, and only two exceed $100 even though the average list's average price rose compared to 2008. Your palate will rejoice as well: 93 of the wines are rated higher than 90 points, and the top wine is Cambria Julia's Vineyard 2006 Pinot Noir, with two 90-plus point ratings. That also happens to be Wine Enthusiast's #1 wine of 2009. And yes, it's less than $20.

Feel free to peek, and we won't tell anyone you bought something only because you saw it on a Top 100 list. But if you do, at least you'll have very good company. Lots of it.

[Image: Wine glass courtesy of Delphaber via CC2.0]

Chocolate and wine, two of our favorite things. It only makes sense to pair them together, right? There are some who feel they don't mix well at all, but many people find that wine and chocolate can really enhance and bring out the best in each other. To get started remember that there are no rules, just the fun of experimenting with whatever combinations you like. There are, however, a few rules of thumb to consider.

Approach wine and chocolate tasting the same way you would any other tasting: start with the light options and move your way through the spectrum to the darker, heavier flavors. In general, the sweeter the chocolate the sweeter the wine should be, and the lighter the chocolate (consider flavor, not just color) the lighter the wine. Full-bodied, heavy red wines will best complement dark and bittersweet chocolates, while a light riesling or dessert wine will more likely pair well with a sweet milk chocolate. Many think champagne is wonderful with white chocolate.

One other aspect to think about when considering which wines and chocolates will go well together is each of their predominate and underlying flavors -- you'll get very different results when you choose varieties that have similar flavors versus those with very contrasting ones.

Last week I wrote about Crushpad's new TinyBottles. We may be looking at a new trend here because a new companyTasting Room has also recently unveiled their sample-sized wine bottle tasting kits. While Crushpad's bottles are straight tubes the Tasting Room ones are mini wine bottles. The first winemaker to use the new systems is Seghesio Vineyards which is shipping packaged tasting kits with 50ml glass bottles. The first packages were delivered to a select group of their customers and featured the 2007 Cortina Zinfandel, 2007 San Lorenzo Zinfandel, 2007 Old Vine Zinfandel, 2006 Omaggio, 2005 San Lorenzo Petite Syrah and the 2004 Aglianico. These tasting kits are also being shipped through the wholesale channel for wine presentations to retail and restaurant accounts. In a press release, Peter Seghesio, CEO and winegrower, Seghesio Vineyards, said that he believes the new small bottles will be "revolutionary for the wine industry."

In Wines and Vines, TastingRoom's founder, Tim Bucher, says his format better preserves the wine and is more popular with consumers. Hiis company spent a year developing the new, patent-pending T.A.S.T.E. Technology (Total Anaerobic Sample Transfer Environment) which preserves wine integrity. In this process wine is transferred from larger bottles into smaller bottles in a sealed, zero-oxygen chamber. Although Seghesio is the first winemaker involved it is expected that a variety of other wineries will jump on board.

Many a gift is made that much more compelling by the addition of a bottle of wine. So when the opportunity arises to give a gift that is sprinkled with phrases like "private" and "VIP" and "Napa," and that gift comes with not one, but three, bottles of distinguished ambrosia -- well, it begins to look like a little bit of attention might be in order.

Wine.com's By Appointment Only will stuff your mailbox with a package of cabernets from Quintessa, Chateau Montelena, and Caymus. Yet those are merely to get you in the mood. The feature delight comes the next time you visit Napa: private appointments at each vineyard, during which you'll tour the facilities, sample as-yet-unbottled selections straight from the barrels -- so bring a straw -- and if Madame Nature plays fair, a tour of the vineyard

These are no rush jobs, either: each group is just four people, and each visitation lasts up to 3 hours. Which means that when you've finished your preliminary samplings and you want to know what makes Caymus so subtly capricious, Chateau Montelena so delicately moving, and Quintessa so.. just plain divine, By Appointment Only is your peek behind their veils. Oh, and priced at $500, it also has a superb finish: it's good until the summer of 2011.

When airlines need to cut costs they have some decisions to make, should they charge more for bags, cut down on amenities, raise ticket prices? Singapore Airlines has said that they will keep the airline's large wine budget even amidst other cuts that include the CEO taking a 20 percent cut in salary after the company's second-successive quarterly loss.

Steven Spurrier, Decanter's consultant editor and one of Singapore Airlines' three wine consultants told decanter.com that passengers who are travel first class still expect the best and that includes fine wines. On the airline passengers are served Dom Pérignon and Krug Champagnes, as well as Grand Cru Burgundy and second-growth Bordeaux.

Singapore Air offers luxury service in their first class cabin that includes Givenchy pajamas, amenities kits from Ferragamo, leather seats and gourmet food that includes entrees like lobster Thermidor with buttered asparagus. It's no surprise that Singapore Air won the best first-class cabin award this year in a survey by London-based research company Skytrax.

The well known women at wowOwow.com are stopping by Luxist on a frequent basis to answer your savvy shopping and spending questions. This week we asked them: What's your favorite hostess gift to give? And to receive?

Candice Bergen: I was very proud of myself when a dear friend whose ranch we get to go to every year loved the hand-tooled leather songbooks I had made for future sing-alongs for his guests. It's lovely when people bring little things but our own Mary Wells is the MOST extravagant gift giver ever, so it's really fun to have her over. But I do have a drawer of gloves, scarves and bracelets that are up for grabs if anyone's interested? Oh, and I like giving hand-painted mugs I make at Color Me Mine because it's fun and personal.

Can lighting affect wine taste? One German study found that drinkers who were served a bottle of Riesling in differently lit environments had different taste experiences. Researchers found that subjects rated the wine as better and more expensive tasting when exposed to the red or blue background lighting versus rooms with green or white background lighting. According to an article in the Telegraph, the wine was described as being sweeter and fruitier in red light than in white or green light. When drinking in the red or blue lit room the subjects though the wine was worth as much as one euro more for the same bottle.

Dr Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel, of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz said in the Telegraph article that more tests are needed to determine why the color makes a difference. One theory is that some colors put people in a more positive mood but it may be more complex than that. The study certainly makes a case for mood lighting in wine shops and tasting rooms as well as in bars or restaurants.

Some people are hard to shop for -- what do you get for that person who has everything? Answer: Booze. Something consumable is almost always a solid choice, unless you know your friend is on some kind of special diet. Cupcakes are great, but a bottle of something imbiblious is festive and practically synonymous with celebration.

A simple bottle of wine can be a pretty lame gift. If you want your gift to matter, be noticed, or be remembered, go for something a little extra special. Here's our list of 10 great holiday bottles (and new-this-season treats) that will have your recipient charmed and delighted. Click through the gallery for pics of each!

1. La Vie Grand Marnier. This limited edition metallic red bottle (above right) is cheery and bright, and comes in an upbeat, vintage French poster-inspired box. $69.95.

If you like your bubbly there is a new conference devoted just to champagne and sparkling wine. The Independent Champagne and Sparkling Wine Invitational (ICSWI) is both a public and industry conference entirely dedicated to sparkling wines. The event, which will take place April 16-18 in New Orleans, will offer a serious and educated look at the sparkling wine grower producer world, but also include plenty of bubbly fun. There will be both educational seminars as well as events like "Bubbles and Blues on Bourbon Street", or "The Bubbly Block Party on Rue Royal", or a Seminar on mixing sparkling wine-based cocktails with award-winning mixologists.

For the event a general pass is $850 and includes the welcome reception, a daily seminar, Grand Tastings, and The Bubbly Block Party on Rue Royal. The Premier Cru pass for $1,350 adds in The Mad Scientist Mixology Party, Winemakers Dinner, and The Finale Champagne Brunch and the VIP Grand Cru pass for $1,900 adds in a VIP welcome reception, special entrance and seating, VIP Winemakers Dinner, Rarities Charity Dinner and Silent Auction.

The latest innovation from custom winemaking facility Crushpad is a new way to get their boutique wines into more hands. Their new TinyBottles come in sets of four letting potential buyers taste several different wines for a lower cost, hopefully attracting those who might balk at spending $50 or more for an unfamiliar wine.

The new tasting kits are available on the site BrixR.com, a website that also includes videos and recommendations and sells wines from the various small vineyards. On Brixr a four bottle tasting pack sells for $29.95. The bottles were developed for Crushpad customers but an article on Wines & Vines says that Crushpad could also use the system for other wines include barrel samples or imports. Other applications include online tasting, retail or restaurant samples, in-flight wine tastings or review samples.

Part of the lure of drinking older vintages is the idea of quaffing history, imagining what was happening when the bottle was first sealed. The 427-year-old La Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris recently auctioned off some of its drinkable history in an auction that brought in 1.54 million euros in two days. A bottle of 1788 Clos du Griffier cognac was one of the first of around 18,000 bottles auctioned off. French entrepreneur Raphael Zier paid 25,000 euros for it but is quoted by Bloomberg as saying that he paid 10 times the asking price because he was eager to contribute to the charity for children, Association Petits Princes, which would get the proceeds. Ivan Imenitov, a Russian businessman picked up another bottle of the 1788 Clos du Griffier for 15,000 euros. It was priced lower because mold had obscured the label. Imenitvov said he was just happy to get the aged cognac, label or not. Collectors from around the world picked up bottles of aged Bordeaux and Burgundy. The bottles, which were bought directly from vinters and sent straight to the seller, had an impeccable provenance, a concern in these days of wine fraud.

The auction also brought attention back to the historic restaurant which is currently trying to earn back a second Michelin star (at one point it had three but is now down to one). Most of the auction proceeds, except for the charity sale of the cognac bottle, will go toward fleshing out the wine cellar with newer vintages and sprucing up the kitchen.

Oxidized wine can be a nightmare for any winemaker. Francis Ford Coppola's winery is suing Vinocor, the maker of specialized screw caps and custom bottles for the Coppola's Encyclopedia wine series. The wines were created to showcase varietals that best represent the culture and traditions of different winegrowing regions and have distinctive beaker-like bottles. Coppola's team says that defective bottles and caps ended up ruining 55,000 cases of wine.

Francis Ford Coppola Presents is taking on Vinocor USA, saying that they paid $685,000 for the packaging but that the first shipment had bottles with chipped glass and caps that had uneven threading and were bent. According to Courthouse News Service, Coppola has said that he complained about the first shipment and Vinocor promised it would fix the problem. Coppola says he ordered another 100,000 screw caps and another round of bottles, but they were also defective. The bottles and caps leaked and allowed air in, causing oxidation and tainting the wine. Coppola's winery wants a return of money spent as well as unspecified damages.

The expression "Cost is no object" goes both ways: sometimes your greatest desires can consume an entire trust fund, other times they can be fulfilled for a few quarters. Yet wen it comes to matters of literal taste -- the kind you judge with your palate -- your mouth knows what it likes, dollar signs be damned. And when it comes to wine, as anyone who has shopped in Paris for a bottle of red knows, one can find some startlingly delicious vintages at startlingly low prices.

Robin Goldstein's The Wine Trials 2010 helps you find divine deals on either side of the pond. The tome has 150 recommendations for wines under $15, all of which were chosen in blind taste tests. The fine print says the "results were compiled, analyzed, and reviewed by a team of scientists including statisticians, neuroscientists, and economists," but as with those dollar signs, your taste buds don't care about them, either -- the point is that you can indulge in rewarding varietals without wincing.

There were 450 wines, bruts, and champagnes tested, with winners emerging from Spain, Portugal, Argentina, France, Germany, and Washington state among others. Goldstein also includes a section called "The taste of money" examining the the principle that people believe a wine tastes better if they know it's expensive. And no, the picture doesn't lie: there are even three box wines included, if you are fearless about your frontiers.

We'll be honest: it's occasionally rewarding to remember that luxury doesn't need to cost a fortune. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't, so don't get any ideas...

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for five-dollar words and crepuscule has to be one of my favorites. It is a French word referring to the magical hour of twilight. It's also the name for a magical dessert wine. The 2006 Crepuscule Late Harvest Semillon, $90 (375 ml) is a wine from Swanson Vineyards in Rutherford, California. Swanson has made this wine eight times over the past 22 years, needing exactly the right conditions for 'noble rot.' The wine includes some Sauvignon Blanc and is fermented in new French oak with native yeast.

Swanson has made my bottles to bring lists before, their dessert wines are some of the best produced in California and with names like Arsene, Minuit, Tardif and Luminous they are great conversation starters. The 2006 Arsene Fortified Petite Sirah which sells for $75 is a port-style desert wine that would pair terrifically with dark chocolate truffles. The 2004 Minuit Black Muscat, $65 (375 ml) is made entirely of black muscat grapes, vinified in a process developed by Spanish missionaries two hundred years ago, adding brandy to the just harvested juice. The wine's name, the French word for midnight, seems to suggest the ideal drinking time. The 2005 Tardif Late Harvest Chardonnay, $80 (375 ml), is golden wine with a honey nectar flavor, it would be all sorts of wonderful served with a creamy cheesecake. The 2006 Luminous Gewurztraminer Ice Wine, $85 (375 ml) has the classic piercing sweetness of ice wine and expresses the lychee and honeysuckle character of the grape.

For chocolate lovers, the Alexis bonbon, a collaboration between Alexis Swanson Traina and Katrina Markoff of Vosges Haut Chocolate is a must-try. It has a cocoa and cabernet sauvignon center, is dipped in Belgian chocolate and dusted with a delicate curry powder.

Celebrity endorsement is a common thing in sports equipment but not quite so common in the world of wine. Master Sommelier and Master of Wine Ronn Wiegand has collaborated on hew line of wine glasses with German line Eisch Glaskultur. The Ronn Wiegand Signature series of Breathable wine glasses were collaboratively designed by Ronn Wiegand and Eisch. In a press release, Wiegand stated that after a year and a half of using Eisch Breathable glasses on a daily basis on hundreds and hundreds of red, white, and rose wines from around the world he was very impressed. He found that they helped wines taste smoother, fruitier, and more forward. The new line is machine-made, lead-free crystal with a pulled stem and is specially designed to show the best in New World wines. Each piece is produced from a single lump of glass, eliminating the seam between the stem and the bowl. The series includes glasses for Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Chardonnay, Champagne, and an all-purpose Red Wine glass. The Ronn Wiegand Signature line also includes a Tumbler. Prices range from $239.99 to $324.99 for a set of six glasses.