Are you thinking about buying wine for the holidays? Santa is busy right now, but there are other red-nosed characters who can help you in the liquor store.

My team of wine reviewers and I have put our best wine picks into our free mobile wine app. You scan more than 150,000 bottle bar codes to instantly get tasting notes and food matches.

Christmas came early last week when Apple selected it as the only Canadian app to be included in its Essentials Collections in the "Apps for Foodies" and "Pocket Sommelier" categories.  

With 136,000 users on iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Android  who access hundreds of thousands of wine picks and pairings monthly, our web site traffic has skyrocketed, even though that's not captured by Google and other sites. We remain Canada's largest wine site... we'll drink to that!

Meanwhile, I'm happily exhausted from a month-long book tour across the country for Unquenchable, with 17 events that gave me the opportunity to meet thousands of kind and enthusiastic wine lovers. 

You may find the media interviews of interest as most focus on tips for finding wines that taste twice as expensive as they cost. I've also linked to an article below on buying wine as a gift this holiday.

My thanks to all who have put Unquenchable on the bestseller non-fiction list. You're welcome to post your own review of it on the site. I raise my glass to you!