We thought you may like to see some photos from Napa this week. Cheers!! We hope you have a fantastic weekend.

This wine cocktail may seem a little on the Valentine’s Day kick, but we’re pretty sure you can find an occasion to raise a glass of XOXO with your significant other AND your friends! Not only is this wine cocktail unique & fun, it’s also simple and refreshing for warm spring & summer nights. Cheers!

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XOXO
Made with Sutter Home Bubbly Moscato

-3 oz. chilled Sutter Home Bubbly Moscato
-1/2 oz. white rum
-1 small scoop raspberry sorbet
-1 raspberry

Scoop a small spoonful of raspberry sorbet into a champagne flute. Top with chilled Sutter Home Bubbly Moscato and white rum. Garnish with a raspberry.

This Sutter Home wine cocktail is so simple yet so impressive! When we made them, we even heard a lot of ooooo’s and aaaaahhh’s! Dazzle your friends with today’s wine cocktail: Frosted Pink Sparkle.

Enter your original wine cocktail recipe into our Facebook contest!

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Frosted Pink Sparkle

-5 oz. chilled Sutter Home Bubbly Pink Moscato
-Sugar-rimmed champagne glass

To sugar the rim of a glass, gather two small plates. Fill one with a small amount of water and the other with sugar, about 1/4″ deep. Dip the rim of your glass into the water then into the sugar, coated the entire rim. Fill the glass with chilled Sutter Home Bubbly Pink Moscato & toast to happiness in a glass!

For more information about Sutter Home Bubbly Pink Moscato, visit our website.

Spring is here! It’s the time of year to start using fresh ingredients, enjoy meals outside and, of course, it’s party time! If you have a bridal shower, engagement party, birthday party or another party for someone close to you, Showered with Love is the perfect signature cocktail for your event!

Enter your signature cocktail into our Facebook contest! You could win a $250 Crate & Barrel gift card, perfect for all your home bar needs.

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Showered with Love
Made with Sutter Home Sweet White

-3 oz. Sutter Home Sweet White
-1 oz. vodka
-1/2 oz. pineapple juice
-3 Raspberries, muddled
-Lime, mint: garnish

Muddle 3 raspberries in the bottom of your shaker. Add ice, Sutter Home Sweet White, vodka and pineapple juice to shaker. Shake until very cold. Strain into martini glasses. Garnish with a small sprig of mint and a lime wheel.

Cheers!

Our Facebook fan, Varonica T., made salt & pepper shakers out of mini bottles of Sutter Home White Zin!

1. To make your own, pick up a 4-pack of mini bottles (187ml) of your favorite Sutter Home wine.

2. Enjoy the wine!

3. Wash out the bottles, taking care not to get the label wet. Option: if you’d like to remove the labels completely, fill your sink with soap & warm water. Let the bottles soak in the sink for about an hour. The labels should slide off. If they’re stuck, let them soak for longer, ensuring that the water is warm.

4. Let the bottles dry completely!

5. Tap a nail through the caps to make holes.

6. When completely dry, fill with salt & pepper.

Do you have a cool wine-related craft? Leave it in our comments or post it on our Facebook page! We love creative ideas that recycle, reuse & upcycle!

Our wine cocktail recipe contest continues every month until the end of 2012! We have so many resources for you to get started…

We’ve been creating a ton of new recipes and maybe you haven’t had enough time to try them all. They’re all here on our blog if you ever need inspiration to make your own Sutter Home wine cocktail.

Want to make it a party? Read our quick blog post on hosting a mixology party! You need some Sutter Home wines, some mixers, a few bar tools & you and your friends are off to a fun evening.

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Inspirational Cocktail

Simply Bubbly
-4 oz. Sutter Home Bubbly Moscato
-Strawberry
Serve chilled Sutter Home Bubbly Moscato in a champagne flute & drop in a clean strawberry. It’s simple, beautiful & perfect for a celebration dinner, brunch with the girls or a toast to one of life’s many pleasures!

Spring has sprung around the country, perfect timing for a refreshing wine cocktail that’s easy to make, easy to serve & pairs with tons of foods! Try it this weekend (or tonight!) Make it your own – add a new ingredient, blend it, change it up – and enter your unique cocktail into our contest!

For more information, visit the Wine Cocktails category on our blog. Cheers!

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Raspberry Jammin’
-3 oz. Sutter Home Merlot
-1 1/2 oz. raspberry liqueur
-1 oz. club soda

Shake Sutter Home Merlot and raspberry liqueur with ice. Strain into a rocks glass with ice. Top with club soda and garnish with a lime. Cheers!

Our March Book Club book is Losing Clementine by Ashley Ream. Have you picked it up yet?

“A bold debut from an exciting new voice, Losing Clementine is a wonderfully entertaining and poignant novel about unanticipated self-discovery that features one of the most irresistible, if deeply flawed, characters to grace contemporary fiction in years.”

This month’s author’s recipe is Potato Soup, paired with Sutter Home Chardonnay. Visit our site for all of our books with recipes & wine pairings!

Every month, we offer four book choices on our Facebook Book Club app that our fans can vote on. Based on your votes, we tally up the scores and the winner is the book for the next month! Voting for April’s book is over, but in early April, we’ll open up voting for May’s book!

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With 375 (!) votes, April’s book is A Wish and a Prayer by Beverly Jenkins! Watch for all the details about this book on our Facebook page & website in April.

Last week, the Jamis/Sutter Home Professional Cycling Team wrapped up a successful 2012 training camp. The team members went through media training, planned out the race season, and met the great sponsors at Sutter Home with a fun bike ride a delicious dinner at the winery in St Helena, CA. Additionally, they dialed in their new Jamis Xenith SL racing bicycles, were outfitted in the new team race kit (cycling jerseys and shorts), and logged some serious training miles on the roads of Napa and Sonoma counties.

Now the team is off to the races! 8 guys are currently outside of Mexico City racing the 8-stage Vuelta Mexico Telmex (the photo below is of Carson Miller driving the breakaway on Stage 3) and 6 guys are getting ready to start the Redlands Cycling Classic in California tomorrow. Wish them luck!

To follow the team and their racing check out their Facebook fan page or the official team website.

Love cosmos? You’ll love our take on it! Shake up this refreshing cocktail & enjoy with your girlfriends. Our Sweetini is made with Sutter Home Sweet Red – a sweet take on the always fun cosmo. Don’t forget to enter your favorite personal cocktail creations into our contest!

What’s your ideal night with your friends?

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Sweetini

-2 oz. Sutter Home Sweet Red
-1 oz. vodka
-1/2 oz. cranberry juice
1/2 oz. lime juice

Fill your shaker with ice and add all of the ingredients. Shake until cold. Strain into a martini glass & garnish with a lime. Cheers!