I’ve been seeing this wine lately at Trader Joe’s and fell in love with the label on the bottle. I was actually looking at one of the reds by 19 Crimes when I discovered this Chardonnay this morning. I was at our local bagel shop, as I am almost every morning, when I noticed a couple men having a meeting and one was wearing a shirt that said “19 Crimes” on it. I said to my daughter “Oh my goodness, I’ve been looking at this wine for the last couple of weeks at Trader Joe’s and I think these men might work for the wine company. I need to go talk to them.” She replied with “Oh geez!” Kylie knows I can strike up a conversation with most anyone and I was just about to do that again. Which I did.

I asked him if he worked for 19 Crimes, and he told me they are a distributor for several wines and this is one of the newest. It’s been quite the hit. He told me about an app you can download called “19 Wines”. This app brings the wine label to life. It is the coolest app, I have been having fun with it all day.

You open the app and face the phone camera at the label. The criminal on the label comes to life and tells you what their crime was. The woman on my label was in trouble for stealing bacon. That was her crime. It gives you a monologue broken into three parts; wait to hear all three parts of the story. I wanted to put a video of this on my blog, but WordPress won’t let me post a video. I will be posting video of this on my Facebook page if you are interested in seeing how this app works. It is a lot of fun! (I can be found at Kris Paust Braunreiter on Facebook.)

I was especially excited to buy this wine today because my Neighborhood book club is meeting tomorrow evening. We just finished reading “The Black Hand” by Stephen Talty. This is the story of how the mafia came to be in America. The book is being made into a movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He is also producing this movie. I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to the movie. How appropriate to have a wine that is named 19 Crimes when you are discussing a book like “The Black Hand”!

I’m looking forward to bringing this wine to book club and showing my friends this new app. I hope they have as much fun with it as I did!

This is what shows up when you open the app.

Until next time, Kris