The dog days of summer are once again upon us. Whether your remedy to beat the heat is a cool pool, a shade tree, or a blasting air conditioner, it always helps to have a relaxing beverage to help ease the pain. IntoWine.com asked our panel of wine experts to recommend refreshing white wines for those hot summer nights: " On a hot summer evening, I look for a chilled white wine. I also find that if the wine has a bit of sweetness, it offsets the heat a bit. My go-to wines on these evenings tend to be Rieslings. Rieslings are one of the most versatile wines for matching with food. They are especially great with light summer fare such as a salad or fish or fruit. They also make easy sipping on their own.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINERIES GO ORGANIC, SUSTAINABLE AND BIODYNAMIC From large to small, northern California wineries are starting to color their operations green, whether by organically growing their grapes, practicing sustainable activities or creating biodynamic environments.

Even if you’ve never heard of any other Spanish wine, chances are you’ve heard about cava. This is due to the huge international presence of cava sparkling wines. Freixenet and Cordoníu are the two best-known producers of cava and both wineries have done a marvelous job of marketing Spain’s sparkling wines outside of their home country. In fact, Spain exports more than half of the sparkling wines it produces, according to the Peñin Guide to Spanish Wine 2007 .

Rome is one of the great cities of the world. It has been for over two thousand years, and continues to be to this day. If there is a wine that is synonymous with Rome, it is Frascati. This wine has been produced in the countryside around Rome for almost two thousand years.

Shaquille O’Neal. Ann Coulter. Jackson Pollack. James Carville. Mark Cuban. Igor Stravinsky. Noam Chomsky. Andy Warhol. Andre the Giant. In life, the biggest and loudest among us get the most attention – while finesse and nuance, toiling in relative obscurity, float in the choppy wake of incendiary, splashy, larger-than-life personalities.

While beer is often the refreshing beverage of choice on the 4th of July, wine is increasingly more popular as a relaxing summertime refreshment. With wine's increase in popularity comes the challenge of finding a wine to serve that not only beats the heat, but pairs well with typical picnic fare. IntoWine.com asked our panel of wine experts for their thoughts on what wine to serve on the Fourth of July: "There is one wine that surely must be the choice for the fourth of July - Madeira. Madeira is the wine that was used by the Founding Father's to Toast the Declaration of Independence. Betsy Ross had a side table with a glass of wine on it when she was sewing the flag. It was used to Toast the Constitution and George Washington drank a pint of Madeira every day for dinner. It is also very convenient because Madeira cannot be harmed by the hot sun and the July heat. I vote that Madeira be adopted as the OFFICIAL July 4th beverage. By the way, it is very important to drink TRUE Madeira from the island of Madeira and not confuse it with wines that are made in America for cooking. True Madeira is heated to simulate the voyage between Europe and America when the wine was used as ballast in the boat holds, where they discovered that the intense heat improved the wine. Try the Broadbent Madeira Broadbent 10 year Malmsey Madeira at about $44 a bottle or the Broadbent 5 year Reserve at $25. Once you've opened a bottle, it never goes off. It also goes well with any food. Great with hamburgers, even with pickles!" - Bartholomew Broadbent , CEO, Broadbent Selections, San Francisco

Laely Heron (Click Image to Enlarge) Laely Heron's life reads like that of a character in a James Bond flick. Raised by adventure seeking parents, Laely spent her childhood moving from one exciting place to another -Algeria one year, Singapore the next- with over a dozen different places of residence by the time she graduated high school. College found Laely at the University of Colorado but wanderlust soon took her to Bordeaux to study oenology. The end result was a young woman with a nose for the unique customs, flavors, and scents that differentiate cultures. Not surprisingly, a wine career ensued. Adventurous, entrepreneurial, talented, ambitious and, let’s face it, stunningly beautiful, the only thing missing is a secret identity and a pistol in her boot and Laely Heron could very well be a Bond girl. Action flicks aside, today Laely Heron is pushing the envelope in the wine industry as she endeavors to reshape the image of the “cult“ winemaker as one who makes high quality, ambitious, and affordable wines. Thanks to Laely for chatting with IntoWine.

We’ve all had the occasion to find a little sediment in our wine now and again. Or maybe you’ve noticed that the wine in your glass is not necessarily transparent, that the wine is cloudy. Depending on the treatments the wine received before, during, and after the fermentation process, a bit of residue in the your glass can be a positive or negative sign. On one hand, a little cloudiness or sediment can denote a laissez-faire winemaking style. The winemaker, in other words, attempts to retain as much character in the final product by not fining or filtering the wine before bottling it.

Say “Oregon” and Pinot Noir comes to mind. Argentina? Malbec. And who can say “Shiraz” without thinking of Australia? But what grape will Washington wine country claim as it’s own as it expands in production and popularity? There are so many red treasures in this state, sometimes it is hard to say. But after my luscious Saturday tasting, I’m thinking Syrah and Merlot may duke it out for the prize.

Apulia (also called Puglia) is the region that makes up the southeast corner of Italy including the heel of the boot of Italy. Historically, Apulia has been a very large producer of wine often leading Italy in terms of quantity of wine produced. The wines produced there were rugged, rough and deeply colored, and not of high quality. Much of the production went into cheaper jug wines or was blended into generic wines. Often, the wines were scandalously blended into wines from the more premier wines of the north giving those wines deeper color and a bit of texture. Nevertheless, the locals liked their local wines. These wines, however, were rarely tasted outside their homeland as a serious individual bottle of wine.