Here’s a round up of some of my favorite wine news as of late, with an emphasis on local New York happenings (hence the Mets logo):

1. The Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act of 2010, also known as H.R. 5034. OK, before your eyes start to glaze over, hear me out: if you love wine, you need to know about this proposed legislation. If this law passes, it will curtail direct-to-consumer shipping, making it difficult–if not impossible–for you to order wines directly from wineries. Lots of small producers just don’t have the scale or resources to make their wines available at retail, and instead rely on mailing lists and online orders to sell their wine. If they’re not allowed to ship directly to consumers, these wineries will go out of business. Check out this H.R. 5034 video on YouTube for more.

2. In what must be the most exciting Queens debut next to Ike Davis, The Queens County Farm Museum is going to auction off the “first and only wines produced using grapes grown in a commercial vineyard in New York City” on May 18. Bids for the wines, made from Chardonnay and Merlot grown on the Farm, start at $50 each. Check out the Queens County Farm Museum site for more.

3. TasteCamp East 2010. The intrepid Lenn Thompson over at New York Cork Report has created a great event called TasteCamp East, wherein a dozen or so wine bloggers descend upon an East Coast wine region for a weekend of tasting, blogging, and all things wine. I wasn’t able to attend last year’s event on Long Island, but I’m delighted to be coming, with husband in tow, to this year’s TasteCamp East, which will be held in the Finger Lakes. I’ve admired the Finger Lakes from afar for a while, and I can’t wait for this up-close-and-personal look at the FLX, as the kids are calling it. I’ll be there from May 7-May 9, so you’ll be hearing more from me about it soon.