"Wine improves with age. The older I get the more I like it." --Anonymous

Bacchus, the Greek god associated with wine and its powers of intoxication, would have been loved the Internet's bountiful web vineyards, bursting forth with news, tips and trivia pertaining to the grape's glorious nectar in all of its infinite manifestations.

However, one need not be a God or Goddess to savor the crème de le crème of wine-inspired websites.

Mortals with a taste for the grape can learn "everything you were afraid to ask your mama about wine" on The Wine Brat's delightfully irreverent web site.

There's a cornucopia of interesting wine essays and articles as well as Johnny Garlic's Chef Steve Gruber's recipes for scrumptious rigatoni with grilled vegetables and penne pasta with mushrooms and asparagus, served with a glass of wine, of course.

The Brat's site offers barrels of educational information, including a report on hosting a blind tasting party and a primer on deciphering wine label lingo. In the spirit of the Wine Brat's "It takes a village to enjoy a bottle" populist philosophy, free membership to any of their 42 chapters located throughout the United States is offered to all takers.

The best wine site around has got to be Robin Garr's Wine Lovers Page . Garr's outstanding site features advice on building your own wine collection, a neat collection of vintage charts, tips for matching Chinese or vegetarian food with wine, and a free weekly e-mail bulletin containing wine tasting tips, short facts about wine topics, tasting reports and more.

Tongue-tied wine lovers will adore the site's guide to pronouncing wine words like Aligoté (Ah- lee-go-tay) while the more articulate among us will adore "101 Wine Quotes," with its inviting grape-glorious witticisms like John Maynard Keynes' "My only regret in life is that I didn't drink enough champagne."

If you've ever wondered where all the good wines have gone, they can most likely be found in the Wine Spectator's 65,000 label ratings database, the scope of which makes this the perfect site for wine lovers thirsting for the perfect Merlot or Chardonnay.

You must be a member to search through the complete database but non-members can perform a limited search of 15,000 wine ratings for free.

Interested in "fascinating stories about wine?" Wine Taster's Tales devotes an entire section to the "Best Wine Stories."

Visitors can vote on whether or not the stories are true and find out if they're right by pressing an answer button.

This site is chock full of useful information including wine quizzes, the low-down on wine-making, a wine question of the day and a stroke-of-genius formula for pairing wine and appetizers using the category of food taste.

Serving something salty and creamy? Wine Taster's says to serve a light- to medium-bodied fruity white wine or glass of champagne. The matching formula is so easy to follow--you simply can't go wrong.

Grape-colored Wines.Com's award-winning site features a searchable database containing articles on topics like taste-scoring systems and wine terms. There's also a weekly wine column.

Wine skeptics pondering the vagaries of $5,000 price tags on dusty old bottles of wine might want to check out the site's "Appraising Fine Wines" article by Fritz Hatton, Director of world-famous Christie's Wine Department, to uncover why some vintages cost so darn much.

Befuddled and easily intimidated wine novices will adore Winekey.com's user-friendly tour of Italian, Californian, Oregonian and Washingtonian wines.

The intimidation factor is pleasantly and purposefully low at this down-to-earth and blissfully uncluttered site. Notable categories include wine trivia and a listing of wine definitions.

Cheers!

Rachelle Nones is a freelance writer with experience writing about health, pets, wine, food, and other good things.