Labels: meta
Most winemakers are looking for a very specific reaction to their wine -- somewhere between an "aaah" and a "wow!" Which is another way of saying that I'll bet most of them would want to avoid a reaction called Wine-Induced Anaphylaxis and Sensitization to Hymenoptera Venom. Unfortunately, this problem seems like it may be hard to avoid.You see, apparently some people in Spain have been admitted to the hospital with severe allergic reactions to wine, or so they thought. Instead of being allergic to wine, however, these folks seem to be having reactions to trace amounts of wasp venom contained in the wine or grape juice they drank.
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The problem here will be immediately apparent to anyone who's ever been around a winery crushpad in mid-harvest. For those who haven't seen such an operation let me paint a picture: huge bins of grapes being dumped into crusher-destemmers or into tanks, and above all the crushed fruit, a lot of sweaty, exhausted winery workers, and inevitably some swarming, dive-bombing yellow jackets, wasps, and other creatures who are out for a free lunch.
Labels: health/safety, production
The fact is, such scientific findings always run smack up against the brick wall of wine romanticism. People don't like thinking of winemaking as chemistry, despite the fact that it is very much so. The wine world lives in a strange dichotomy, where different wine lovers tend to draw very arbitrary and personal lines about just how much "science" they're willing to tolerate in their wine before it stops being wine, and starts being an engineered beverage. Hence the ominous nature of our increasing knowledge about why wine tastes like it does. The more we know, the less magic it seems.My own view is that knowing the chemistry adds, not subtracts, from the appreciation of the wine. Knowing that orange juice has citric acid or beer carbon dioxide never lowered my enjoyment of either. And we have gone far, far afield from "non-engineered" wine; even shoes and forks are engineered.
Labels: chemistry
Forget the image of the stuffy male sommelier. These days, diners at many upscale restaurants in Washington will encounter a woman when they need help navigating a wine list.I could not find a fair-use excerpt that did the full article justice. The article goes on to discuss, inter alia, how women have been more successful breaking into the upscale restaurant industry as pastry chefs than into the beverage/restaurant industries as sommeliers.
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A Jamaica native, [sommelier Elli] Brown sees a benefit from her background in social work and thinks her opening line -- "What are you in the mood for?" -- creates an emotional tie with the customer. "I don't think a man would say that. The tone of my voice is reassuring."
The average bottle at Charlie Palmer Steak costs $60, she says, but "if I sense someone is worried about spending $400, I can say: 'Trust me. I've had this.' It's easier for women to be more sincere."
After the election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in May, five masked members of the guerrilla wine-growers' group known as CRAV, famous for dynamiting groceries and burning cars in the name of French agriculture, issued a call to action. "If in one month, nothing has changed and the price of wine has not increased, the vintners will come out of hiding," their leader said, warning Sarkozy that he would be held entirely responsible.I guess it's politically easier to slash the vines themselves than to slash the subsidies that caused this perverse glut of apparently undrinkable plonk, wine so bad that it is being reduced to industrial solvents. Why do wineries produce at unprofitable levels and unprofitable quality? Because it is profitable to do so with perverse subsidies. Having paid wineries to overproduce, the EU will them pay them more to kill their productive capacity.
One month later, action is being taken, but not in the way the ultra-protectionists would like. Mariann Fischer Boel, Agriculture Commissioner for the European Union, last week unveiled a plan for complete reform of the wine-growing trade, from vineyard arrangements to bottle-labeling. The aim? To pull the plug on Europe's 1.3 billion liter "wine lake" surplus, deepened by subsidies and awkward regulatory measures.
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In a bid to reduce production, Boel's five-year plan calls for the destruction of 200,000 hectares' worth of vineyards, known as "grubbing up." Growers will be encouraged to quit their trade thanks to a "grubbing-up premium," initially 7,714 euros ($10,488) per hectare but gradually decreasing to 2,938 euros ($3,995) per hectare.
Labels: Maryland
Most of you have heard that kosher wines are inherently bad and cough-syrupy (which our readers know just isn't true)...but probably even most of us would argue that Mevushal wines (those flash pasteurized so observant Jews can drink them after having been served by non-Jews) often have a sort of burned taste and are much less likely to be high-quality....
Ernie Weir is the winemaker-gentleman of Hagafen Cellars. If you're in the area you need to visit. The tasting room is located near the southern end of the Silverado Trail so they're easy to get to.
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Ernie's good wines put to shame anyone who argues that Mevushal = Monstrous.
1. The more you post the more readers you will have.
2. If you can't show an interest in your peers' blogs, why would they show an interest in yours?
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4. HTML and style sheets aren't as difficult to learn as you think, but they are very hard to master.
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7. The best post are [sic] those that provoke polarized responses from your readers.
Labels: blog
