Alsatian Wine Takes Sweet Turn

Riesling, Oregon, Costieres de Nimes, and Kermit Lynch are your friends

(NEWSER) - Ordering wine in a restaurant can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. "Quit being afraid of wine!" wine blogger Nilay Gandhi writes for The Awl . "There's one truth to that wine list you're so terrified to negotiate: it's full of baloney." You can't go wrong by ignoring half of the vintages on it, which are "show wines. Stop ordering them." More»

Shepherds want to hunt sheep killers at will

(NEWSER) - Call it Yellowstone sur Seine. French shepherds are demanding the surging wolf population be culled following increasing sheep deaths by the growing packs of protected canines. Wolves are now roaming the Vosges Mountains on the Alsace-Lorraine border for the first time in 80 years. Some experts predict the wolves could reach forests near Paris in a decade if not controlled, reports the Independent . A handful of Italian wolves in the Alps have multiplied to some 200 animals in 20 packs. But that's bad news for sheep, so a group of Alpine shepherds and politicians are petitioning for the right to hunt the animals at will. More»

France not doing enough, faces fines if it doesn't improve

(NEWSER) - They may be just 10 inches long, but Alsace’s wild hamsters are Great all the same—and France isn’t doing enough to keep them around, the EU’s top court ruled yesterday. If the country doesn't make a better life for the creatures, it faces $24.6 million in fines. The Great Hamster of Alsace is Western Europe’s only wild hamster, and there are only 800 alive in France today, notes the New York Times . More»

We're not back in boom times, but things are looking more rosé

(NEWSER) - Olympic golds pale in comparison to this national feat: The US last year consumed more wine than France. And it's just one of many full-bodied wine stats for 2010. The Los Angeles Times shares the signs that Americans are trading their recession-minded ways for a good (or, at least, decent) glass of red:

• Shoppers flocked to bottles priced at less than $7 during the peak of the recession; sales of $7 to $14 bottles were up 5% last year.

Eric Asimov: It's time to simply descriptors for consumers

(NEWSER) - Next time someone starts waxing poetic about the particular aromas of a wine, tell them to stick a cork in it. Those "gaudy descriptions" are often meaningless, writes Eric Asimov in the New York Times . In fact, "the more specific the description of a wine, the less useful information is actually transmitted," he writes, comparing two reviewers' notes ("huckleberry" vs. "spice box"?) about the same bottle. It's time the wine world simplified and started using two descriptors: sweet or savory. More»