FOOD & WINE
Old-school wineries show 'balance and restraint'
New York Times Aug 20, 08 6:33 PM CDT
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Forget "jammy fruit bombs" that crush the palate—subtle cabernets are making a comeback in Napa Valley. "You don’t hear much about these sorts of wines today," writes Eric Asimov in the New York Times . While critics swoon over rich, oaky cabernets, a few wineries still rely on elegant floral and herbal flourishes that made the region famous years ago.
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Gourmet Aug 17, 08 2:00 PM CDT
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France’s wine business is stuck in the doldrums, as American wines (and their aggressive marketing campaigns) explode onto the scene. But one Napa Valley girl is working to change that, by introducing stodgy French vintners to the modern concept of marketing. “A lot of what I do is psychological,” Jaime Araujo tells Gourmet . “Changing the identity of a wine that’s been in your family for four hundred years is hard, and it takes a lot of hand-holding.”
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Experts explain pricing and weigh in with ways to save
Wall Street Journal Aug 16, 08 10:26 AM CDT
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Why does a bottle of wine cost $100 at one restaurant and three times that at the bistro down the block? The Wall Street Journal asked wine experts to decipher vino pricing and offer tips for finding the best deals. The results: Expensive wines often mean better value, as do less popular varietals. And never, ever buy by the glass.
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110K marijuana plants already confiscated this year
Associated Press Aug 10, 08 4:50 PM CDT
(Newser)
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Washington state is cracking down on drug dealers' latest innovation: Using vineyards to secretly grow marijuana crops, the AP reports. Police have made 22 arrests this year and confiscated 110,000 pot plants from the Yakima Valley alone, worth more than $100 million. But tracking dealers isn't easy: Some are in Mexico and others buy farms with fake names in quick cash deals.
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The bizarre techniques behind the Scholium Project
San Francisco Chronicle Aug 8, 08 1:39 PM CDT
(Newser)
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Abe Schoener is reinvigorating California wines with a decidely unorthodox, almost experimental, approach, writes Jon Bonne in the San Francisco Chronicle . Schoener, who lacks formal training, eschews the traditional do's and don’ts of the craft with his Scholium Project winery. His wines "are bizarre, ingenious and polarizing—quite simply unlike anything else being made anywhere in this country," writes Bonne.
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FOOD & WINE
Unpretentious pleasures for aficianados who branch out
New York Times Aug 6, 08 1:29 PM CDT
(Newser)
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In honor of the Olympics, Eric Asimov set out to rediscover Greece's white wines for the New York Times . He found whites just subtly different from the made-to-be-drunk young bottles of Italy and Spain, fermented from "unfamiliar, indigenous grapes grown nowhere else." The moschofilero varietal dominated the tasting, including the panel's No.1 pick: a 2007 Tselepos that "smelled like roses and tasted like grapefruit."
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Wine growers battling cheap imports launch commando attacks
Time Aug 2, 08 7:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Tough times have turned some wine-growers in southwestern France to "wine terrorism," Time reports. Guerrilla grape-growers have bombed supermarkets and government buildings, hijacked trucks carrying foreign wine, and drained tanks. The growers want the French government to protect them from the cheap imports they say are threatening their survival.
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The region is famed for its reds, but don't overlook its whites
New York Times Jul 30, 08 4:20 PM CDT
(Newser)
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It almost sounds contradictory: exquisite white wine hails from Bordeaux, the unofficial home of red. But the whites produced in Pessac-Léognan—the heart of the Bordeaux region in France—include "some of the most thrilling, underappreciated white wines in the world,” Eric Asimov raves in the New York Times . Historically popular in Britain, the whites are now gaining traction in Belgium, Russia, and Japan.
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Italian bubbly makers hope to edge out pricey champagne
Reuters Jul 22, 08 8:07 AM CDT
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Sales of Italy's answer to champagne have been bubbling up for years, Reuters writes, but prosecco producers plan to boost output to 250 million bottles next year, with an eye on someday overtaking champagne as the world's favorite sparkling wine. The bubbly is cheaper to make than its French rival, and vintners believe its sweeter taste will go down well in red-hot export markets like China.
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New ordinance forbids eating, drinking, noise
Reuters Jul 11, 08 5:50 PM CDT
(Newser)
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Rome's residents and visitors had best behave themselves for the next 4 months: An experimental ordinance bans eating and drinking in the streets of the Eternal City, and cracks down on hooligans who want to "shout, sing or be noisy," Reuters reports. The newly elected mayor enacted the law, which applies through October in "areas of historic, cultural or artistic value."
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glossies
Despite study's hints, wine tasting remains a personal pursuit
Gourmet Jun 17, 08 11:27 AM CDT
(Newser)
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That peppery flavor of Syrah? It comes from the same chemical that gives pepper its aroma, a recent study says. So sommeliers aren't making this stuff up: Wine bouquets actually have an empirical basis. But the compounds are tough to pin down because they change when mixed, and 20% of the study's subjects couldn't whiff the chemical in question at all, Tara Q. Thomas writes in Gourmet .
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Opinion
Dry notes make
snobs too boring
to mock—almost
Los Angeles Times Jun 13, 08 11:46 AM CDT
(Newser)
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When wine lovers say they taste notes of cherries or hints of tobacco, “usually all I can detect is a whole lot of jackass,” Joel Stein writes in the LA Times . Wine dialogue has devolved into a meaningless string of obscure scents, Stein says. It’s boring—too boring even to make fun of—and it says virtually nothing about the wine.
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Weak quality, futures sales have French winemakers worried
AFP Jun 11, 08 1:45 PM CDT
(Newser)
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French winemakers are increasingly worried about fizzling sales of futures from the 2007 Bordeaux harvest, AFP reports. Investors and drinkers are skipping the vintage because they expect little increase in price by the time it's ready to drink in 2009; one merchant says reluctance to trim prices shows "avarice and arrogance" from producers of France's flagship wines.
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'The name should not sell it,' he says of his Napa-produced vintages under GTS label
Bloomberg Jun 5, 08 8:40 PM CDT
(Newser)
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You might think baseball Hall of Famers might be content to rest on their laurels, but not so Tom Seaver, Bloomberg reports. The three-time Cy Young winner spent some time as an announcer after his retirement in 1987, but his interest in wine led to the founding GTS Vineyards in California's Napa Valley in 2001. Now, his labor is starting to bear fruit.
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Grape ingredient could be used for anti-aging drugs
New York Times Jun 4, 08 5:19 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Researchers have found new signs that the fountain of youth could be filled with red wine, the New York Times reports. Resveratrol, an ingredient in grape skins, has been found to slow the effects of aging by triggering a change in the body—making it switch resources from fertility to tissue maintenance. Some scientists are so impressed by the findings that they're already taking resveratrol capsules.
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