Wine

  • Happy cows come from British Columbia, too

    Posted: July 22nd, 2010 - 5:59pm by Sol Erdozain

    Author: 
    Sol Erdozain

    I like having a glass of wine with my dinner every now and then. It tastes good and they say it’s good for you, so I don’t even have to feel guilty about it.

    Apparently, a group of farmers in British Columbia think the health benefits also apply to cattle. The idea is a variation of the Kobe beef, where cattle are fed beer. Unlike Kobe beef, the wine is not fed every day.

    “It’s during the final 90 days leading up to their slaughter that they are fed red wine supplied by a number of wineries in the Okanagan Valley.”

    The final product is sweeter-tasting meat that is supposedly more tender. Plus, the cows get to die buzzed.

    I wonder, if they did this with dairy cows, would wine and cheese parties become obsolete?

     

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    Animals  |  0 Comments
    Happy Cows, Wine
  • Science says: wine-in-a-box OK

    Posted: June 8th, 2009 - 1:33pm by Doug Powell

    That’s a relief. I love my vino in a box, or from a box. In Maubisson, France, I’d bike to the store, and the dude would fill up a 2 litre bottle with Bordeaux from a box. Awesome.

    Gary J. Pickering, senior author of a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry says that for some reason the researchers can't explain, wines stored in Tetra Pak-brand cartons had the lowest levels of unwanted chemicals, called methoxypyrazines.

    One possibility, Pickering said, is that the chemicals escape through the carton's innermost layer, made of polyethylene, and then attach to an adjacent layer made of aluminum foil.

    The best storage method for preventing that problem, the study found, was a bottle sealed with a screw-cap - which, like the cardboard carton, has some connoisseurs wrinkling their refined noses.

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    Wacky and Weird  |  1 Comment
    Bordeaux, France, Maubisson, Sandbox, Wine
  • 'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a lobotomy

    Posted: December 10th, 2008 - 5:45pm by Doug Powell

    Some new New York restaurant is going to offer wine and beer in baby bottles to diners.

    The New York Times described the impending birth of La Cave des Fondus, an underground crib at Prince and Elizabeth Streets, as “a faithful homage to the Montmartre restaurant Le Refuge des Fondus, where Parisians enthusiastically suck down the house red and white."

    The owner of the Manhatten playpen said,

    “I wanted to set up my place exactly like the one in Paris. It’s such a fun place. Everybody loves drinking beer and wine from baby bottles - even my father thought it was fun - and I think New Yorkers will like it too. I checked with the health department and as long as we put the bottles in the dishwasher they have no problem with it.”

    Shouldn’t these geniuses be figuring out a way to deliver beer and wine through the breast? Everyone knows breastfeeding is best for babies.

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    Restaurant Inspection, Wacky and Weird  |  0 Comments
    Baby Bottle, Beer, Wine
  • NZ cafe served dishwashing liquid instead of wine

    Posted: May 6th, 2008 - 3:08pm by Doug Powell

    Two women were hospitalised after a New Zealand cafe mistakenly served dishwashing liquid as mulled wine.

    The Southland Times newspaper reported that Chico's Restaurant Ltd in the mountain resort of Queenstown on South Island pleaded guilty to a charge of selling food containing extraneous matter -- the chemical sodium hydroxide -- that caused injury.

    An investigation showed the two liquids had been mixed up after 20 litres of dishwashing liquid was delivered in a container formerly used to hold Mountain Thunder mulled wine.

    Under New Zealand's no-fault accident law, victims do not sue for damages. Instead, treatment costs and income loss are met by the nation's Accident Compensation scheme.

    The company will be sentenced next month and faces a possible fine.
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    Wacky and Weird  |  0 Comments
    Dishwashing Liquid, Soap, Wine
  • Suzanne Schreck, guest barfblogger: Wine protects against nasty bugs

    Posted: October 26th, 2007 - 6:16pm by

    My favorite meal includes a New York strip steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes, salad, and a glass of cabernet. 

    In recent months, media reports on new research being conducted at the University of Missouri-Columbia have indicated that that glass of cabernet may effectively kill bacterial pathogens that have found their way into my meal, making it safer.  Just this weekend WTAE TV in Pittsburgh reported on the results of this research: 

    The neat thing about the study is that it doesn't seem to matter about the price. It's all in the color of the wine: red.

    Researchers said cabernet, pinot noir and merlot have the right stuff to protect against Salmonella typhimurium, H.pylori and the potentially fatal Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli.

    After reading this report, one might conclude that eating raw cookie dough is OK as long as it’s followed by a glass of red wine.  But what do the researchers really have to say? 

    Azlin Mustapha and Atreyee Das were interviewed by Abraham Mahshie for an article in the Columbia Tribune.  In the interview, Das said, “Sixty percent [concentration] wine is enough to kill bacteria,” but that concentration was reached in a controlled environment in a test tube in a lab – not in the human gut, which is where consumers might seek practical application of this new knowledge.

    Lead researcher Mustapha told the Tribune, “I would not recommend that people go out and consume wine in excess.”  But how does this research really apply to the average person’s wine consumption?  Early reporting on the findings may give us false hope that one, two, even three glasses of red wine with dinner might make eating a rare hamburger safe.

    Mustapha and Das anticipate two to three years of additional research on the subject.  When their study is published, maybe they’ll be able to tell me how much cabernet I have to drink to kill the pathogens on my steak, asparagus, and mashed potatoes.  Until then, I’ll rely on the system, from farm to fork, to keep the pathogens off my plate to begin with.

    Suzanne Schreck is the communications director of Marler Clark.  Since joining Marler Clark in 2002, Ms. Schreck has managed the firm's media relations and on-line presence, including the firm's websites and blogs.
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    Wacky and Weird  |  3 Comments
    Antibacterial, Wine