The number of empty wine bottles we produce in my small household is obscene. So I am constantly looking for new ways to reuse our bottles, corks and other vinous waste. In honor of Earth Day, I'll be spending the next week sharing some cool ideas and products that will make use of our tasting trash... And I suppose I'll sample a few organic and biodynamically farmed wines. Feel free to chime in if you find a good one too.
Photo of the Earth taken from Apollo 17 fromWikipedia
Finally! A picnic wine that you can actually take to the park or the beach or an outdoor concert venue -- or just about anywhere you CAN'T take a glass wine bottle. Super convenient and dare I say, super cute, Volute wines might be the best thing to happen to tailgating.
We source our wine from small, independent Bordeaux wineries that posses the same values and views as we do. Our wineries also believe passionately about - and employ - green practices, and do not use any artificial additives.
Not sure yet if they live up to their story, but I just received a bottle of each, so I'll expound once I've popped the tops.
My Kind of Chemistry - Washington State Periodic Table of Wines
In a clever twist on the periodic table of elements, Wines of Substance from Walla Walla, Washington have caught my eye. They offer an interesting menu of varietals--and they teach you a little something about each on their site. It doesn't hurt that the concept, the website and the packaging are fresh and fun.
There is something infinitely elemental about wine... winemaking is chemistry after all... and I just love a periodic table I can actually remember.
Prices are in the $14 - $18 range. Stay tuned for more info about how they taste and where to buy.
My apologies for going AWOL these past few weeks. I left town rather suddenly due to a death in my family and though I have been out of touch, and trapped in the cocoon that surrounds a grieving family, wine was on my mind quite a bit during this hiatus. So before we resume our Back-to-Wine-School lesson plan, I would like to share with you why.
You see, the person I lost was the first to introduce me (at the tender age of 12) to the world of wine and its unlimited fascinations. By all accounts he was rather snobbish and old fashioned with regard to wine, and until very recently maintained the opinion that a decent bottle could not be had for under $20. He relished the idea of wine as a luxury item and thinking of it as such increased his enjoyment. This was only one of many of our differing philosophies.
So I was surprised--no, shocked--to learn that earlier this year, he decided to make his own wine. And not at some hoity-toity wine estate, but at local place, a store-front, no less, where he made wine with a group of strangers over the course of a few months. And I was honored to have been asked to bottle and label his wine.
And that is how I came to find Vines to Wines, one of many micro-wineries cropping up in cities and towns across the country. This one is smaller than I imagined, but I think just the right size for the Village of Wellington, Florida. I only participated in the bottling part of the process, but I'll try to give you a brief run down of what you get for your money.
The first step, of course, is to choose your wine. They have an interesting list of regional varietals--Washington pinot gris, Stag's Leap merlot, Argentine malbec, South African pinotage, to name a few. The juice arrives, already pressed, in bags. Some of the reds, such as the malbec and pinotage, are bagged with the skins, which in theory adds more depth and interest to the finished wine.
After you choose your varietal, you are partnered with someone who chose the same. You collaborate through the fermentation stage and, depending on the varietal, you share a barrique for several weeks. In the meantime, you choose your desired bottle shape--or you bring your own recycled bottles if you're feeling green--and you decide on a label. They have pre-designed versions that you can customize, or if you prefer, you may create your own original art.
Much to my surprise and delight, I handled the malbec. After fermentation and a little time in the barrique, I arrived to work the bottling machine. The bottling process was pretty basic. You place six bottles on a machine (two at a time) that is pre-calibrated for your bottle type and the bottles are filled automatically. Once your wine is bottled, you are instructed on the finer points of the corking contraption.
A little elbow grease and a steady hand will see you through corking and then you choose a capsule color and style for your wine. After that, you affix your label and are sent home with 30 bottles and strict guidelines on how to store them and when to enjoy them.
Though my experience was limited, I can tell you that Vines to Wines does quite a bit of repeat business. They have a lot of corporate customers who brand the bottles and distribute them as gifts, as well as wine-loving families who keep coming back to try new varietals. Many of them say you just can't find anything better in the $8-$12/bottle range.
If you live in the West Palm Beach/Wellington area, you should check it out. Ask for Molly or Danny.
Drip Ruff's design is based on a honeycomb structure that is shaped into a 360-degree ring. It is made entirely from Indian paper - an absorbent material normally used in traditional Chinese painting. The folding method used in its construction provides the elasticity required to "grip" the neck of a bottle. Drip Ruff is disposable after use, and the paper used is recyclable, which makes it environmentally friendly, hygienic and convenient to use.
Obviously depending on price and availability, these could be really nifty to have on hand when you are hosting a dinner party or wine tasting and lots paws will be handling your bottles. Of course, if you're looking for a re-usable alternative check out this Drip Stop Ring
While it is certainly a novel idea, I'm not sure the wine handbag (or wine in a box that looks like a handbag) is the wave of the future. A little too kitchy for my taste--though I am a rose fanatic--and I'm sure I would not settle on White Grenache as my rose of choice. A resounding, YIKES! But check it out for yourselves:
This package won best design and packaging prize at the 2008 Drink Business awards, for its clutch-style handbag box. Now perhaps I am just not the right kind of woman, but I found the strapline "White Grenache - loved by women almost as much as they love their handbags", a tad condescending. "Appealing directly to the rosé wine consumer" - does the love of rosé equal a love of handbags? Apparently so; according to Tesco, where it is being sold, the package has been "incredibly successful". Posted on TheDieline by Natasha Chetiyawardana
Days of Wine and Roses is one film not to watch if you are melancholic by nature, as this tale of middle-class alcoholism rings very true. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are the besotted couple who find that life is not always fun when viewed through rosé-colored glasses.
Here's our take - it's Summer and a nice old movie mixed with a little wine could be just the thing for tonight.
You, or someone you love can soon be making your own super-swanky wine, at home, in your own personal super-swanky winery. Check out this uber-cool apparatus:
If you have a trust fund and dear old dad likes wine, and I mean really likes wine, here is the perfect father's day gift. The Winepod lets dad become his own winemaker with his own personal fermentation chamber.
The chamber itself is 4-feet tall and needs less than 4 square feet of space. The device has sensors and uses wireless technology to connect to a software application on a PC called the WineCoach. WineCoach walks users through the fermentation process and when it detects problems it tells users how to fix them.
Winepod can produce one fermentation every 30 days with each one producing four cases of wine with 48 750ml bottles total. Users can order the grapes directly from the Winepod maker and they are shipped de-stemmed and frozen for freshness. Users wanting to use their own grapes can get them lab certified to ensure fermentation. The Winepod itself is a whopping $4,499, add the bottling kit, grapes, and accessories and it will cost you $5999, thrown in a 30L French oak wine barrel and you will need $6349. (by Shane McGlaun)
The Drops of God piques wine interest and drives sales
Talk about wine appreciation reaching the masses. In Asia, a new graphic novel is introducing wine knowledge and interest to a whole new fan base. Check out this bit from the May 12 BusinessWeek:
In Asia, Comics Uncork A Wine Boom A graphic-novel series with an oenophile hero is whetting Asia's appetite for wine. Kami no Shizuku (The Drops of God), a Japanese manga comic written by a brother-sister team under the pen name Tadashi Agi, has sold 1.9 million copies in Japan, and wine distributors are harvesting the benefits. Japanese distributor Mercian even hired the series' illustrator to design a new label for some of its bottles of imported Beaujolais Nouveau. In 2007, Mercian sold 127,000 cases, with the manga-labeled bottles helping to boost sales by 18% from the year prior. Translations of the books are creating wine lovers elsewhere in Asia, too. In Taiwan, sales of Colli di Conegliano Rosso Contrada di Concenigo rose 30% after the wine, produced by Italy's Umberto Cosmo, was mentioned in one volume. And some Koreans use the series as a kind of wine guide. Now a bigger test awaits: In April, the comic books were launched (as Les Gouttes de Dieu) in France.
-Ian Rowley and Hiroko Tashiro in Tokyo
Content and image from Business Week
Cheap swill or swanky pour? It's all in your head.
Here is a delectable little tidbit from the April 28 issue ofBusinessWeek:
Your Taste Buds Are In Your Wallet
Is that Rubicon Estate cabernet worth the $80 you may have paid? The answer lies within the folds of your medial prefrontal cortex. A recent study conducted by researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology concludes that when people know a wine is expensive, the pleasure they get from it is enhanced in the area of the brain where such sensations are processed. In the study, published online earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, students were placed in an MRI machine and given sips of red wine--including the same one presented twice, with two different price tags: $5 (the actual bottle price) and $45 (a fiction). The subjects all said they liked the "expensive" wine better--a preference mirrored by increased activity in their prefrontal cortexes. The lesson, says Baba Shiv, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford: "There's a temptation among marketers to keep reducing prices. We're saying be careful before you embark on that strategy." -Steve Hamm
Fascinating stuff. You're brain may be telling you that the more expensive one tastes better, but the fact is the $5 vino wins the day. All the more reason to buy cheap and taste blind! Content and image fromBusiness Week
Organic Wine Primer - Red & White and Green All Over
In honor of Earth Day, I have been scouring all of my reference materials as well as a ridiculous number of online sources in search of a Reader's Digest condensation of the ins and outs of organic wines. The fact is, finding a good "organic" bottle has become a confusing and stressful affair as labeling and certification requirements have changed what wines are truly considered organic versus ones made from organic grapes or biodynamically farmed. Personally I prefer the latter two categories as they produce much more drinkable and durable wines. If you want a straightforward resource that marries relevant factual information with great advice, check out this primer fromThe Organic Wine Company:
What is Organic Wine?
Following the recent creation by the USDA of a National Organic Program, an organic wine is now defined as "a wine made from organically grown grapes and without any added sulfites". By this unfortunate restriction, the vast majority of what you and I have been calling organic wines must now be referred to as "wines made from organic grapes" (or organically grown grapes), as they are allowed to contain up to 100 ppm of added sulfites.
While we support the effort of some winemakers to explore avenues to eliminate the use of sulfur dioxide, the truth is that wines without added sulfites are very few in number and very unstable in quality, giving the public a negative perception of what an Organic wine can be! The wine industry has therefore the dubious honor of being the only one that cannot call its product "organic" even though it is made with more than 95% of organic components. [With the higher permissible level of 100ppm SO2 present in the wine, the percentage is still 99.99% organic!].
This is detrimental to the winegrowers who seek to market a consistently drinkable product and yet are discriminated against in an absolutely unprecedented way. It is also confusing to consumers and merchants alike who did not need more categories to confuse them! Moreover, a wine without sulfites should not be equated with an organic wine, since it is quite possible to make a sulfite-free wine with conventional (non organic) grapes.
The excessive attention given to this matter is perfect to distract the public from much more important issues like soil depletion and erosion, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, ecological impact, resistance to pests, chemical dependence, and product standardization to name just a few!
In all cases, however, an independent body of certification, itself duly accredited by the almighty USDA, has the responsibility to control each winegrower, once or twice a year, to verify his adherence to the standards for organic farming, now internationally recognized. The fundamental idea behind organic wine is that making wine from grapes grown without chemical fertilizers, weed killers, insecticides, and other synthetic chemicals is better both for the planet AND for the wine drinker because all of these things can damage the soil and the plant, and can end up in the wine as residue.
There is no doubt that growing under organic conditions protects the environment and the people that work in the vineyards from the adverse effects of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. Organic is more than simply a way of farming. It is also a philosophy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said
"We did not inherit the Earth from our forefathers, we are borrowing it from our descendants."
How does Conventional Winemaking differ from Organic Winemaking?
In the cellar, "organic" suggests minimal processing and no use of chemical additives. Organic winemakers pay particular attention to three factors: the use of yeasts, the filtration/fining method, and the use of sulfur dioxide. The need for cultured yeasts in organic winemaking is reduced by the farming practice itself, for wild yeasts remain present, unperturbed by weed killers or insecticides. Therefore their use is limited to difficult weather conditions which would threaten the harvest. The physical treatment of the wine (like filtering and fining) is kept to a minimum. However temperature control during the winemaking process is widely used since it is only a physical process.
Minimizing the use of sulfur dioxide as an antioxidant is stringently observed. It's rather difficult to make a wine that will keep well without adding at least some additional sulfites to those naturally produced. This is particularly true of white wines, which ferment apart from grape skins. Red wines ferment with juice and skins together, providing them not only with their color but with various tannins, a natural preservative.
All of the wines imported by Organic Wine Company are "Certified Organic" by ECOCERT or BIOFRANC and contain only a minimal amount of sulfur dioxide.
After educating yourself, if you like what you read, check out theOrganic Wine Company wine club. As organic wine clubs go they are quite reasonable. You get three bottles (red only or mixed) for $49.99 per month.
A Shot of This, a Vial of That ... Test Tube Wines for Tasting
Leave it to Springwise to find all of the truly fascinating business ventures in the world of wine. The latest buzz is from a French company called WineSide that has come up with an idea that might incite the next revolution--in wine, that is. They are marketing trial size tubes of wine which, in theory will make choosing just the right bottle a little less scary:
WineSide offers both sweet and classic wines in patented, flat-base glass tubes with screw tops carefully engineered to protect the wines' flavour. The sweet wines--which include Sauternes and Muscat, for example--are available in 6cl tubes, while the Pomerol, Chateau Neuf du Pape and other classic wines can be purchased in 6cl or 10cl sizes. WineSide's collection represents a range of appellations and producers; tubes are available individually or by the box, which can be chosen to provide an introduction to a variety, year or region. Kicking off retail sales, the products are available exclusively at Colette in Paris this month.
In addition to giving consumers a new way to sample and discover wines, WineSide's tube format also promises to give vintners new tryvertising capabilities at relatively low cost. The French company's website is still under construction, but it says it is looking for distributors.
Today I have been daydreaming. My new Food & Wine arrived and feeling a little bit of the Monday blahs, I poured over it . . . for hours. One of the tasty tidbits I uncovered was in the News & Notes section. Just a brief paragraph about wine travel and a company that specializes in wine "adventures," and since I haven't actually taken a vacation since my honeymoon, I just had to check out Zephyr Adventures for myself:
Wine country travel is extremely popular and for good reason. The beautiful scenery combined with excellent lodgings and restaurants makes for a great vacation. However, most visitors to wine areas spend more time on their rears than we like in a vacation, as they shuttle from hotel to winery to restaurant. We've added a whole new element to wine touring, as we stay active - on foot, bike, horseback, and canoe.
At the same time, these tours are as much about the wine as the activities. We have private wine tours, conversations with local vintners, exclusive walks through the vineyards, and other opportunities to intimately get to know the wines of the region.
You need be neither a strong athlete nor a wine expert to enjoy these adventures, as we have tailored them for almost all audiences. And you can't go wrong with the [following] seven wine regions, so pick your favorite and join us in 2008!
Burgundy WalkingJune 8-13, 2008 $2300 Oregon Multisport August 10-14, 2008 $1900 Sonoma Vineyard Walking August 24-28 and October 26-30, 2008 $1900
Spain Multisport September 7-13, 2008 $2600
Italy Hike & Bike September 26 - Oct 3, 2008 $2700
South Africa Hiking October 10-18, 2008 $3200
Chile & Argentina Multisport Novem. 8-15, 2008 $2700
All Adventures include double occupancy lodging, dinners, breakfasts, guides, van support, local transportation, a Zephyr souvenir, and a Pre-Departure Packet. Trekking Adventures also include most lunches but one dinner is often on your own. Most trips include instruction in the activities on that adventure. Equipment is included for some activities: mountain biking, kayaking, horseback riding, and river rafting. Fromwww.zephyradventures.com
Though most of my travel incorporates some outdoor activity--and all of my travel includes wine tasting, I think this is an innovative and exciting way to really focus on both and to more fully experience a country or wine region. So, where shall I go next?
Drink, Reuse, Recycle. Repeat...
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