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From wine to bottled water: UC Davis scanners may help TSA

Have you ever been itching to carry a bottle of Petrus and a can of Red Bull on a plane? Thanks to researchers at UC Davis, that might be possible. (However, as we discussed previously, don’t think you’ll be allowed to openly serve yourself the Petrus on board.)

The researchers may be able to take scanners they developed to study spoilage in unopened bottles of wine and use that technology to differentiate between explosives and toothpaste and bottles of water in travelers carry-ons. In the above video, found via the good folks at Upgrade: Travel Better, they demonstrate their scanning device with a bottle of ’79 Petrus and a can of Red Bull (hopefully not mixed together afterward!).

In its wine application, the device was originally built to test for oxidation through the presence of acetic acid and acetaldehyde, according to Augustine’s page. There’s certainly a market for that, but it has to be small compared to the market for testing an unopened bottle for TCA (often referred to as cork taint). After Augustine is done counting his millions from solving the security problems of the TSA, maybe he could turn his research to detecting TCA, which would be a boon for wineries and wine enthusiasts alike.

How I gave up bottled water and lived to tell the tale

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Yes! I made it 30 days with no (er, little) bottled water! And I’m not even living in a yurt, making clothing from alpacas that I’m raising, and eating exclusively local root vegetables.

Thirty days with no bottled water may not seem like a lot. And, quite frankly, it’s not. I didn’t bring Aquafina to their knees. And I did cause myself a lot of inconvenience.

For those of you who just tuned in, the logic behind my self-imposed ban on bottled water (and soda) is a form of my own carbon offset. Yes, it would have been a lot easier to pay $15 to buy some credits. But I wanted to take matters into my own hands and go bottle-for-bottle offsetting the carbon of my wine consumption. My logic was that the wine I enjoy is unique while the bottled water I can buy at every corner shop is easily substitutable with tap water and a little planning.

So what I’ve learned:

* Try not to blast the air conditioning with the windows open (actually I jest–the AC was coincidentally–and annoyingly!–broken during the entire period).
* NYC tap water really does taste like chlorine. And it is best served cold, VERY cold.
* Refilling the same Poland Spring bottle for a few weeks straight isn’t the best idea.

So am I going to keep up the ban forever? No. But I’m going to reduce the amount of bottled water, especially non-sparkling, that I buy. In fact, British consumers were urged last week to substitute French wine for New Zealand wine in the name of finding a wine that had fewer “food miles” under its belt.

This is nonsense. British wine consumers should instead celebrate the diversity of distinctive wines from around the globe and instead perform their own offsets and drink tap water. Or something else less fun. Just don’t give up the diversity of wine!

So what am I going to drink to celebrate? You might think a big glass of Pellegrino. But actually, since I included all club soda and tonic water, I have been thinking about a Tom Collins (gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and club soda) ever since I read Eric Felten’s WSJ article ten days ago. So tonight I’ll be mixing up a cocktail before dinner. And maybe I’ll just have a glass of tap water to go with my wine at dinner.

Update: bottled water ban

As I was watching planes take off and land last Friday at LaGuardia, I contemplated the folly of my bottled water ban. Jets roared overhead burning carbon and spewing emissions and I am doing what–not drinking a few bottles of water in the name of carbon neutrality? My ban seemed so piddly.

But that doesn’t mean it is easy! I had to remembered to bring my water bottle with me, filled up from home. Then I had to chug it in line at the TSA to go through devoid of fluids. Then fill it up again on the other side of TSA at the drinking fountain.

Nor have I been without transgressions–yes, I fell of the water wagon in less than a week! At a lunch, an overly enthusiastic waiter poured me a glass of Pellegrino. Then I had the ridiculous choice of throwing away perfectly good water or drinking it. I drank it and asked for tap water next time. As the level of that water lowered, I got refilled with Pellegrino.

It would be so much easier to drink bottled water at will and just pay $15 and buy some carbon offsets…

Make your own bubbly–water, that is

Perhaps this holiday season you will get the $5k winepod to make wine at home. For my birthday a few months ago, I got a gift that gave me the ability to make something a little less exciting: water.

Well, not exactly make water, which, of course is free from the tap. But I received a carbonating contraption known as SodaStream that adds some sparkle to your H2O. Fill a one-liter bottle with water, twist onto the nozzle, press button three times and voila! Sparkling water! Just like an old-fashioned seltzer water maker. After making probably close to a hundred liters of such water now, I find it to be very good (though it is best to carbonate immediately before consuming) and convenient (no running out of sparkling water).

And, of course, it’s low carbon footprint! As an offset to my wine consumption, I gave up bottled water almost entirely last year and it was the sparkling water that I missed most. Now it’s great to have it back on my table. In fact, since grape fermentation produces both alcohol and carbon dioxide, I’ll be looking out for the first carbonation cartridge that comes from captured fermentation CO2!

As to the pricing, it’s about $100 for the Fountain Jet model that I got with two cartridges and a refillable bottle (but having extra bottles helps since you can just keep them full in the fridge; UPDATE–enter code SODAGIFT to get $25 off a new soda maker for the holidays). At 50-60 liters of carbonation per $15 cartridge, or $0.25 a bottle, it’s neither as cheap as tap water nor as cheap as I would like, but it’s less expensive than bottled water–and lower carbon footprint, clearly, without the trucks hauling glass bottles and water from Maine or the Alps.

Now if only I can get the courage up to try carbonating still wines, then I’ll really be undercutting the market price for bubbly!

Putting water in my own wine boycott


Events have conspired, the plot has thickened and now I call on you to say “non” to only one-third of Beaujolais Nouveau this year!

As you may recall, last week I asked you to ditch Beajolais Nouveau this year because of the high carbon footprint of the wine. The rush to bring this proto-wine to the world’s shops on the same day, November 20 this year, means that airfreight is commonly used, increasing the greenhouse gas emissions of the wine by at least fourfold for New York and many times more to places like San Francisco, Santiago, and Tokyo.

Word floated in to the Dr. Vino tower that major changes were afoot this year in Beaujolais with this year’s Nouveau. So I picked up the phone and called France (at the low rate of 2.3 cents per minute). First up, I spoke with Inter Beaujolais, a regional trade authority, where I learned that Beaujolais Nouveau last year had a volume of about 48 million bottles, about a third of the region’s production. Further, the Nouveau for EU destinations is not permitted to leave the region until November 13 this year, giving it a week to get places like Amsterdam and Athens. But non-EU destinations were given a special extra week this year and could leave the EU on November 6. Could it really get to store shelves in New York City by November 20?

To find out I called Georges Duboeuf, the largest shipper of Beaujolais Nouveau with around three-quarters of the Beaujolais Nouveau market. Read more…

Wine over water, Oregon, Michigan, the dollar — sips and spits

Sipped: Peter Singer, Princeton ethicist
“And buying the merlot may help sustain a tradition in the French countryside that we value–a community, a way of life, a set of values that would disappear if we stopped buying French wines. I doubt if you travel to Fiji you would find a tradition of cultivation of Fiji water.” Excellent! He’s clearly been reading his Dr. Vino! [great piece on bottled water in Fast Company]

Sipped: NYC tap water
The NYT gives NYC tap water a thumbs up for taste and price, pointing out that eight glasses of tap water a year has a total tab of $0.49. [NYT]

Sipped: Oregon wine tourism
Oregon Wine has a new interactive map for plotting your next trip to the state. Good stuff–we love maps! [Oregon Wine]

Sipped: Michigan wine country(?)
“There’s a quiet revolution happening here,” Joel Goldberg, a local wine writer, told the NYT about the burgeoning wine life in Michigan. “Go off a side road and through the woods and you’ll find a vineyard here, a vineyard there — hundreds of acres of new vineyards are going in all over the place. And there are some real quality wines.” [NYT travel]

Spit: the US Dollar
Touched a record low versus the Euro on Friday as it fell to $1.3814.

Spit: EU wine reform, in Central Europe
“If this EU reform is passed, I think the size of the vineyards under cultivation in Hungary will be halved. It could create a dramatic situation,” Laszlo Kiss, president of Hungary’s National Council of Wine Communities. [AFP].

Spit: California Rhone-style wine under $10

“Why can’t California deliver the same kind of terroir [as a Cotes du Rhone] for $10? “[SF Chron]

Carbon neutral: keep wine, ditch water

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I’m giving up water for 30 days. Bottled water that is.

In the discussion of the carbon footprint of wine here last week, I floated the idea of purchasing carbon offsets to assuage carbon guilt. In case I had any doubt of the efficacy of this matter, an excellent column in the Financial Times last week on the subject of offsets made me put paid to this notion.

A hilarious quote compared the system of carbon offsets to “the medieval system of indulgences, in which corrupt priests absolved sins for haggled fees.” The author, John Guthrie, went on to say that the practice of buying tracts of forest land for protection as offsets may be out of favor now. The band Coldplay bought 10,000 mango trees in southern India to offset the carbon produced by the release of their second album. Five years later, the trees have now withered and died.

So if I am to make my wine drinking carbon neutral, I can’t buy my way out of it: I actually have to give something up. I figure I should go beverage-for-beverage, in other words, keep wine, and give up something else. I’d love to say that I would give up soda, but since I haven’t had a soda in something like 15 years, that would kind of be like my giving up snowmobiling, jet-skiing, and being driven to work in a stretch Hummer limousine (oh wait, that last one actually WILL be tough to give up).

Because the kind of wine that I enjoy is a unique product that can’t be replaced locally, I have another target in my sights that can: bottled water. It’s one of those paradoxes of the global era to be able to buy spring water from the French alps or the islands of Fiji in New York when there is abundant drinkable tap water available (unlike some countries, the efforts of a current UNICEF campaign). And, as a commenter pointed out in a previous posting, this chart shows that bottled water’s growth rate is faster than wine–it must be stopped!

So for 30 days I’m not going to consume any bottled water. Just what kind of a sacrifice will that be? Granted, not a huge one. I might save the world something like 30 bottles of water. But it’s a start. And I may even extend it if I can live without my favorite Gerolsteiner. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and fill up my water bottle at the drinking fountain.

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Chart of the day: soda down, wine up

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Americans love soda so much that we drink 44 gallons a head last year. But soda sales have slowed, as Americans drank 52 gallons of soda in 1998. So that’s a decline of 18%. Even though that change hasn’t been reflected entirely in America’s waistlines, the secular decline has led to some to argue that “peak soda” is over.

Of course, we’re drinking a lot of other things such as bottled water, coconut water (!), and the juice of pomegranates and acai berries. For beer, the consumption arrow is pointed down (and sentiment is in free-fall). But wine consumption per capita has risen every year since 1993.

So there you have the current score: soda, 44 gallons, red arrow; wine, 3 gallons, green arrow.

Oh, and for a bonus chart of the day, check out the latest poll data from Gallup. They show that Americans of all ages are more into wine than 20 years ago. Only 14 percent of the youngest drinkers then liked wine as their preferred drink (compared to 71 percent who like beer); 29 percent of that cohort now says wine is their preferred drink (with only 43 percent liking beer the most). Young people today like wine twice as much as they did then. And people over 50 don’t really like beer.


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