Dr Vino's wine blog

As if wine weren’t fun enough to drink with another person, a new set of glasses “forces” cooperation among couples. Hmm, I guess cooperation is another word for backwash?

The developer of the glasses, called “my other half,” describes them as two glasses as attached by a tube. If someone tries to drink alone then all the wine flows into the other person’s glass, hence “cooperation”–or frustration!–or the need to find someone taller than you are.

Photos of the glasses in action after the jump. Read more…

Look what my son, age 3 1/2, brought home from pre-school the other day–a train! Can’t you tell?!? Apparently the assignment was to pick some objects for an art project…and he gravitated toward a sparkling wine canister and a cork!

Bambino vino, doing his father proud.

A new wine bar, 90pluspoints, opens in New York City’s East Village neighborhood next Tuesday. The focus of the bar is, as the name implies, serving wines that have been rated 90 points and more by the influential wine review, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate.

“Anything under 90 points is crap,” owner Joseph Coonawara told me last week. “The point score is all that matters. Grape variety, region, and especially vintage, even food pairings–the rest of it’s all noise.”

Known as “Run Rig” to his friends after the Torbreck wine awarded 99 points by Robert Parker, the Australian Coonawara has built a solid resume for launching his own wine bar. He rose in the ranks at New Jersey wine shop Wine Library and later became head of internet sales at Zachy’s. But he left because “they weren’t points oriented enough for me. There’s a great opportunity here to bring the pleasure of points to an on-premises establishment.”

Coonawara will have several flights of wine by the glass available. Most notably, there will be the five two-ounce shot glasses of Parker favorites from Spain and Australia that roll in at more than 16 percent alcohol.

“You don’t need to swirl and sniff, just toss it back,” Coonawara said. We’ll see if New Yorkers have a taste for it starting next week.

90pluspoints
131 e. 4th st
212-555-9463
click here for directions and other background information

The screwcap posting from a couple of days ago generated an interesting discussion on The Consumerist about the pros and cons of closures. Check it out.

One thing that came up is that the World Wildlife Fund has proclaimed that using cork–actually tree bark harvested every nine years–is better for the environment. They claim it makes those forests more economically viable, which then reduces the possibility they will be sold for other development (no word on why making it a national forest would not achieve the same goal). And they even invoke the Iberian lynx habitat!

Whether or not using corks is better or worse for the environment, we all no doubt have a cache of corks. I, for one, rarely throw them away (except for those rubber bullet synthetic corks). I even made a cork board out of them once thanks to a frame as a birthday present. What do you do with your corks?

One company in Missouri that specializes in green building materials is encouraging consumers to send in their corks so that they can reuse them. They need 1,200 pounds and appear close to attaining their goal! If only they had recruited this guy earlier on…

A dress made out of wine? Wow, I thought ethanol was a bad fate for the wine glut. But this might be even more, um, creative.

Gary Cass who works at the MicroBe project at the University of Western Australia “noticed that when oxygen got into the vats and turned the wine into vinegar, a slimy, rubbery layer grew on top.” Apparently, Cass saw that and thought “dress!”

The picture to the right shows the “cavewoman” cut of the dress (no word on whether the Goth face paint and wig are also obligatory). “It’s the bacteria that are weaving all these fibers together,” says Cass. “We’re not using any machines, sewing machines and so forth.”

One catch is that it has to be kept wet–wow, wet wine waste dress contests! Just in time for spring break…

“News in Science: Bugs make dress smell like old wine” [abc.net.au]

tags: wine | fashion | fabric

What is your caption for this photo? Post your comments below!

Image credit: AP

tags: wine | Nascar | jeff gordon

Du pain, du vin, du Boursin

Some wine, some bread, some Boursin cheese. So ran the national ad in France for Boursin, linking it to both wine and bread.

But what works in France might not work in America. Specifically, Connecticut.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Mitch Rapaport and Margaret Sapir. Throwing in the towel on corporate careers (and perhaps in spite of their business training since each holds an MBA), the couple decided to start a Wave Hill Breads, a bakery, as a second career. They apprenticed for three years with a baker in Vermont before finally finding space in Wilton, Connecticut a year and a half ago.

It’s a great bread for wine lovers since they mill their own spelt and rye at the bakery, activating wild yeasts and leading to…fermentation! The excellent, hand made breads made from just six ingredients are currently available at select stores in Fairfield and Westchester Counties (see a photo of them in their bakery here). Foodie Michael Stern even went so far as to say it is possibly the best bread on the East coast!

Mitch had a previous career in branding and thus told me that he took a particular interest in the bread’s bag. He wanted to include a couple of stanzas from the poem “Neighbours” by Robert Service that mentioned both wine and bread. But when he emailed the text to about a dozen friends, he said the opinion was split on whether to include the reference to wine, with the negatives particularly strongly opposed. So he decided to scrap the poem.

He wrote me in a follow-up email that some were “concerned that wine may be taboo in some homes, that parents may be concerned about the influence on children, and that many families contain recovering alcoholics. In other words, why take an unnecessary risk?”

I could possibly understand some people not wanting to put actual wine in front of recovering alcoholics or children–but the mere mention of wine?! Eegads, the Catholic Church with real bread and wine must pose difficulties…See right for the final packaging of the bread, which isn’t exactly short on words. Here’s the text from the poem that Mitch wanted to use:

My neighbour has a field of wheat
And I a rood of vine;
And he will give me bread to eat,
And I will give him wine.
So with my neighbour I rejoice
That we are fit and free,
Content to praise with lusty voice
Bread, Wine and Liberty.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments below!

Wave Hill Breads, 196 Danbury Road, Wilton CT 06897. Tel: 203.762.9595

Related: “You say oinos, I say oenos” [Dr. V]
tags: wine | bread