Interesting article on Yahoo today (by way of AFP) about Diageo Chateau & Estates's apparent decision to get out of the Bordeaux market and what's likely to happen to Bordeaux prices as a result. Necessary reading, if you drink or collect Bordeaux!

A group of geologists in Oregon have a few skeptical things to say about the notion of "minerality" in wine, the Southern Oregon Mail Tribute reports. They've got a good point or two—that the amount of actual minerals in wine is below the threshold of human taste and smell, for instance—though they're a bit wobbly on what the French term terroir actually means, which is not just the soil, but the totality of the influence of a specific place on a wine's character.

Terroir takes into account human influence, too, according to Rhône winemaker Michel Chapoutier, who stopped by our office for a quick tasting a few days ago. Chapoutier also made a nice distinction between what he sees as the two broad types of wine in the world: taste-driven wines (where the producer assesses what consumers want, finds appropriate grape sources, and markets a wine that satisfies that demand) and wines of terroir (where the nature of a specific vineyard determines the character of the wine, the winemaker intervenes as little as possible in order to preserve that character, and then the owner hopes that people will buy it). 

When angry colonists threw tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, they had no idea that their rebellion would eventually lead to the American Revolutionary War in 1775, or that it would inspire the creation of another kind of beverage in 2009: Absolut Vodka Boston, a limited-edition vodka infused with black tea and elderflower.

Recently, mixologist Jamie Gordon hosted an Absolut Vodka Boston Tea Party at Food & Wine's New York City office. He gave the editorial staff a taste of some fantastic cocktails he created with the spirit, such as the juicy and aromatic Absolut Boston Blackberry.

ABSOLUT BOSTON BLACKBERRY
Makes 1 Drink

4 large blackberries
1 ounce agave nectar
4 ounces Absolut Boston
1 1/2 ounces fresh lemon juice
4 dashes rhubarb bitters
Ice

In a cocktail shaker, muddle 2 of the blackberries with the agave nectar. Add the Absolut Boston, lemon juice, bitters and ice. Shake well and double strain into a chilled large martini glass. Garnish with the remaining 2 blackberries.

So it seems that researchers in Japan have determined the cause of that horrible metallic super-fishy taste that occurs when some red wines are paired with fish. It's iron. Specifically, the amount of ferrous ion present in the wine. You can read all about this discovery here in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Admittedly, you'll have to be willing to plow through sentences like "Metal ions were analyzed by a postcolumn reaction with 4-(2-pyridylazo)resorcinol reagent combined with spectrophotometric detection," and "Total phenolics of wines were estimated according to the Folin-Ciocalteu method expressed as gallic acid equivalents," but what the heck, it's Wednesday afternoon and you're probably bored at work anyway, right?

If you do manage to wade through the article, you'll hit the payoff which is that tannins—long the scapegoat of bad fish-and-red-wine pairings—are entirely innocent. Yes, tannins are the Dreyfus in this whole fishy affair; blame not the tannins, friends. Instead, stick the onus on iron. Of course, there is one small hitch. As Mssrs. Tamura, Taniguchi, Suzuki, Okubo, Takata and Konno put it with appealing delicacy, "In daily life, it is difficult to predict the iron content in a bottled wine without opening it."

And, one might add, without subjecting it to a postcolumn reaction combined with spectrophotometric detection—but then, who doesn't do that sort of thing, these days?

There's a fascinating article in the NY Times today about how the tongue perceives the particular taste of carbonated beverages—a category that includes sparkling wines. Evidently, it isn't the prickliness of the popping bubbles that gives things that 'fizzy' taste, as one might think, but the receptors in the tongue that perceive sour flavors, which, as it turns out, are also tuned to sense carbon dioxide. The article (and the research paper in Science, which it reports on; only available with a subscription) is mainly concerned with soda and whatnot, but Champagne lovers might get a kick out of it as well.

Yes, oddly enough, social networking phenomenon Twitter is coming out with a wine (full story from the SF Weekly blog here). No idea how good the juice is, as it won't be bottled until August of 2010, but the proceeds are going to a good cause—Room to Read, a global charity that seeks to improve literacy rates among rural and impoverished children. More info can be had at the wine project's website.

On a side note, I met Twitter founder Biz Stone at a dinner party about five years ago. He was carrying on about the unbelievable future of blogs, social media, and so on. I thought to myself, this guy's kind of nuts about this stuff, uh, right—good luck with that. So, wow. Excellent job of predicting the future, Mr. Wine Writer. It's not like anyone has offered me half a billion dollars for anything I've founded recently...

Yes, it's come to this—as the LA Times reports here, wrestling mogul Vince McMahon and his World Wrestling Entertainment company are taking legal action against the Philadelphia-based American Wine Foundation to prevent it from referring to one of its wine classes as the "Sommelier Smackdown." I'd suggest settling it in the ring, but somehow I doubt things would go well for the wine-tasters in that fight...

Just heard that F&W American Wine Award winning winery Cliff Lede (the 2007 Cliff Lede Sauvignon Blanc won in 2008) has gone and snapped up F&W American Wine Award winning winery Breggo Cellars (Best New Winery of the Year, 2008). Apparently Breggo co-founder Douglas Stewart will stay on as general manager and winemaker. No word on what Cliff Lede paid for Breggo, but regardless, it's nice when these things stay in the F&W family. I'm sure that had a huge influence on the deal, of course...

When a friend invited me to a five-course, whiskey-paired dinner at Eleven Madison Park last Wednesday, I hesitated before accepting. I’ve been to plenty of wine- and beer-paired dinners, but sipping whiskey through a meal sounded a little intense. If anyone could pull it off, though, it would certainly be genius chef Daniel Humm. And the whiskeys around which he created the menu weren’t just any whiskeys. We were being treated to six limited-edition Balvenie 17-year-old single-malt scotch whiskeys, including the 2001 Balvenie Islay Cask and the super-rare 2006 Balvenie New Wood. The pairing of the night: The 2007 Balvenie Sherry Cask matched with Humm’s black angus tenderloin with roasted summer beans. Most of these scotches are nearly impossible to find, but the newest limited-edition release, the Balvenie Madeira Cask, will be in stores in early October. This extraordinarily rich scotch, matured in oak and finished in casks that were used to make fortified Madeira, was the nightcap to our feast, with sweet vanilla-oak notes that gave way to spices and dried fruit and a seemingly never-ending finish.   

 

Yesterday I sat down in the Food & Wine tasting room with Samuel Adams founder and brewer Jim Koch to try some of his latest releases. After two years of tinkering, Koch has perfected the recipe for his new Coastal Wheat. The idea was to bottle the bright taste of a classic Hefewizen-style (meaning unfiltered wheat) beer poured on draft and finished with a squeeze of fresh lemon. He finally achieved perfection with the zest from Eureka and Lisbon lemons that come from just three growing regions in California. Koch also opened the 2009 Utopias, which should be out by the end of the month. This monster of a beer (about 55 proof) is released every odd year and is a blend of cask beers dating back to 1994. The ’09  tastes a little brighter than previous releases, with a bit more fruit and some vanilla and maple flavors. We ended the tasting with a rare bottle, the 1994 Sam Adams Triple Bock. One of the first “extreme” beers, it has 17.5 percent alcohol. “This was the beer equivalent of a lunar landing on the moon. It broke the sound barrier,” Koch says. Aged in oak barrels, it’s full of dark fruit and drinks more like a fine port than a beer. You won't find this beer in stores, but Koch says a few bottles are still floating around for people willing to search.