Rabelais Books, a terrific bookstore in Portland, Maine, that specializes in books about food and wine (surprising how we love that around here, huh?) has released its first catalogue of rare and antiquarian food, wine and spirits books. It's great fun to glance through, even if you can't throw down $1,800 for a first edition of Agoston Haraszthy's 1862 classic Grape Culture, Wines and Wine-Making.

(As a side note, the catalogue also includes copies of the out-of-print and rare 'in bocca' series of Italian cookbooks, which I recall coming across during my own stint in the rare-book business, back in the early 90s, for about $35 rather than $450, alas. Here's a comment from Mario Batali on the in bocca series from an article in the NY Times, if you're interested).

There's a very amusing post over at Dr. Vino about what one can do with leftover corks—I'm particularly fond of the cork castle with the Obama action figure on the balcony, but there are a number of other nifty options. And if none of them satisfy your cork obsession, you also might want to pick up a copy of Cork Boat, a quirky, charming, and very entertaining book about author John Pollack's successful attempt to build a boat out of corks (165,321 of them) and sail it down Portugal's Douro River. Ah, human ingenuity. No wonder we're the dominant species on the planet. —R.I.

Actually, I can't say for certain that Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain is the world's most famous che, but he's certainly up there; and in terms of influence, he's definitely at the top of the heap. So it was a privilege to have him turn up at the F&W offices the other day to talk about his latest project, Inedit. 

As Adria said, talking about the project, "At El Bulli I thought that the world of wine, even the world of water, was very well taken care of. But there was a hole in the world of beer." To fill that hole, he joined up with Estrella Damm, the Spanish mega-brewer to create Inedit, a blend of a Belgian witbier-style wheat ale with a traditional lager (about 30% witbier, 70% lager). Beer is typically either lager or ale, even in the crazier realms of craft brewing in the U.S., so Inedit is definitely a novelty in that regard.

One of Adria's sommeliers added that their hope was to blend the spiciness and creamy texture of the wheat beer with the dry, light, pleasant bitterness of a lager, ideally producing a beer that would be perfect with a wide range of foods—in essence, Inedit is a beer designed to go with food, rather than a beer designed to be simply a beer. 

For that reason, when you taste Inedit, it's surprisingly unprepossessing. It doesn't bowl you over, the way, for instance, a West Coast double IPA might; i.e. by blasting your tongue with unprecedented amounts of hops; nor does it go the sturm und drang direction of something like Avery's The Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest, which I love, but which weighs in at a whopping 9.37% alcohol. Instead, Inedit is a fairly subtle, softly effervescent beer that tastes like a traditional lager with a bit more texture and faint (less than most white ales) notes of orange peel, licorice and cinnamon.

Inedit won't be available in the U.S. at retail until September (when it will cost $11.99 for a 750ml bottle), but it's currently being poured at a number of terrific restaurants, including 11 Madison Park, Casa Mono and La Fonda del Sol in NYC, Amada and Vetri in Philadelphia, Tapas y Tintos in Miami, Hugo's in Portland ME, and the SLS Hotel (and Bazaar, one assumes) in LA...

If you're bored, unemployed, or just have a whimsical attitude towards life, you should check out this job offer/contest/who knows what at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma. Apparently, they'll be paying $10,000 a month for six months to an as-yet-undetermined social media whiz/wine lover who can wax poetic in a web 2.0ish way about the wonders of Sonoma, MG's wines (of course—had to be a hitch somewhere), winemaking, vineyards, what happens if you try to thump a king cobra on the head with a mixing spoon (just kidding—no king cobras in Sonoma), and so on. 

I do want to know, though: Why, on the overview page for this job offer, is there a picture of a large fellow in a Viking helmet tromping through the vineyards? Do the Murphy-Goode folks know something about Sonoma that I don't?

The traditional harbingers of spring have finally arrived—asparagus at the farmers’ markets, cherry blossoms bursting all over the city—but one that might not be on your radar, and should be, is spring sake, or nama. Roughly the sake equivalent of Beaujolais Nouveau, spring sake is made from the previous fall’s rice harvest and is bottled without going through pasteurization or the traditional aging process.

“The beauty of spring sake is its freshness and liveliness,” says Yoshi Sako, of the small but fantastic Corkage Sake & Wine Shop in San Francisco, which carries more than 200 different sakes. “It’s a good introduction to sake, because even though the alcohol can be high, there is a richness and fruitiness to it.” (Other shops that carry selections of nama sakes include New York's Sakaya and Wally's in LA.)

Yoshi, who passed Japan’s sake-sommelier exam last year, pairs these sakes with lighter foods like summer rolls, soba salads and seafood. Two namas he recommends seeking out are Otokoyama Yukishibare ($30), on the drier side with pear and grape aromas, and Harushika Shiboribana ($30), which has a fruity nose and long finish. Just drink them sooner rather than later—the freshness fades the longer the sake is in the bottle. —Kelly Snowden

There's a useful post on a South African winery blog, kumkani.com, about how to remove red wine stains. The author tested a number of options, and landed on hydrogen peroxide as the winner. I'll have to try it myself, though in the meantime I intend to keep on using my handy-dandy bottle of Wine Away, which I find does the trick quite nicely. —R.I.

Though it's been entirely a pleasure writing this darn blog all by myself, the fingers can only move so fast on the keyboard, and there's a world of interesting wine info out there. So, starting today, a few of my colleagues here at F&W are going to weigh in occasionally on nifty news and great bottles (whether wine, beer, sake, or spirits). I, for one, am both relieved and thrilled to add some new voices to the mix, among them Megan Krigbaum (our F&W assistant wine editor), Kristin Donnelly (associate food editor & wine fanatic), Kelly Snowden (assistant editor, scion of wine producing Snowdens, and what have you), and potentially others.  

San Francisco-based DIY wine specialists Crushpad have just opened a branch in Bordeaux, so if you've got a hankering to see if you can beat producers like Ausone and Cheval-Blanc at their own game (the facility is located in St-Emilion), now's your chance. And no matter what, it's got to be cheaper than buying top quality Bordeaux vineyards, which can run around $670,000 an acre...

I stopped by briefly this afternoon at a tasting of the new 2007 Vintage Ports (here's a lengthy report from Jancis Robinson on the vintage) from some of the major houses, and walked away very impressed. Based on this group, the '07s are more precise and fragrant than I recall the 2003s being; not as lusciously ripe (no surprise—it was a much cooler growing season through the entire summer, though it ended on ideally warm days in September) but more complex and graceful; and with a refined, powerful, spicy tannic grip on the finish of almost all the wines. I'll blog more about the vintage when I taste a few more examples—the wines won't be out for quite a while—but the two at the top of the heap today, for me, were the compellingly floral, layered, powerful Quinta do Vesuvio and the plush, black-currant-and-chocolate Croft. 

There's a thought-provoking article over at The Telegraph regarding a purported potential 12 billion Euro bid by Diageo (BV, Sterling, Guinness, Smirnoff, Tanqueray, etc etc etc) for LVMH's spirits and wine portfolio (Moet & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Hennessy, Chalone, Glenmorangie, Château D'Yquem, etc etc etc). Yet there's also news over at Forbes that LVMH has strongly denied that they are considering this offer. Well! I say that's a relief, because it means—hah!—I can now counter with my own bid, which will include at least $1,500, one pair of used but high-quality cowboy boots, and a 1993 Volvo with 200,000 miles on it.

Oh wait—rats, I already gave the Volvo to charity. Never mind.