Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
What is wine for? As I continue to grow older, I find that the questions that occupy my intellect tend to grow more basic. The questions that occur to me and capture my interest tend to be substantially broader than the kind of trivialities that were stationed in my more youthful mind. I only broach the question above here because lately I've been questioning (or at least trying to understand) how I could have possibly produced more than 2,450 posts…
On the eve of two simultaneously scheduled wine fairs dedicated to the proposition that everything old is new again, it’s hard not to admire the enthusiasm of those taken by “natural” wine. It’s hard not to notice the excitement its admirers exhibit. It’s hard not to notice that many of the proponents and champions of these wines revel in the idea that they are part of a revolution that defies a stale status quo. The kind of excitement that is…
Some truths are uncomfortable. The Experts Are the Best Sources of Wine Info and RecommendationsThe tendancy to disparage "wine experts" or "wine elite" grows as the role of social media and peer reviews grow. Yet the fact remains that the experts are the best and most reliable source of information on wine. Folks like Eric Asimov, Robert Parker, Jim Laube, Jancis Robinson, Steve Heimoff, Charles Olken, Dan Berger, Lettie Teague, Jon Bonne and other well known experts are the one's…
Minors Don't Buy Alcohol On-line. And yet, this fundamental fact has gone unnoticed in the wake of a recently released study that looks at minors access to alcohol conducted by Chapel Hill North Carolina and funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. While this study shows that 8 students attempting to buy wine from 100 unknown on-line vendors demonstrated that 48 out of 100 orders were delivered, the study itself and the media coverage that has followed somehow failed to mentioned…
"The advantages is to enjoy the drunk sensation with none of the harmful effects of alcohol on the body." This sounds a bit like a description of love. It's not. It is a description of a new product called "Wahh"created by scientists that allows a user to administer a dose of alcohol via aerosol spray to the mouth that gets the user INSTANTLY drunk—but, the effects wear off in seconds. When I first read this it immediately sounded to me…
