Too-Hearty Party Costs Winery Its License
Cork dorks since the time of Bacchus have rhapsodized over the lush sensuality of wine, but a winery in upstate New York has learned that too many lushes and too much sensuality can cost a winemaker his or her business.
Vineyard 48 in Long Island had its license suspended by the New York State Liquor Authority last month after years of neighbors’ complaints came to, ahem. . . a head following a weekend party at the winery, where a crowd of 400 juiced-up revelers allegedly got seriously out of control, drinking wine out of gallon buckets with straws, fighting with each other, and peeing and pooping in adjacent backyards (“The lines at the Porta-Potties were so long!”). One amorous couple was even said to have been spotted doing The Wild Thing in an outraged neighbor’s bushes.
The winery’s owner denied the allegations, but at least one Cutchogue, Long Island, town official said Vineyard 48 had been a pain in the town’s collective ass for years and has required numerous police visits to calm drunken patrons (and in a couple of cases, have them carted off to the hospital for emergency treatment of alcohol poisoning).
Despite the winery’s denial of a raging pee-poop-and-pork fest, a couple weeks later Vineyard 48 owners read the chunder on the wall, voluntarily gave up their license and closed, leaving neighbors with a lot less excitement but a lot more peace and quiet.
Wine Thieves Target Burgundy Grapes, Vines
Given the worldwide cachet and stratospheric prices of great Burgundy, it’s no surprise that light-fingered cork dorks might try to pinch a few bottles from their local wine shop.
But six tons (!) of grapes? And 500 vines, ripped right out of the ground in the dead of night?
Ouch!
That’s what’s happening in the regions of Pomerol and St. Emilion, where French grape robbers apparently have not only light fingers but heavy machinery. . . plus a giant set of cast-iron gonads. So far in the waning months of 2017, all told almost seven tons of grapes have been stolen from Burgundy’s vineyards, and while the overall financial impact on local wineries has yet to be revealed, at least one vintner estimates thefts of his grapes to total more than $35,000.
So far, no grape-stained thieves have been apprehended, though Burgundy growers suspect they’re both wine and robbery professionals. To safeguard their crop, local growers have organized nighttime patrols, on the lookout for vehicles cruising through their vineyards at night. In the Champagne region, local police have stepped up too, sending officers on horseback to watch over vineyards and nab any grape-happy thieves.
French wine industry analysts suspect that the recent boom in rip-offs is caused by one of Burgundy’s worst growing seasons in 30 years, where brutally cold weather and hail have reduced the harvest by almost 20 percent. The one bright spot, however: local growers have yet to report any plagues of locusts, water turning into blood or three days of total darkness.
Wine and Your Waistline: The Flabby Facts
It is that time of year again.
No, not “Christmas” decorations that went up before Thanksgiving and will stay up until the last drop of rampant consumerism has been squeezed from the gift-buying turnip or gratingly insipid carols sung in keys hitherto unknown to the human ear, but the time to watch over how much we eat and drink so we don’t greet the new year looking like the Goodyear blimp with a bad case of elephantiasis.
Since for many of us strong adult beverages—wine, for example—are essential to both enjoying and surviving the holiday season, it’s only sensible to examine their effects on our waistlines (and butts and thighs and chins), all in answer to that age-old question: Does this make me look fat?
This is what we know. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, five ounces of the average dry wine with an alcohol level of between 11 and 14 percent contains between 120 and 130 calories. By comparison, five ounces of beer contains about half as many calories. Five ounces of your favorite hard stuff will slap you with more than twice as many (and probably get you shit-faced to boot).
Then there are carbohydrates. That five-ounce glass of dry California Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon typical contains three or four grams of carbs. If you like the sweet stuff or those monster truck-sized, high-alcohol wines, both calories and carbs go up. . . and up and up and up. What’s more, alcohol slows the body’s ability to burn off carbs, so they’re more likely to be converted into sugar and be stored as flab in your gut, thighs. . . you get the idea.
On the other hand, our average glass of fermented grape juice contains no cholesterol, fat or sodium, which almost (almost) makes it health food. Don’t forget wine’s other benefits too: reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer. And it really does make it easier to take the annual holiday madness.
Merlot Finally Moves Up From “Sideways”
“I am not drinking any Merlot!”
Those words, spoken by the main character in the 2004 hit film “Sideways,” were to the user-friendly, then wildly popular varietal what “salmonella outbreak” would be to your local fine dining restaurant.
No one anticipated the effect of that outburst by Pinot Noir-loving, Merlot-hating Miles (played by Paul Giamatti, who didn’t know jack about either wine when making the movie). But effect there certainly was. Pinot Noir sales shot up by some 16 percent after the movie’s release, a prelude to 9 percent increases in the years following.
Merlot, however, wasn’t quite so fortunate. Both sales and prices dropped markedly after “Sideways” debut, though admittedly it was lower-end Merlots that bore the brunt of the decrease. The effect was felt in the vineyards too, as growers yanked out more than 10,000 acres of Merlot grapes.
Well, more than a dozen years after Miles’s snarky retort, Merlot has finally regained its mojo. A survey last year found that Merlot is the No. 1 wine of choice by American consumers of all ages, while upscale bottles are more popular than ever, with impressive increases in both retail and restaurant sales.
In fact, some vintners even credit the movie for “saving” Merlot, cleaning out the oenological gene pool of many purveyors of the kind of simple, syrupy, character-free Merlots that pissed off Miles so much. Now you might even find wine lovers saying, “I am drinking a Merlot!”
Skip the Flu Shot, Drink Wine
It’s getting to be that time of year again, time for fever, chills, headaches, stomach upset, and general feeling like crap, aka, the flu.
You could get a flu shot, load up on Vitamin C or encase yourself in bubble wrap, hide under your bed and not come out until springtime. Or, according to researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, you could drink more wine.
Yes, along with the benefits of consuming moderate amounts of fermented grape juice like reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, cataracts and stroke, wine can also help your immune system resist the flu and, if you get it anyway, help reduce the severity of its symptoms.
It’s all about things called flavonoids, which are metabolites derived from plants that act as antioxidants. Wine has lots of them, and when these flavonoids interact with the microbes in our digestive tracts, the result can jack up the body’s immune system to fight off infections, or in this case, the flu.
Now, the university’s study was conducted only on mice, not on people. But those results were pretty impressive. And, really, would you rather have somebody stick a needle in your arm of sip a glass of good Cabernet? In medical terms, that’s called a “no-brainer.”
Great Wine… It Really Is All in Your Head
What is it that makes expensive wine taste better?
Is it the lovingly grown grapes, planted in gold-plated vineyards and kissed by the breath of virgins in the glistening dew of morning? Is it the sheer brilliance of the winemaker, an alchemist who possesses an enological Midas touch that turns mere grapes into Chateau Lafite Rothschild? Or is it the magic of that all-encompassing if enigmatic term “terroir,” which is French for, We don’t really know what it is but it does make for really great wine?
Actually, it’s none of the above. It’s your brain. Specifically, your brain under the influence of, well, money.
That, at least, is the conclusion of a study done by the University of Bonn and the global business school, INSEAD. It involved more than a dozen people, each given three tastes of wine costing about $14 a bottle. The first taste they were told the wine cost $3.50, the second $7 and the third $21, though in fact it was the same wine every time. Not surprisingly, they found the high-priced wine tasted best.
Researchers focused on two areas of the brain: the pre-frontal cortex, which seems to conflate price with quality, and the ventral striatum, which seems to get goosed by higher prices and apparently encourages people to think the wine tastes better than it is.
Unfortunately, the study doesn’t indicate what cork dorks can do to keep their brains from messing up their palates, except perhaps to pay more attention to what’s in your mouth and less to the price tag on the bottle.