Naked Wines Share Discussion Threads

[bionicdog] 10/3/2009 08:14

I had my first ever 15%er the other day and jolly nice it was too.

Here's another one that I haven't got around too yet.

[ariane] 06/3/2009 11:28

EU Wine Output to Fall 1% on France, Spain, USDA Says (Update1)
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By Rudy Ruitenberg

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- European Union wine production will drop 1 percent in the year through July after unfavorable weather in France and Spain reduced the grape harvest, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The EU may produce 160.2 million hectoliters (4.2 billion gallons) of wine in the marketing year, down from 161.8 million hectoliters in the prior year, the USDA said in an annual report. It may rise to 162 million hectoliters in the year to July 2010.

The region is the world's largest producer, consumer, exporter and importer of wine, according to the department. The EU accounts for almost half of the world's vine-growing area and two-thirds of wine production.

"In the current marketing year, Italy has become the leading wine producer in the world, although this is mainly due to the continued crop declines reported in France," the USDA said. EU production fell "due to adverse weather, mainly in France and Spain," the USDA said.

Italian wine production is expected to rise 7 percent to 45.5 million hectoliters, while France's output will drop 6 percent to 43.6 million hectoliters, according to the USDA. Spain will produce 36 million hectoliters of wine, down 2 percent.

In central and southern Italy, wine production has increased "substantially," the department said. In northern Italy, especially the Piedmont region, rain and cold in May and June, accompanied by hail storms and strong winds, caused production to decline more than 15 percent, the USDA said.

Mild Winter

In France, "in most of the wine-growing regions, an unusually mild winter did not allow the vines to have their usual resting period" last year, the USDA said. "This was followed by a late spring frost which was particularly harmful in the Loire Valley and Bordeaux."

Production of French appellation-of-origin wine is expected to drop 7 percent to 21.6 million hectoliters.

EU wine consumption is being affected by anti-alcohol campaigns in Italy and France as well as the economic crisis, the USDA said. Per-capita consumption in France and Italy fell to 50.6 liters and 43.7 liters respectively in 2007, from more than 100 liters in the 1960s, according to the report.

"The economic recession which started in the second half of 2008 is increasingly affecting wine consumption," the department said. "Expectations for the immediate future indicate an even greater reduction of domestic consumption."

To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at [e-mail].

Last Updated: March 6, 2009 06:02 EST

[itsourpete] 28/1/2009 18:56

Shopped in Morrisons the other day (first time ever) and stumbled across a crackingly good Cabernet / Shiraz from South Africa. Its a Nederburg 2006 and it weighs in at a meaty 14.5%. Its thick gloopy earthy blackcurrenty and a joy to drink. I'm sure it was reduced by about 30% to around a fiver a bottle. Paid my second visit a few days later and picked up another 3 of them. Lovely - and recommended to all gluggers too!

[grupo] 29/11/2008 16:25

Wine makers crack open hi-tech tricks

By Rami Tzabar
BBC Science


French scientists have devised a method of analysing valuable old bottles of wine to test if they are fake or genuine.

Using a particle accelerator, more associated with unlocking the secrets of the Universe than those of red wine, physicists at the Centre for Scientific Research in Bordeaux have teamed up with some of the great wine producing chateaux of the region and a wine merchant specialising in rare wines.

"We wanted to find some objective scientific method for analysing the wine and authenticating it in cases where it's not entirely clear if the bottle is genuine," says Stephen Williams of The Antique Wine Company, which bank rolled the VinCert project to the tune of £100,000.

The secondary trade in fine wine, with vintages dating back many decades or even centuries, now exceeds £1bn a year.

Mr Williams got the idea after purchasing a case of old wine from a house in the south of France, including a bottle of 1900 Chateau Margaux, worth in the region of £10,000.

The record auction price for a single bottle of wine is £96,000 ($156,000) for a 1787 Chateau Lafite, which was reputedly once owned by America's third President and author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.

"We wanted to establish a scientific mechanism to verify the wine that we buy in cases where we can't satisfy ourselves that it's absolutely genuine," explains Mr Williams.

He had heard about a technique carried out by scientists at Arcane, the transfer technology arm of the Nuclear Research Centre at Gradignan in Bordeaux, which was using an ion beam from a particle accelerator to test the authenticity of fine art.

"We wondered if this could be developed further, and saw an application for wine," he said.

Elementary analysis

The analysis works by measuring the X-ray radiation emitted when the glass bottle is placed in the path of an ion particle beam.

"The detector allows us to analyse the chemical composition of the glass," explains researcher Herve Guegan.

"From that, we can detect the age of the bottle and also where the glass was made."

As glass production methods evolved over time, the chemical composition of wine bottles changed.

Trace elements produce a characteristic signature - or fingerprint - for each bottle, as some elements were only used in glass making for a few years before being substituted for something else.

For example, manganese was used to produce the green colour of wine bottles only between about 1920 and 1957, as it came from Moroccan mines at the time when Morocco was under French rule.

Then bottle manufacturers switched to chromium after Morocco gained independence.

So it is possible to compare the chemical fingerprint of a suspect bottle with that of a genuine sample to see if there are any substantial differences that would suggest that the bottle is fake.

The composition also gives clues to the specific production methods and furnaces used in different parts of France.

Bottled wisdom

So far, the project has been able to build up a database of the chemical components of glass bottles from the last 200 years, using around 150 authentic bottles of fine wine donated by the various chateaux.

But it does not take a master forger to work out that you could get around this technique by simply taking authentic empty bottles and filling them with plonk.

So to get around this, a second test on the wine itself was devised by Philippe Hubert at the Centre for Nuclear Studies.

It uses a gamma ray detector to study the levels of radioactive particles in the wine, in this case caesium-137, that have been present in the atmosphere since the era of atomic weapons testing began after World War II.

"The main advantage of this technique is we don't need to open the bottle to do these kinds of measurements," Professor Hubert relates.

"We just have to put the bottle close to or on top of the detector."

Using bottles donated from the chateaux, Philippe Hubert has built up a record of caesium-137 levels in wine across the second half of the 20th Century.

"In the wine," he says, "is the story of the atomic age."

The measurements show that caesium levels rise dramatically from 1951, reaching a peak at around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and then dropping dramatically, reflecting the atmospheric test ban treaty agreed by Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev in 1963.

The next spike in the data comes in 1986, caused by fall-out from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

"If you have an old wine, say from 1860, for example; if you see some caesium in such a bottle, then immediately you can tell that this bottle is a fake one."

Authentic expertise?

Both the gamma ray and the ion beam analyses should make forging antique wines much harder, particularly as the database expands to cover several hundred wines and include other regions such as Burgundy.

But some critics have pointed to a potential conflict of interest, given the close involvement of the chateaux and the financial backing of a wine dealer with a vested interest in authentication.

"Our objective here," explains Stephen Williams, "is to develop the technology and then hand it over to an independent company that will offer a service of authentication to other merchants and private individuals around the world."

Today, the best chateaux in Bordeaux, the so-called Premier Gran Cru Classé, take forgery much more seriously than in the past.

At Chateau Margaux, assistant winery manager Philippe Bascaules casts his eye over their unique and priceless collection of vintage wine, a reference cellar of authentic first growths from 1848 to the present day.

"Thirty years ago, I think we didn't care about the authenticity of the bottle," he says.

"It was unthinkable that someone could make a copy because the cost of the bottle was not so high. Now, when one bottle is more than 1,000 euros then people want to make one bottle of Chateau Margaux."

Margaux, like many prestige winemakers around the world, are taking fraud much more seriously now.

"We want it to be more difficult to copy a bottle of Chateau Margaux than other wines," says Mr Bascaules.

"So first of all the bottle has the logo of Margaux, but now we also put the vintage of the wine into the glass bottle. Since 2005, we also put a tag inside the bottle cap, and with a special reader we can recognise our cap."

Other technologies developed in the last few years include watermarks and holograms on labels and the use of special inks.

Hardy's, the Australian wine producer, has been encoding the caps of its niche wines with samples of DNA from 100-year old vines.


Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2008/11/28 16:26:38 GMT

[itsourpete] 23/7/2008 20:45

Plenty of deals around at the mo - possibly linked to shortage of cash around















Pete

[bionicdog] 23/7/2008 19:55

Have had the SB which was pretty good and up to the usual NZ standard. Speaking of which , try the Maven Marlborough pinot from Tesco.

[realcooltrader] 30/6/2008 16:03

Yep, just been there, the 25% off is in place of their normal 5% off minimum 6 bottles. It's on top of any other already reduced prices, e.g. I bought some Pouilly Fuisse for £5.99 and some Wolf Blass Green Label Chardonnay for £3.74 (missus likes it...).

[isis] 30/6/2008 14:10

Minimum 25% Off All Wines & Champagnes at Tesco this week.

[ariane] 04/6/2008 17:01

Study boosts wine chemical hopes
A chemical derived from red wine could one day help keep the heart "genetically young", claim researchers.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that resveratrol appeared to halt age-related changes in the function of heart genes.

The effects, described in the PLOS One journal, appeared to mimic those produced by eating a very low calorie diet - known to prolong life.

But an expert said drinking wine would not achieve the effect.


In order to have any effect, you would have to drink literally gallons of wine, and that is not recommended
Dr Louise Connelly
Imperial College

Resveratrol, a plant polyphenol found in red wine, grapes and pomegranates, has been suggested as one of the reasons for the so-called "French paradox" - the relative longevity of the French despite a diet rich in artery-clogging animal fats.

It has been suggested that the traditional glass of red wine taken at mealtimes was helping beat heart disease.

The Wisconsin researchers the chemical on "middle-aged" mice, looking at the effects on the workings of genes in the heart.

The natural ageing process in animals and humans is marked by changes in the function, or expression, of thousands of genes in the organ, and even though the precise consequences of all these changes in gene expression is not fully understood, they are thought to contribute to its gradual overall weakening.

The mice on resveratrol appeared to have fewer changes in gene expression over time compared with those who did not.

The researchers suggested that this brought studies of the chemical closer to the "consumption reality" of middle-aged humans.

They also noticed similarities between the gene expression changes linked to resveratrol and those noticed in mice given low calorie diets, prompting speculation that the chemical may have a similar effect.

Many animals who undergo "calorific restriction" live longer, and Dr Tomas Prolla, one of the lead authors, suggested a similar process might be at work.

"There must be a few master biochemical pathways activated in response to caloric restriction, which in turn activate many other pathways - and resveratrol seems to activate some of those master pathways as well."

Hard to take

However, none of this may be good news for lovers of red wine.

Dr Louise Connelly, from Imperial College, who has looked at the effects of resveratrol on lung disease, said that the chemical did not stay in the body long enough to have any effects.

"The resveratrol molecule is very quickly removed from the bloodstream metabolised by the liver.

"In order to have any effect, you would have to drink literally gallons of wine, and that is not recommended."

She said that the only way for humans to experience its effects would be the development of a form of the chemical which overcame this problem.

Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2008/06/04 06:58:11 GMT

[ariane] 04/6/2008 17:01

Study boosts wine chemical hopes
A chemical derived from red wine could one day help keep the heart "genetically young", claim researchers.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that resveratrol appeared to halt age-related changes in the function of heart genes.

The effects, described in the PLOS One journal, appeared to mimic those produced by eating a very low calorie diet - known to prolong life.

But an expert said drinking wine would not achieve the effect.


In order to have any effect, you would have to drink literally gallons of wine, and that is not recommended
Dr Louise Connelly
Imperial College

Resveratrol, a plant polyphenol found in red wine, grapes and pomegranates, has been suggested as one of the reasons for the so-called "French paradox" - the relative longevity of the French despite a diet rich in artery-clogging animal fats.

It has been suggested that the traditional glass of red wine taken at mealtimes was helping beat heart disease.

The Wisconsin researchers the chemical on "middle-aged" mice, looking at the effects on the workings of genes in the heart.

The natural ageing process in animals and humans is marked by changes in the function, or expression, of thousands of genes in the organ, and even though the precise consequences of all these changes in gene expression is not fully understood, they are thought to contribute to its gradual overall weakening.

The mice on resveratrol appeared to have fewer changes in gene expression over time compared with those who did not.

The researchers suggested that this brought studies of the chemical closer to the "consumption reality" of middle-aged humans.

They also noticed similarities between the gene expression changes linked to resveratrol and those noticed in mice given low calorie diets, prompting speculation that the chemical may have a similar effect.

Many animals who undergo "calorific restriction" live longer, and Dr Tomas Prolla, one of the lead authors, suggested a similar process might be at work.

"There must be a few master biochemical pathways activated in response to caloric restriction, which in turn activate many other pathways - and resveratrol seems to activate some of those master pathways as well."

Hard to take

However, none of this may be good news for lovers of red wine.

Dr Louise Connelly, from Imperial College, who has looked at the effects of resveratrol on lung disease, said that the chemical did not stay in the body long enough to have any effects.

"The resveratrol molecule is very quickly removed from the bloodstream metabolised by the liver.

"In order to have any effect, you would have to drink literally gallons of wine, and that is not recommended."

She said that the only way for humans to experience its effects would be the development of a form of the chemical which overcame this problem.

Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2008/06/04 06:58:11 GMT

[itsourpete] 24/4/2008 20:27

Hmmmmm

My local Oddbins recommended their 'wine of the week before last' today (jolly fine fellows recommending the stuff that they're not promoting THIS week)and, for those of you that didn't take up their offer, it was a LOURENSFORD 2006 Merlot - South African 14.5% alcohol by volume. BY JOVE! What a cracking little number. Typical 'earthy' south african taste with a full (and I mean FULL) body behind it! a glass or 3 of this and by golly you'll be chanting south african vibes and renting michael caine's Zulu in no time! EXTRAORDINARY!!!

Glug . . . . . . . and enjoy!!!!

Pete

P.S. £6.99 before you ask!!

[bionicdog] 11/4/2008 22:09

Not too much to write home about at the Tesco wine festival , but regular readers will be aware of my love for NZ wine. The Tesco finest Marlborough Pinot is lovely and down to £6.98 , it's worth 9 quid of anyone's money. I'm drinking my second bottle now strangely enough. The Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc is also a steal at £4.89 , there is an extra 5% off for 6 bottles.
Happy glugging.

[bionicdog] 04/4/2008 15:55

What does it taste like? Hope it's better that Denbies , Britains largest and finest (so they say anyway).

[chutes01] 04/4/2008 15:41

Gents,
Please cast your eyes over the English Wines Group (EWG) thread, spoke to the Co. only a couple of days ago, finals out end of this month, company about to move into profit, chap said the share price was 'a no-brainer down here', I hold a decent chunk, any level of buying will push the share price up.
Good luck, off to open my first of the day.
Cheers, Chutes.

[bionicdog] 19/3/2008 20:47

Anyone else who enjoys NZ sauvignon blanc could do a lot worse than this.

Currently £5.99 in store instead of the normal £7.99. You normally have to pay at least 8 quid for a sauvignon of this standard.

[elmfield] 19/3/2008 20:27

the way nthe markets are going we all need some good cheer, more of that 14.5% yes please!

[itsourpete] 19/3/2008 20:26

Had an absolute CORKER (no pun intended!) of a wine tonight. Picked it up whilst idly browsing (accidentally in the wine section!) of Marks & Sparks today. Tis a 'Harrowgate 2005 Central Victoria Shiraz' 2005 14.5% alcohol by vol. Goodness me - what a SPLENDID wine! Had it with lamb but it's good enough to drink by itself! £8.99 but as good as anything up to £20 a bottle - in my humble opinion of course!

Regards to all gluggers!

Pete

[isis] 19/3/2008 17:18

Has anyone noticed the tax increases?
I suppose they use the old stock first,Offies and Supermarkets reported a sharp increase in sales after the budget and a spokesman for Thresher said 'It is amazing what people will do for 14p'.
LOL

[realcooltrader] 19/3/2008 17:12

Cheers, think I'll stick with the NZ then.

[realcooltrader] 19/3/2008 15:45

bionicdog, I have an offer from Threshers for 6 for £24 for any of the Casillero del Diablo range, so would be grateful for your thoughts on the SB once you've sobered up ;-)

Slightly OT, borrowed from jibba_jabba:

[bionicdog] 19/3/2008 12:09

I will now be sampling the Casillero del Diablo sauvignon blanc in an attempt to remove the hangover.