Red Wine - Resveratrol and the Search for the Elixir of Life

Well, that clears everything up for me. According to a new study in Cell Metabolism, there's still hope for winos everywhere that a life of swilling red wine will keep you healthy. In short, it was found that whether given in small, medium, or large doses, resveratrol, a naturally occurring "dirty molecule," helped American* mice live longer.

ScienceDaily.com

They can't yet identify what exactly is going on, but this article marks a positive turn in the experimental-drug-development phase for big pharmaceuticals hoping to find the anti-aging pill. I don't know about you, but I plan on sitting back with a few boxes and not worrying at all about this until they can inject the solution into my Orange Tyson Chicken or something.

Seatle Times - Think Inside the Box

*American here refers to the high-fat diet with which they are fed

Drink 'till your face matches the wine!
Redface

Drink the Best Wine First - Or Just Stick to Cheap Wine. Your Call.

While I may heartily agree with Nanuchka, I also don't think the best wine has to be expensive. Given my past swilling break-even Welch's, I can honestly say I have enjoyed cheap wine on many an occasion.

Recently, however, I have fallen victim to what appears to be an American trend in wine purchasing: Almost every bottle I buy is $12-$18. While I sometimes plan on buying a cheap magnum of wine, I am seduced by the rack upon rack of wine and when my eyes are dragged to the sale bottles, I end up thinking "$11.99 down from $15.99, that's a steal" when I should really be thinking "If they can sell it for 3/4 the listed price, I could probably find something that tastes as good for 1/4 the price."

A recent Slate article prompted me to write on this topic. Also, according to Slate, one of the biggest complaints some people have (I've never really minded this) about cheap wine - the inconsistent quality - is no longer a factor because of "falling market share over the last 15 years."

So, here's to drinking cheap wine from large glasses and getting flushed without paying much.

Oh Nein Meine Trauben

Earlier this week an awesome/awful crime was committed. Around 5,500 lbs of premium grapes were stolen in the middle of the night from a German vineyard. The gutsy thieves brought their own harvester and escaped with nothing but tracks in the mud.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bild-787436-263023.html

Instead of the desperate work of professionals, I personally hope it was a pair or trio of home-brewers out to make the wine batch of their lives. How cool would it be to have a couple years worth of premium pirated wine locked away in your cellar? Just saying.

A Day of Rosiness - Morning Effusion

In several parts, I would like to present to you a day's worth of cocktails that will keep you rosy. To start things off, we have the Morning Effusion, a Rosy Navel:

Morning Effusion:

Rosy Navel
4 oz Rosé Wine
1 oz Curacao
2 oz Orange Juice
Lemon-Lime Soda

Add the wine, curacao, and orange juice to a shaker half full with ice and stir languidly. Do not shake, as this will really mess up the taste from the rosé (unless you're throwing a party with this stuff and you've gone for box o' wine in which case who the hell cares if you shake it?) Pour into collins glass with some ice, then top with the soda. Garnish if you wish with a lemon wedge.

This cocktail is obviously light on liquor, which makes it perfect for an early start to the drinking day. A few glasses of this will add the requisite glow to the morning and get you ready for our Midday Tincture.

World's Oldest Winemaking

History has always pointed to how venerable alcohol is, but new evidence published by the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests that wine may be even older than we thought.

In a cave in Armenia, "A shallow, thick-rimmed, 3-by-3 1/2-foot clay basin appears to be a wine press where people stomped grapes with their feet." NYT Article.  How cool is that?  over 7,000 years ago, people already knew the effects of cultivating the sweet nectar of grapes - and even built a specialized facility for making it.

Download the journal entry for all the science behind how they know it was cultivated wine - some interesting data about syringic acid contents then and now as well as plenty of other archaeological practices.