Cork stoppers – with extra membrane?
In the last decade businesses have been enticed alongside the cork industry, providing new barrier technologies to modify cork performance.
Chocolate Unwrapped, Sarah Jane Evans
Master of Wine Sarah Jane Evans is also one of the founders of the Academy of Chocolate, so she knows about taste, flavour, texture and those other nebulous associates of palate pleasure.
Canberra District – riesling rising
Canberra seems to get a bum rap from Aussies who don’t live there, but the capital has a strongly emerging wine region.
The Wine Opus, various authors
The weight of this ambitious tome may break the back of a less substantial coffee table, but it’s easy on the eye, there are some picturesque double page picture spreads, and the texts are written in friendly and informative styles.
Aussie sparklers and sweets
With Christmas in mind, I recently went to a tasting of Aussie sparklers and sweeties.
Vin de France – the new kid on the block?
There’s excitement in France at the new Vin de France category, in effect from the 2009 vintage, which means wines started coming on the market about six months ago.
Outsiders view of the Languedoc
The Mediterranean south is France’s biggest vineyard area, and one of the country’s most exciting wine-producing regions. So much so that over the past couple of decades folk from all over the world have been relocating to the south and following their vinous dreams.
Airocide
Equipment developed in the 1990s by NASA to keep fruit and vegetables growing and healthy on the space station has been found to remove airborne TCA – trichloroanisole, the chemical that causes mouldy, musty taint in wine.
Reading Between the Wines, Terry Theise
This is accessible and entertaining wine philosophising that puts the poetry back into prose portrayal of wine.
Austro-Hungarian tasting in London
In October 2010, the Institute of Masters of Wine hosted a tasting of wines from contiguous nations Austria and Hungary, which, both being niche producers (their combined production is about 1/8th that of France), decided to collaboratively present their wines.
