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Local Wine & Food Column

A Bit about Butter

One all important ingredient in baking and cooking is butter. Most everyone knows that butter is made by churning cream until it reaches a semi solid state. By US law butter must contain at least 80% milk fat. The USDA grades butter based on flavor, body, texture, color and salt. You’ll notice a rating sometimes accompanied by the grade on the box or container. AA(93 score), A(92), B(90) and C(89). Butter is sometimes colored with Annatto and should be kept wrapped tightly as it has the tendency to absorb flavors around it quite easily. Salted butter lasts longer than unsalted butter and any butter labeled “sweet” butter is made with sweet cream compared to sour cream.

Learning to taste wine

by the Grape Guy

As simple or rudimentary as it my sound you must first learn to taste wine correctly to enjoy it. I know you probably have a quizzical look on your face right now and are thinking, “what the heck are you talking about?” Let me explain, we live in a fast paced society. When we’re hungry, we drive through a fast food restaurant and eat in the car on the way to our job, school, family etc. , we get married by Elvis at a drive through in Vegas, we go to Jiffy Lube to change the oil in our car and we drink a big gulp from 7-11 when we’re thirsty. When we taste, I mean really taste wine, we need to slow down to understand the wine. Most people drink wine like they’re drinking a soft drink. They put the glass to their lips and slug it down.

The first thing you’ll need to learn is to take a small sip and draw a little air into your mouth. Go easy! You’ll make a slight gurgling sound when you do this, but don’t draw too much air in our you’ll end up inhaling the wine into your lungs and your bodies instant reaction will be to cough or shoot it out your nose. Try this with a little water or juice first, I don’t recommend soda or any carbonated beverages because they WILL foam up and either make you cough or come out your nose.

As a sommelier, when I describe a wine as having notes of fresh cherry with an underlying note of cinnamon followed by black raspberry and cedar, most people look at me as if I have three heads. I can tell by their expressions they’re thinking “ does he make this stuff up? And what the hell is he talking about?” The reason why we draw air into the wine is to bring the nuances to the olfactory bulb in your nose. Our taste buds only recognize sweet, sour, bitter and salt, our nose is what recognizes most of the “flavors” we associate with taste. You may see some wine “experts” swishing wine around their mouths like they’re about to gargle, I’ve even seen a few gargle their wine. This really doesn’t do a wine justice as it sends the tannis and acids in a wine all over the mouth and can interfere with the aromatic process that you are trying to achieve in understanding the wine. So take your wine into your mouth, purse your lips, draw a little air in, let it gurgle for a few seconds, hold the wine in your mouth for another couple seconds then swallow the wine. Did you notice anything different? When I teach this as a class most peoples eyes light up. “Wow, that made it more intense!” or “Oh, I tasted those flavors you were talking about!” are the two general reactions. Even though wine tasting is considered a special art or talent, most studies indicate that the majority of the population can be effective tasters.

You don’t have to become a serious taster to enjoy wines, but you’ll enjoy them even more if you exercise your sense of recall. Practice drawing air through your next glass of wine and you'll notice the difference immediately.

But remember wine is just a beverage, it's there to enjoy with friends, food or just yourself.

Cheers!

Wine & Health News

Wine greenwash

Does being green make better wine, or just better bragging rights?

Andy Peay

These days, every winemaker is falling all over himself to declare how "green" he is. Are they doing this to improve the quality of their wine, or have marketers decided it's time to apply a fresh coat of green-wash to the wine industry?

Take solar. The incentives to go solar here are financially attractive and can pay back on the investment in five to 10 years. I like that return. It's also neat to generate clean energy and negative utility bills from PG&E. But should a winery put "solar-powered" on its label? It appeals to a certain psychographic set of consumers, but cues that the winery feels this should be one of the consumer's main considerations when buying their wine. How does solar taste?

And organic farming? It's better for the plant, the soil and the greater environment. It is more costly, too, and harder to control outcomes and avoid threats in the vineyard. The rewards may be a healthier vineyard and better wine quality, an increase paid in price per ton or a point of distinction when selling wine if it is certified and marketed on the label. Not everyone who farms organically, however, is certified or markets himself as such. Why not? If the goal is a healthy vineyard that will make the best wine, then tying your hands by touting your practices or paying for certification may come at too high a price. What if a fungus that cannot be treated by an organic chemical threatens your vineyard? If you farm organically for marketing purposes, sticking to your guns becomes your only alternative, taste be damned.

Should wineries tout farming and energy practices to attract "green consumers"? These practices could signal an increased attentiveness that leads to better-tasting wine. Or they could mean that wineries care more about their positioning than the quality of the wine. To suss out greenwashing, look at how much effort is put into selling techniques versus implementing them. In any event, the evidence is in the bottle.

Red wine compound may extend life, says mice study

By Stephen Daniells, 02-Nov-2006

Resveratrol, a polyphenol found in red wine, extended survival rates of mice and prevented the negative effects of high-calorie diets, says a new study published in Nature.

The study, described by an independent expert as potentially "the breakthrough of the year", adds to a growing body of research linking resveratrol and red wine consumption to a range of beneficial health effects, including brain and mental health, and cardiovascular health.

"The "healthspan" benefits we saw in the obese mice [fed] resveratrol, such as increased insulin sensitivity, decreased glucose levels, healthier heart and liver tissues, are positive clinical indicators and may mean we can stave off in humans age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, but only time and more research will tell," said co-author David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School.

The new study, published on-line in Nature (doi: 10.1038/nature05354), looked at the effects of the feeding middle-aged mice (52 weeks old) one of three diets: a standard mouse diet, a high calorie (fat) diet and a high calorie (fat) diet supplemented with resveratrol.

At 60 weeks of age, the researchers report that the survival curves of the high calorie and the high calorie/resveratrol groups began to diverge, with the resveratrol group showing a 3-4 month advantage in survival.

When the mice reached 'old age' (114 weeks), lead author Joseph Baur and his colleagues report that more than 50 per cent of the high calorie mice had died compared to less than 33 per cent of the high calorie mice receiving resveratrol.

Baur reported that the high calorie mice (no resveratrol supplement) were found to have increased plasma levels of insulin, glucose and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) 1 - markers that in humans predict the onset of diabetes - when compared with their overweight counterparts supplemented with resveratrol.

Pathological studies of the heart tissues of mice from the three diet groups showed that the abundance of fatty lesions, degeneration and inflammation were significantly less for the standard diet and resveratrol-supplemented group (1.6 and 1.2 points on a relative scale of 0-4), compared to the high calorie diet group (3.2 points).

"After six months, resveratrol essentially prevented most of the negative effects of the high calorie diet," said Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D., from the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

The mechanism behind the apparent benefits is proposed to be related to activation of an enzyme called SIRT1. To determine this, they looked at the amount of a specific chemical modification (acetylation) on the molecule PGC-1alpha. The research team found that levels of PGC-1alpha were three-fold lower in the resveratrol-supplemented mice than in the high calorie mice, consistent with what would be expected when SIRT1 was being activated by resveratrol, they said.

"This study shows that an orally available small molecul at doses achievable in humans can safely reduce many of the negative consequences of excess caloric intake, with an overall improvement in health and survival," concluded the researchers.

While the results are very promising, Richard Hodes, M.D., director of the NIA, added a note of perspective and caution: "At the same time, it should be cautioned that this is a study of male mice, and we still have much to learn about resveratrol's safety and effectiveness in humans."

Professor Steve Bloom, an obesity researcher at Imperial College, London, told the BBC: "If we start with the idea that there is an evolutionary advantage for the life expectation of each species, and this is tied into scarcity or abundance of food.

"If there is plenty of food, you'll live a very active life for a while, and then drop dead. If there isn't much food, because reproduction takes more energy, it is better to keep a small number of animals going for longer.

"There is a system to regulate it, and it looks like resveratrol bypasses this system or may be an endogenous part of that system.

"This paper is extremely interesting - it could be the breakthrough of the year, with massive possibilities for… human beings."

In an accompanying article (Nature, doi:10.1038/nature05308), Matt Kaeberlein and Peter Rabinovitch, from the University of Washington, said: "The safety of resveratrol at the high doses in humans comparable to those used by [the researchers] is unknown, especially over the course of years or even decades, when relatively modest side-effects could have dramatic consequences."

"For now, we counsel patience. Just sit back and relax with a glass of red wine - which alas, has only 0.3 per cent of the relative resveratrol dose given to the gluttonous mice," they said.

The amount of resveratrol in a bottle of red wine can vary between types of grapes and growing seasons, and can vary between 0.2 and 5.8 milligrams per litre. But nearly all dark red wines - merlot, cabernet, zinfandel, shiraz and pinot noir - contain resveratrol.

The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).