March 2009 Archives

Researches have long suspected the health benefits of drinking wine.  In fact, Hippocrates recommended certain types of wine to purge fever, and serve as dietary supplements, as early as 450 B.C.

While we've learned in more recent centuries that wine isn't the best "go-to" when you're fever-stricken, we've also learned that the illustrious juice can help our heart, at the very least.  This post is dedicated to the positive effects of wine drinking.  Woop, woop!

• Longer Lives!  A Finnish study found that wine drinkers have a 34 percent lower mortality rate than beer or spirit drinkers.

• WINE is the key component in what nutritionists call the french paradox, or the overall cardiovascular health enjoyed by a nation (France) that consumes more wine, cheese, and fatty foods than we do.  Why? Researches have found that moderate amounts of wine drinking actually "flushes out'' arteries, and decreases risk of heart disease (see below).
  

• Reduces risk of heart attack (Harvard School of Public Health), heart disease, and type 2 Diabetes.
  

• Slows brain decline:  a 2006 Columbia University study revealed that "brain decline occurs markedly faster rate in nondrinkers than moderate drinkers." 
  

• Lose Weight!  Alright, I'm a bit skeptical too.  But according to www.health.com, "studies find that people who drink wine daily have lower body mass than those who indulge occasionally; moderate wine drinkers have narrower waists and less abdominal fat than people who drink liquor. Alcohol may encourage your body to burn extra calories for as long as 90 minutes after you down a glass."  Yeah.  I believe.  Why not?

"A bottle of champagne is too much for one and too little for two"

-- Winston Churchill

When we gathered with friends this New Year's Eve, and said goodbye to the fiscal disasters of 2008 -- blissfully ignorant to the colossal recession around the corner -- we probably did so with a tall glass of bubbly.  Champagne has become synonymous with New Years, and really celebration in general.  Weddings: champagne.  Job promotions:  champagne.  You get the idea. I don't know when it started, but I'm glad it did.

Champagne is really just sparkling wine made in the tiny area of Champagne, France.  If it doesn't hail from this region of the world, it's not champagne.  Long ago, the folks in Champagne branded their product -- essentially protecting it -- and claimed it for their own.  Many countries make sparkling wine, but only the fastidious grape-growers in Champagne get to label it that way.  And charge, what I feel, is a ridiculous amount of money for wine with bubbles in it.  I mean seriously. 

But it's soooooo good.

Champagne is a blend of grapes, but it is mostly made with chardonnay (see post #3) and pinot noir (see post #6), plus a bit of pinot meunier.  It is usually a soft, yellowish golden color, and to achieve this, the crafty wine makers remove the skins from the pinot noir grape (the flesh of the pinot noir grape is actually clear, think red grapes when you bite into them) to prevent the elegant liquid from turning, well, pink.  (If you've ever wondered what a rosé is, here's your answer:  some skins are left on, some taken away, yellow plus red equals pink,  or rosé).

When looking at a sparkling wine label, if you see term blanc de blanc, it means it's 100 percent chardonnay.  Likewise, if you ever see the label blanc do noir, it means it's 100 percent pinot noir.  In case you were wondering.

As for taste, there is a complexity often times, to the sparkling wines of Champagne.  It may be the wind in the air.  It may be the soil.  Or it may be because they've been producing that wine since the 16th century.  Whatever the cause, the wine is special.  There's a reason that people only drink when the have something to celebrate.  It's "luxury" wine.  It always will be.  That's also the reason the Nazi's tried to take over Champagne in World War II.

However, there is some fine fizz coming from our country these days, too (and for a fraction of the cost).  Some countries have followed suit with Champagne and labeled their sparkling wine.  For example, if it's called cava, it comes from Spain.  If it's prosecco, it is made in Italy.

Made in the style of true champagne, this sparkling wine from New Mexico rocks (that's right, I said New Mexico).  It's called Gruet, and it will only set you back about $15.




Of course, if you are awash with stimulus money, feel free to plunk down the full $150 for a bottle of Dom Perignon*, the original and true CHAMPAGNE.  If it doesn't break your bank, you might be happy you did.

**I have never personally purchased this.  I have been privy to mere tastings.  It's out-of-this-world yummy, albeit hard to justify.

Cheers.