Procrastination is considered by some to be the enemy of productivity. However, combine procrastination with the flabbiness of the Internet and suddenly you have the tools to answer questions that you’d never before thought of asking.

Wineoftheweek is currently in a heightened state of procrastination and we were therefore chuffed when someone sent us a link to Googlefight.com. Google Fight is a one page website that allows you to compare the number of search results for two competing keywords. You enter your keywords and an animation of two stick men fighting builds the ‘tension’ before the winner is revealed.

Using this tool, we were prompted to ask the rarely asked question “Who would win in a fight between wine and lager?’.

The results couldn’t be more conclusive. Wine beats the cr*p out of lager every-time!!!

Other bizarre fights conducted by the world’s great procrastinators include:

OJ Simpson vs Homer Simpson

Marilyn Manson vs Marylin Monroe

Hotdog  vs Hamburger

My Girlfriend vs Pamela Anderson

and of course…

Googlefight vs Waste of time

We live in crazy times. We really do. Forget the age of austerity, Forget the imminent collapse of western free market democracy.

We live in a world where someone is prepared to pay $304,375 for a bottle of wine. If you’re struggling to pay your mortgage this month please look away now.

The 1947 vintage of Cheval Blanc was sold at Christies auction house today and a crack in the space time continuum opened up as a result. The imperial sized bottle (the equivalent of 8 standard bottles) was purchased by anonymous buyer and according to Christie’s wine specialist Michael Ganne :

This wine is undoubtedly one of the greatest Bordeaux of all times, not only because of its rare quality but also due to its extensive life span, as it could still be kept and enjoyed 50 years from now with no problem at all.

Apparently it took Christie’s two years to convince the owner to put the 1947 Cheval Blanc up for sale and clearly both seller and Christies will be counting the greenbacks tonight.

This isn’t the first time that WineOfTheWeek has featured the bizarre art-form that is musical wine glasses and we can’t promise it will be the last!

The video features Dutch artists Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug and was performed after just eight weeks of practice.

Utterly bizarre thing to do. But also utterly bewitching.

Selling my Mini Cooper S remains one of my few regrets in life. It was a super little electric blue bundle of unbridled energy. It became costly to run and maintain and it had to go. I miss it dearly.

So, when I saw pictures of the ‘Chateau Mini’ my pulse starting racing. These cars were produced a few years ago by an Italian company called Aznom who took twelve Mini Clubman S cars and customised them with a wine theme.

Each one contains a mobile wine cellar that can hold six bottles of wine and six wine glasses. The cars are designed to look wooden, including a veneer finish, aged gaucho leather, and brownish paint throughout the interior and exterior.

I’m pretty sure that these aren’t available on Auto Trader.

Have wine will travel

Angus cattle in British Columbia are being fed red wine with their grain. And while Chefs in the province of Okanagan say that it makes for a unique beef taste, Canadian food inspectors seem puzzled on how to react.

Janice Ravndahl of Sezmu Meats claims that the beef produces has an enhanced flavor, “You don’t get any better than steak and a wine,” she said. “We just start a bit earlier.”

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency called Ravndahl recently and questioned her about sediment in the wine. After concluding that there is no risk to human safety the bureaucrats have not required her to stop production of the wino cows. “They said they had some concerns about wine being fed to cattle. We are not being shut down. We are being allowed to sell the product,” Ravndhal said.

But what affect does the vinous intake have on the cows themselves?  ”It definitely changes their personalities. They moo a lot more with each other. They get really chatty,” Ravndhal said. The wine appears to make the steers more docile, which enhances the texture of the meat. “Cattle that are relaxed taste better,” she said. “You don’t want tense beef.”

The first bovine booze-up was in April 2009 with the 21-day dry-aged beef first hitting the market in February 2010. “We just put it in a pail and said ‘Who’s going to drink it?’” she said. The cows are served up to a litre of the red stuff a day.

The real test of course, comes in the form of human consumption and it seems that the Canadian chefs who’ve tried the beef can’t get enough of it. Quail’s Gate Winery of Kelowna, was among the first to put the beef on its menu and Chef Roger Sleiman is enthusiastic about the response.”We’ve had great reviews from our customers. At first I thought it was a gimmick,” he said. “It costs a bit more but we think it’s worth it.”

Nobody pours it better

Have you ever asked yourself this question:

“Since dissolved CO2 is known to be of great importance in champagne and sparkling wine tasting, would not it be pertinent to revisit the way champagne should be served?”

No? Well if your Dr Liger-Belair and colleagues you’ve been thinking of nothing else recently. To such an extent that they conducted a series of lab experiments measuring the loss of CO2 gas from champagne as it was poured.

Having nothing better to do with their time, Dr Liber-Belair and his chums compared three champagne temperatures and two different ways of serving. They then measured the loss of CO2 using infrared imagery which showed the gaseous clouds disappearing as the fizz was poured.

Still awake? Then let’s continue. They concluded that the traditional method of serving – pouring the drink vertically so it hit the bottom of the flute – generated a thick head of foam and was less effective in retaining bubbles than the ‘beer pouring method’ where the champagne flowed along an inclined flute wall.

The findings were published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. The scientists are now working towards a mathematical model to describe their findings.

Now I’ve no wish to sound like George Osborne, but if this research was publicly funded then god help us all. Oh hang on, it was conducted by the French. That explains everything.

Every man needs a hobby. This man’s hobby involves roller-blading through lines of wine bottles carefully arranged to play Mozart when he hits them with customised spurs on his skates . Yes. That’s exactly what this man’s hobby is. Watch on…

The vuvuzela has quickly become the symbol of the 2010 World Cup. While the press and the TV broadcasters moan about them, the rest of us are rejoicing that the hornet like sound has managed to drown out the bloody awful England Band.

I was praying that there was some link kind of wine link to the vuvuzela and thanks to the awesome South African wine blog SpitOrSwallow there now is. Yes, with the provocative “how long can you blow me” the good people of SpitOrSwallow have provided us with a simple press and hold vuvuzela endurance test. Click on the picture below to take part.

Spit or swallow is a brilliant site, so do check it out. It’s a blog for wine enthusiasts who visit vineyards across South Africa. You can log your experience of each vineyard you visit and also read what others have to say about each vineyard (or “farms”. It’s a really simple idea with an excellent design, look and feel.

Can it really taste as bad as it looks?

After the first successful detonation of the Atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled Hindu Scripture with the declaration, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I wonder if the manufacturers of Chocovine experienced similar emotions when they first blended chocolate and wine?

The sales pitch for Chocovine tells us all that we need to know:

Chocovine is a fine French Cabernet subtly combined with rich dark chocolate from Holland, paired together to create a decadent silky smooth drink.

Chocovine is blended in Holland by one of the oldest and respected cream manufacturers in the world. Chocolate and wine can be paired in such a way that features the best and most interesting aspect of each flavour profile.

The right chocolate paired with the perfect wine can create a near orgasmic taste experience… after years of research the perfect union of wine and chocolate is not only a reality but the outcome is a true match made in heaven.

Additionally not only is wine and chocolate a tantalising blend for its sensational taste, but research shows that they are both rich in antioxidants. Chocovine is gluten free.

Blimey. So not only is it made from ‘fine wine’, it’s also good for you, takes you to the point of sexual satisfaction, is the product of scientific research while also being a product of God himself.  That’s some drink.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

What's thong with this picture?

The world of wine has been getting its clothes off recently.

From the sublime UK online retailer Naked Wines to the ridiculous U.S. wine vod-cast ‘The Naked Wine Show’, wine drinkers are being assaulted with all kinds of nudity.

Indeed, even artists have jumped aboard the nudewagon, as photographer Spencer Tunik demonstrated with last year’s Greenpeace climate change protest involving a vineyard and a hundred naked bodies picking grapes.

Now it seems that this epidemic has finally reached us, the ‘people’. Last week a woman was arrested in Nevada for trying to buy a bottle of wine while topless (and it should be said, completely intoxicated). Describing her own behavior as “mind-boggling” she now faces charges of indecent exposure, felony drunken driving and burglary.

More disturbing is the tale of the British paramedic who walked into a supermarket in his uniform, picked out some wine but was refused at the checkout as the store has a policy of not serving people in ‘uniform’.

Affronted, the man stormed out to his ambulance, stripped down to his underwear (in this instance a thong and a pair of socks) and marched back into the store declaring ‘I’m not wearing my uniform any more. Will you serve me now?’

It hasn’t been explained why the man was wearing a thong. Urrghh.