What a corker!

It used to be a truism that when an English footballer retired from ‘the game’ he either bought a pub or became an alcoholic. And in many cases both.

If ever there was a sign that football has changed it comes with the news that Barcelona and Spain’s midfield maestro Andrés Iniesta has his own wine company.

As reported in Decanter this week, Bodegas Iniesta is a €9m project based near his home town of Fuentealbilla in the province of Albacete.

Red, white and rosé wines will be available from the 2010 harvest with local grape variety Bobal used for the red wines, and Macabeo and Chardonnay for the whites.

And how about this for a mission statement:

I want the wine to be a reflection of who I am. The standards are set high, but so are the key pieces to meet them: hard work, family support and knowledge… wine is destined to be one of my great motivations

Oh Andrés. My footballing god becomes a wine god. WineOfTheWeek worships your every incarnation.

The aim is to sell the wine in Spain and for export to the UK, Germany and Japan with early reports suggesting a restaurant price of EUR40 a bottle.

Meanwhile here in England, we’ve got Gazza. Dionysus help us.

‘Champagne’s stiffest competition comes not from Prosecco, Cava or English sparkling wine – but from Viagra.’

This was how Decanter reported the story of Pierre Emmunel Tattinger’s speech at the recent Reuters Global Luxury Summit. What a wonderful use of an adjective. Top marks!

Taittinger is always good for a quote or two and here’s a selection from his speech:

On the economy:

‘I am worried about pensions. I am worried about the debt of our countries. We will have less money. But we will always have the time to make love and drink Champagne, and we will do it even more.’

On China:

‘China is the new United States,’ he said. ‘There is no doubt that it will be a strong market in 15 years. It will be much better than the US.’

On his brand:

“Taittinger has never been bling bling champagne. We are champagne for connoisseurs. We are artists in champagne,”

On money and art:

“If I had money I would buy Francis Bacon. He was a big champagne drinker. Every night he was having champagne.”

On Life:

“Today, life is very tough for all of us. There’s stress. We are under pressure, we have to fight, we have to be competitive. We have to face all the difficulties of life. Nothing is better than a glass of champagne to forget things for a few minutes, a few hours,”

On Tattinger:

“I am a happiness producer. Figures do not interest me.”

Pierre. We salute you.

MILF or Merlot?

Us Brits used to enjoy the superiority we felt while watching American politics from afar.

The religious fundamentalism, the assertions of manifest destiny, the  illicitly stained dresses of interns and mistresses, the militias in the woods shooting defenceless squirrels, the obscene level of corporate influence, the willing delusion to see America as a peaceful nation – all topped off with the American public falling for the promise of “change” every 4 years from whoever was next in line.

And then Britain elected Tony Blair and our superiority was replaced by a realisation that we had become what we had mocked. Ouch.

And so, when it was recently announced that Sarah Palin will speak at this years Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) convention in Las Vegas I choked on my wine-gums. What if the UK follows the WSWA example and asks Nick Griffin to become keynote speaker at this years London International Wine Fair?

In explaning his choice of Palin as the keynote, the WSWA president (Craig Wolf) said, “Governor Palin is a great supporter of America’s free enterprise system and understands that industries like the beverage alcohol industry play a key role in driving our national economy”.

The irony of this statement is not lost on the readers of Decanter Magazine with this particular contribution summing the situation up nicely,

“Anybody familiar with our 50 state tangle of restrictions on alcohol beverage sales knows that the system is hardly ‘free enterprise,’ and that in many cases the restrictions serve the wholesale tier of the industry quite handily. The WSWA has been very skillful at protecting its interests at both state and federal levels for years, and much of this effort has been devoted to measures that effectively block anything resembling free enterprise”

Although the content of Palin’s speech is not yet known, Mr Wolf gave us this frightening insight , ’We expect she will share with the convention attendees her analysis of the current political environment and her vision for America’s future.’  Why is the WSWA providing a prospective presidential candidate a soapbox in this way? Has Mr Wolf succumbed to a schoolboy crush?

In the 1980′s p*ss poor drummer Phil Collins famously said that he would leave England if Labour came to power*.

If Palin wins the presidential race in 2013, I will leave the universe.

* n 2005 Mr Collins said he may return to Britain if the Tories regain power. Please remember this when you come to vote later this year.

See also: Sarah Palin Guilty – It’s Just Not Hockey Mum

The following statement is an example of a wine industry lobbyist disappearing up his own backside. In reaction to Mr Darling’s most recent raise in alcohol excise duty, Jeremy Beadles of the Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA) said the following:-

“The Chancellor has turned into Santa Claws, snatching scarce pleasure from millions of people… It is staggering that a Government which claims to act in the interests of the many, not the few, wishes to punish ordinary, hard-working consumers who wish to spend the little cash they have left on a drink”

What utter tosh, Mr Beadles. We understand that you exist to serve your industry (right or wrong). You must be seen to be taking a tough stand but how much port did you have at the company Christmas party to come out with such an inappropriate and misjudged statement?

I can safely say that not one of my “hard-working” (not to mention lazy for that matter) friends or colleagues have come up to me and said “I’m really down. Drinking cheap wine at Christmas is the only scarce pleasure I get at Christmas. I know I should be saving my money to buy a present for Tiny Tim but I was intending to p*ss the little cash I have left up the wall on cheap booze”.

Beadle(s), who are you to speak for the hard-working people of Britain – you speak for the paymasters you represent and don’t pretend otherwise. We may have sympathy for (some) producers and suppliers, but get a grip man. People who have either lost or are about to lose their jobs are worried about paying mortgages and feeding/clothing their kids. They’re not in despair about not being able to afford a couple of bottles of vino.

Meanwhile in the real world:-

 - Threshers and Wine Rack 40% off all wines and spirits

 - Tesco (just finished) 20% of all wines

 - Laithwaites £50 off introductory case offer

 - M&S Wines up to 33% off

 - Waitrose save 50%

And while we’re at it, Decanter magazine covered this story with the following opening salvo ”The vast majority of shoppers will be paying more for wine this Christmas after the government’s duty hike to the fury of the UK drinks industry.”

Our message to Decanter is – get some backbone. Your tone too often panders to your advertisers and too often you blatantly editorialise where you should be reporting. Send your kids back to Journo school.

Drinking and health – you pays your money and you takes your choice. This week, we’re all gonna die.

Heavy metals in wine could pose potential health problems to regular drinkers, claims a scientific report published today.

RAWK!!! Drink, Drink and be Damned!

The report, which appeared in the online journal Chemistry Central, claims that a daily 250ml glass of red wine could expose wine drinkers to hazardous levels of metal ions linked to Parkinson’s disease and cancer. 

According to the study, wines from Portugal, Hungary, France and Austria are among those to have dangerous levels of metal ions. Argentinian, Brazilian and Italian wines registered very small levels of the so-called ‘heavy metals’. 

Using a formula developed in the US to estimate health risks, boffins at Kingston University in London analysed the wines against a Target Health Quotient (THQ). A THQ of one is considered safe. Looking at a range of elements including vanadium, manganese, chromium, zinc, copper, nickel and lead, the researchers found that THQ levels in red wine were around 110. 

Professor Declan Naughton, co-author of the report, called for consumers to be made aware of the risks. 

‘Levels of metal ions should appear on wine labels,’ he said, ‘along with the introduction of further steps to remove key hazardous metal ions during wine production.’ 

Naughton, who told decanter.com he still enjoyed drinking red wine, stressed he was calling for a ‘regulatory push’ – not an end to wine drinking. 

He said he could only speculate as to how metal ions get into wine, but that soil types, vineyard sprays and yeasts were the likely culprits. The study added that ‘processing and packaging may add to the metal’. 

Although it contains some of the highest levels of metal ions, wine is not alone is posing a risk. Apple juice and stout was also found to have a THQ above one. 

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has tried to reassure consumers, saying it has yet to review the findings in full. A spokesperson for the FSA said the scientists’ methods were ‘not widely used in Europe’.  

If only Thames water could make this kind of mistake.

I just turned on the tap and there it was!

Quoting from Decanter online from an article by Lucy Shaw -

“Inhabitants of a tiny Italian town thought there had been a miraculous intervention yesterday when wine started flowing from the taps in their kitchens

The ‘miracle’ occurred during the town’s annual harvest festival, the Sagra dell’ Uva, in Marino, south of Rome. 

A huge crowd, gathered in the square to witness the annual spurting of 3,000 litres of the year’s newly pressed vintage from the Fountain of the Four Moors, became increasingly restless as the fountain continued to produce only the usual trickle of water. 

But then a shout of ‘miracolo’ rang out from a nearby house and a woman appeared at her balcony to announce that wine was flowing from her kitchen tap. 

It transpired that instead of connecting the wine to the 17th century fountain, plumbers had hooked the pipes from the local vineyard into Marino’s domestic water supply. 

One resident said, ‘I was in the kitchen to fill a bucket with water. I immediately noticed a sweet smell from the tap and recognised instantly it was wine. Word quickly spread and everyone filled up bottles and plastic containers with the wine.’ 

Mayor of Marino, Adriano Palozzi said, ‘It was a surprise and completely unexpected. People were calling it a miracle which it wasn’t – it was a mistake.’ 

The Castelli Romani area has been producing straw-coloured, slightly effervescent, white wines since the Roman times. Known generically as Frascati, the wine is made from trebbiano and malvasia grapes. “