Understated? Moi?

Amid the Lady Gaga maelstrom of publicity that hit Ireland recently, news of the singer’s wine preferences received barely a footnote in the mainstream media.

WineOfTheWeek is here to correct this oversight with the exclusive revelation that Miss Gaga has a taste for Kendall Jackson and Robert Mondavi.

A ‘mole’ at the O2 Arena in Dublin got his hands on the Gaga tour rider and did what any publicity seeking hound would do and leaked it to the press.

The rider contained the usual oxygen tank related puff but also the cheering revelation that she requests two bottles of white wine for her dressing room, preferably Kendall Jackson or Robert Mondavi.

The riders of pop stars have featured on WineOfTheWeek’s pages on more than one occasion and we’d like to give kudos to Lady Gaga for having the good sense to specify half decent wine.

Indeed compared to Coldplay’s 2003 request of ‘Two bottles of red wine and two bottles of dry white wine NOT CHARDONNAY’, Miss Gaga seems like the Robert Parker of pop-star tour riders.

Speaking of Robert Parker, here’s how he rated the 2005 Kendall Jackson Stature red wine:

“A big sweet kiss of toasty oak intermixed with ripe fruit, low acidity, and sweet tannin. From high-elevation Napa vineyards, it is a big wine that should drink well for 10-15 years.”

Sounds like a pretty suitable description of Lady Gaga to us.

Cenosilicaphobia is the fear of an empty glass.

The Cenosilicaphobiac Cat is the name of a wine.

Here’s the story of that wine presented to us by the consistently wonderful d’Arenberg:

Growing up, fourth generation winemaker, Chester Osborn, had a large ginger cat with blood shot eyes named Non Alcoholic Booze. In typical Australian fashion this was shortened to Booze after he was caught cleaning up a small red wine spill with his tongue. He developed quite a taste for red after that, but was denied access to his new found love by the concerned Osborn family. Consequently Non Alcoholic Booze lived a frustrated life, because despite his nickname, he suffered a monumental case of Cenosilicaphobia (the fear of an empty glass).

To state the obvious, the best way to conquer this phobia is to never have an empty glass.

The chairman of Camra pulls some birds

In yet another example of agenda driven research, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the Beer Academy have joined forces to hit the world of wine in the face.

The research shows that 34% of men and 29% of women incorrectly believe that beer has more calories than wine when in fact a half pint of beer contains 1.1 units of alcohol and 85 calories while a medium-sized glass of red wine contains 2.1 units and 131 calories.

Clearly the wader-waring swamphunters of CAMRA are keen to hit back at perceived  public perception that beer gives you a belly while wine gives you civility.

You have to take a pretty long bloody hop skip and jump to swallow the following proclamation from the absurd press release that CAMRA released on the subject this week. Here’s brewing expert Professor Charlie Bamforth:

“Beer also contains no fat or cholesterol and very few sugars. So for someone looking to lose weight, swapping their glass of wine for a beer every day would not only reduce their weekly alcohol intake by seven units – but also cut out more calories than are burned off during a typical 30-minute jog.”

Oh my. Is this mad professor really saying that if we swap wine for beer we needn’t bother going to the gym?

To CAMRA and the Beer Academy we simply say this. All alcoholic drinks contain a psychoactive drug called alcohol. We know that if we drink too much it will damage our mind, body and bank balance. If you want to lose weight don’t swap one drink for another, just stop drinking altogether.

And to our readers we say this. Never, ever attend an official CAMRA event and proclaim that you prefer wine. You’ll end up being burnt alive in a straw man on a remote Scottish island.

I posted this a couple of months back but with all the current shenanigans in this desparate part of the world here’s a recap of a recent release from the AP -

SHILOH, West Bank — Israel’s West Bank settlers have been ratcheting up their violence, defying their own government and flouting international public opinion.

But on Monday a settler group tried another tack — wooing foreign journalists with a bus tour featuring a glass of merlot and a visit to a home overlooking the site where the biblical Israelites housed Moses’ stone tablets.

“Here you see the miracles and the prophecies actualized in front of you,” said settler Tamar Yonah Feld, portraying Jewish settlement in the West Bank as a fulfillment of God’s will.

The settlers said they wanted to show the world they are just trying to have peaceful lives. But the bulletproof windows on the bus, the ubiquitous barbed wire and the watch towers at settlements betrayed an existence that is anything but normal.

Despite the wine, a mouthwatering lunch and an earnest video on the land’s Jewish roots, the interaction with the visitors was often heated.

Journalists peppered the settlers with such questions as, “Don’t the Palestinians have a right to a state?” and “How can Israel hope to remain both Jewish and democratic if it continues to rule over another people who will soon outnumber Israelis?”

The answer to the first question was invariably, “No.” Arabs already have enough states, settlers said.

Responding to the second question, some settlers said Israel doesn’t need to be democratic. Others said they expected Jews from around the world to come to Israel to ensure a Jewish majority.

Eliana Passentin, a 35-year-old mother of six who was raised in San Francisco, invited reporters into her home in the settlement of Eli, offering cookies and blue pens marked “From Eli with friendship.”

To get to the house, the journalists passed a swimming pool, basketball and tennis courts, a Jewish seminary, kindergartens and a poster of Meir Kahane, the slain extremist leader who advocated the forcible expulsion of Arabs.

Passentin’s house, featuring modern furniture and fine tiles cemented into built-in benches, overlooks ancient Shiloh, for which a modern settlement nearby is named and where tradition holds that the ancient Israelites kept the tabernacle with Moses’ tablets.

“We love living here. We love this land,” Passentin said.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other Arab territory in the 1967 Mideast war and, after initially holding off, eventually began moving its citizens into the territories. Today nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers live among 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to about 180,000 Israelis living in east Jerusalem neighborhoods also captured in 1967.

Much of the world and a sizable portion of the Israeli public, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, now say many of the settlements will have to be dismantled to make room for a Palestinian state.

That is not going to happen, vowed Avi Roeh, head of the local settler government that conducted Monday’s tour.

“Governments come and governments go. What we’re doing here is something that’s permanent. We intend to stay.”

The settlements, interspersed among Palestinian communities across the West Bank, are easily recognizable with their red-tile roofs, manicured gardens and neat rows of cookie-cutter houses.

Their existence and the hardships they cause Palestinians — including extensive restrictions on freedom of movement — have drawn comparisons to the apartheid racial separation system when South Africa was ruled by whites.

There are some images in life so disturbing that, even though you may avert your eyes from the source, the imprint remains burned into your retina before sweeping up the capillaries into your very nightmares. I’m thinking of the visuals of war, famine, animal cruelty, clowns on bicycles and Anthony Perkins dressed as his dead mother at the end of Psycho. 

And then there is this image of Diego Maradona and Carlos Tevez. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen something as equally comical as it is grotesque. And thoroughly, thoroughly sinister.

The Maradona circus is in town as Argentina take on Scotland at Hampden and the air hangs fat with all the controversy that surrounds the greatest footballer of any generation. Most amusing has been the press coverage given to Terry Butcher over his assertion that he would refuse to shake Maradona’s hand if offered it. 

Still smarting from the 20 year old “Hand of God” wound, Butcher (one of the least talented ballplayers England has ever seen) still regards Maradona as a cheat. Butcher is one of those little Englanders (albeit a quite tall one) who believes that England will win any tournament they enter on sheer will power alone. 

A practitioner of the old “up and at ‘em” game, Butcher goes to bed in Captain Mannering pyjamas with a signed photo of John Le Mesurier by his bed light. Terry forgets that England were as poor in 1986 as they have been at any tournament since 1966 (with the exception of 1990, but that aberration was purely down to the John Barnes Rap). 

He also forgets that in the very same game that Maradona caressed the ball with his hand, he also scored the greatest goal in the history of the game. Where were you when that one was hitting the onion bag, eh Terry? And just in case you’ve forgotten…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rW-lK9F6TU]

So, if Diego were to offer the hand of friendship what better way to do it than with a bottle of Argentina’s finest contribution to wine – the full throttle Malbec.

Malbec is the grape of many names – known as Auxerrois in Cahors, Cot in the Loire and Malbeck in Argentina,

Our growing interest in South American Wines over the past 20 years provided an opportunity for the Argentinean manifestation of this variety to establish itself in the UK but it also has an interesting past in mainland Europe too.

It used to be a main constituent in the famous Bordeaux blends but fell victim to the vicious 1956 French frost from which it never recovered. Nervous growers replaced it with more fashionable and more durable grapes. C’est la vie.

Exported to Argentina the grape is widely grown and is established there in a stronger way than say Carmenere is in Chile (another European Export rarely grown in its homeland). The grapes tend to produces deep coloured wines with generous black fruit characteristics, balanced acidity and smooth tannins.  It’s also good fortune that the wine is the perfect match for Argentina’s abundant supply of thick, succulent red steak. 

My Malbec of choice is the Salentein Reserve Malbec, which I stumbled upon through a recommendation from Tom Cannavan at WinePages. Tom had just been on a trip to Argentina when I spoke to him last year and recommended the wine which, by the grace of the pricing gods, was on offer at Tesco. I got myself a case and it’s been a favourite since.  

Is Malbec the Terry Butcher of wine? Nope. The grape may be full on but it has balance, can display finesse when asked to and plays well abroad.

Butcher on the other hand is a donkey. Or should that be ass?

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’.  

Every now and then I stop and ponder over what really happened at the last Soprano family supper. The next time I do so, my thoughts will be accompanied by a glass of blood red super Tuscan with Dont Stop Believin’ on the ipod.  Out in the US now lets hope these wines hit the UK soon.

“The Sopranos, the landmark US series about a New Jersey mob family, has inspired a line of

Dont drink this with the fishes

Italian wines launched this month in the US.

Sopranos Italian Wines are produced under a licensing agreement between HBO and New-York based Vesuvio Wine Import Company, named after Artie Bucco’s restaurant in the TV series.

The wines come from one of three family-run wineries in Italy (two in Tuscany and one in the Veneto), including the Valiano Estate in Chianti Classico.

The range includes a Chianti DOCG, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir priced between $9.99 – $11.99.

At the higher end of The Sopranos label is a Chianti Classico priced at $23.99 and a Chianti Classico Reserva at $29.99, both of which are estate bottled.

Tony and his cohorts are no strangers to the wine world. Actress Lorraine Bracco, who played Dr. Jennifer Melfi in the series, launched Bracco Wines in 2006.

While Frederico Castellucio, who played hitman Furio Giuntga, comes from an Italian winemaking family which produces red, white and rosé wines in New Jersey.

A bottle of Wine Society’s Exhibition Tuscan Red to the reader who can come up with the most amusing Sopranos themed wine name.  Enter in comments