Wine ethanol, lightest bottle, oxygen, supermarket brands – sipped and spit

183586153_9c086eba4e_mSIPPED: waste wine
A new company is turning waste wine (and beer) into ethanol. Marquee investor: Shaq. [LA Times]

SPIT: bodybuilders
A new, lightweight (300g) glass bottle will debut in the UK next year. [Decanter]

SIPPED: “indelible stain”
Michael Broadbent’s lawsuit against Random House, publisher of the The Bilionaire’s Vinegar, only serves to draw attention to the “indelible stain on his record” that the Rodenstock/Jefferson bottles represent. [Slate]

SIPPED: wine geekdom
Jamie Goode explores the love-hate relationship between oxygen and wine, corks and screwcaps. [Wines & Vines]

SIPPED: public sector frugality
A general in the British Army made the news for £1.49 supermarket Merlot for his guests–among other cost saving measures. No moat cleaning for him! [Timesonline.co.uk]

SIPPED: private label brands
“A $3 unknown wine at Safeway makes you think ‘how can it be any good?’ while a $3 wine with the Trader Joe’s imprimatur makes you think ‘how bad can it be?'” [Wine Economist]

SPIT: pricing information
A pet peeve: winery and wine store web sites that don’t make it easy to tell the price and/or legal possibility of shipping without doing an arduous check-out or profile procedure.

3 Responses to “Wine ethanol, lightest bottle, oxygen, supermarket brands – sipped and spit”


  1. Michael Broadbent’s son, Bartholomew, a wine importer based in the US, posted an extensive comment to The Pour yesterday commenting on the suit.

    http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/the-wine-experts-lawsuit/#comment-101043

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “As the Slate article states, which itself might be in danger of falling fowl of UK defamation and libel laws, Wallace portrays my father as being so eager to sell the wine that he authenticated it. This is clearly wrong. My father did as much as he could, in days before computers, to try to establish if the wine was correct or not, including but not limited to, checking with glass and engraving experts. He had the bottle on view for buyers to inspect it and he disclaimed it as possibly not being genuine. Secretly, he thought it was and still does to this day…As to the actual bottles sold by my father, there is still no evidence that the engravings were faked. You’ll hear more about this some day.”


  2. That was an interesting article about oxygen and wine. I just read at Vineography.com about using a spoon in an open bottle of champagne to preserve it’s effervescence – turn’s out its big bunk. Seems leaving it open and uncorked is best – must be the oxygen affecting the fermentation process.


  3. Interesting point on private label brands. There’s a certain consumer psychology to all of it. For some reason we feel safe-guarded by a better looking label design than the store brand with the same ingredients. In a way it’s somewhat more logical–a brand means a reputation, it means they have something to lose by having lack of quality control and may ensure your safe usage of their product. Alternatively, a nameless face can offer the same exact thing, but where is their reputation? What do they have to lose? It seems silly, but I think that is part of the subconscious mental debate we experience while browsing the labels.


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