But you get the idea. That middle ground between true cork and screwcap is occupied by the synthetic cork. On the plus side, there’s no TCA taint, which can arise with natural cork. But on the minus side, the little rubber bullets can be hard to get off the corkscrew (particularly the solid ones), nearly impossible to shove back in the bottle, not biodegradable, and until someone makes a wall of synthetic corks, they haven’t had much appeal being reused functionally or artistically.

What say you?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Related: “Vent your spleen: wax seals on wine bottles“

Writing in today’s WSJ, Melanie Grayce West describes the annual “Rioja rumble” known as the Batalla del Vino, or battle of wine: “After mass, the melee on the hillside begins and red wine is fired from buckets, jugs, water guns, crop sprayers and any other vessel possible—the goal is to drench everyone in sight with red wine.” The town of Haro graciously provides the wine. The photo from the event, held on June 29 this year, begs your captioning–sound off in the comments!

Drinking wine from the bottle is a pleasure that no Austrian crystal maker will tell you about. But it is the right olfactory, environmental, and economic choice.

The best crystal wine glasses have a wide balloon that narrows toward the top. That’s also the case for wine bottles where the aromas are conveniently concentrated through the bottle neck.

And because heavy glass has a larger carbon footprint than box wine, drinking directly from the bottle bypasses the need for crystal glasses that may have been sent via airfrieght with excess packaging.

Economically, the costs are clearly lower. And it also provides greater mobility to drink on the go although open container laws do interfere.

Paul Grieco of the NYC hipster wine bar Terroir says that bottles as glasses are all the rage at his bar. “The only hard part is getting people to stop after the equivalent of one glass,” he said. “And you really don’t want to be the last one to order a glass from a given bottle.”

For more details, click here.

@pete_wells: Never again will I say there’s no good cheap pinot noir. Drinking Latitude 50 from the Rheingau in Germany. Twelve bucks.
@lancearmstrong: Sitting here with @johanbruyneel at his house. Glass of wine, cheese and crackers. Now going to bed. Night, y’all. http://twitpic.com/2e0z4
@TishWine: Getting excited for April Fools 09. At DregsReport.com, we’re cooking with gas. Laughing gas. Homepage going up later this week.
@peterliem: Finally not working, for once. Listening to Sonic Youth and drinking my friend’s French moonshine: a 1995 mirabelle that his dad made.
@TQThomas: @spume I always think acidic whites with Sonic Youth, but maybe that’s only with Goo. Here, Kings of Convenience and Sant’Agata Ruché good.
@ericarnold: having a monster, spicy ramen from the deli down the block. My insides are on fire like in the Family Guy ipecac contest. But in a good way.
@billdaley: Any Lake Michigan types out there know when smelts will be swimming into the Chicago area? Miss smelts, morels, ramps. Miss them badly.
@FrankWine: is mulling marketing a t-shirt to wine bloggers that reads, “I’m Alice Feiring’s Bitch.” This post is meant in good fun, kids.

FrankWine is riffing off this video from Tina Caputo, editor of trade pub Vineyard & Winery Management, entitled Robert Parker’s Bitch. She interviews several winemakers about the influence of–you got it–RP. Check it out (26 minutes):

Robert Parker’s Bitch.

Why not make that box all fancy? Site reader Damon writes in to say he has made some hardwood cabinets for box wine: take the plastic bladder out of the box and drop it into an oak model that sits on the counter ($200) or a floor-standing model made from purpleheart and birch ($250). He describes them further: “The interior of the cabinets has a stone finish with a sloped floor, which keeps the bladder flowing until it is empty. I will make these custom for people out of any hardwoods that you want, with any finish wanted.”

Would you, could you in a fancy box? Or same old box wine in a new container?

Related: “Best box wines of 2008”
UPDATE: After a couple of requests via email and with Damon’s approval from Whitefish, MT, his email address is fosterfitness@centurytel.net.

Last fall, I discovered and was immediately inspired by the work of Paula Hayes, an artist in the East Village. What captivated my attention were her beautiful terrariums, exquisite miniatures of nature (which you can see in excellent photography on her website).

So I did my best to replicate her art using my own medium: wine. My five-year-old son and I went into the woods last fall and collected two kinds of moss. He made his own terrarium in a glass cookie jar; I made mine in a bottle of Domaine Tempier rose 2007, my favorite rose from last summer. Unlike most wine bottles, rose bottles are clear to show off the eye-popping color of the wine. This also makes them better terrariums!

I first added dirt to the bottle. Then I ripped off chunks of moss, compressed them and shoved them through the wine bottle’s neck with a chop stick leftover from a previous takeout. A few pokes and prods later, I had them all lined up. The only problem was a bit of schmutz and condensation on the upper part of the glass; I’ll have to drop by Paula’s studio and ask for tips on terrarium schmutz removal. But now at least all the moss pieces have actually grown together to form a rich green carpet. And there you have it: mossage in a bottle.

Here’s a pic of Jay-Z at a DC nightclub on Sunday after his belle, Beyonce, performed at the Lincoln Memorial. Hard to top that for sheer size–or quantity! Or price! (find Ace of Spades Champagne) Obviously he didn’t get the memo that Cristalino is the wine for our times…

Are you allowed to bring wine to work? If so, what’s in your bag for tomorrow?
(Photo: FILMAGIC via concreteloop)

Digging through the piles on my desk I unearthed this card from the illustrious importer of boutique wines from Germany, Austria and Champagne. After winning a James Beard award last year, Theise decides to bare mostly all on his year-end card. His caption is: “Theise Wines: so fresh & clean! Swirl. Smell. Taste. Repeat.”

What’s your caption? Be sure to “keep it clean.” Just like Terry.

Krall, the jazz vocalist, presents a long list of acceptable producers of mostly red wine as detailed on thesmokinggun.com. Wines on “the Diana Krall wine list” are mostly robust reds such as Shafer, Paul Hobbs, Ridge, d’Arenberg, Castano, Pesquera, and Allegrini but also includes intriguing choices in Failla and Edmunds St. John. The skinflint show manager would, of course, get her some Ravenswood since that is also on her list. She also requires a can of Nestle’s Good Start baby formula, which may be a chaser of the Ravenswood–or for her then seven-month-old twins, touring with her. (Check out her other demands, including a private yoga room and a dressing room free of bleachy smell!)

The former Van Halen star, Hagar, is less specific in his rider.

Sammy Hagar is a wine connoisseur. Please select good bottles. We are requesting one bottle of red and one bottle of white. Red wine (between $30 and $100):
1st choice: bottle of French or Californian Pinot Noir
2nd choice: Italian Barolo
3rd choice: Merlo [sic] or Cabernet Sauvignon from California
White wines ($18 to $30)
1st choice: Californian or European Pinot Blanc
2nd choice: Californian or European Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonney [sic]

As stage drinks, he also requests 16 cold Mexican beers (Corona or Pacifico), 2 quarts of green Gatorade, and three cans of Dr. Pepper–in stage left cooler only!

For more performers such as Coldplay, Elton John, U2, Foo Fighters, and more, click through to Jamie Goode’s wineanorak, where I first read about these contracts being available on The Smoking Gun. Find out who specifically requested Mouton Cadet!

Which wines would you put in your performance rider?

Talking about the flavor profile of wines, from light to full bodied is, in my view, a really constructive way to talk about wine. Heck, entire stores such as Best Cellars in Manhattan and wine lists at numerous restaurants arrange wines this way.

So I was surprised to hear a boutique wine distributor tell me the other day that “light” is verboten! Here’s what he said:

“Light is bad. It’s the kiss of death for a wine. I instruct my sales staff to never describe a wine is light–it’s not beer after all! Succulent and fruit forward and food-friendly, yes, but light, no.”

It’s probably just a question of semantics since he does have many light-bodied (my term!) wines in his portfolio, which I don’t think even has one Aussie shiraz or Cali cab. But I was struck by his hostility to the term and, needless to say, I don’t think it is the kiss of death; rather, it’s a strong endorsement in my view! What do you think?

So what should be this product’s tagline? Hit the comments with your thoughts!

To get the ball rolling, I’ll riff of the classic Reese’s ad with “You got your chocolate in my wine!”

According to this article, the Cathedral has hired a new “director of hospitality and welcome” away from a department store. He plans to open a chain of wine bars in the downtown area as well as implementing “loyalty cards” for regular parishioners (on the tenth worship you get a tall glass of forgiveness?).

Mark Hope-Urwin, the new director, said: “We’re not trying to encourage drinking, but the cathedral has to engage more with the city and find ways of meeting people on their territory.”

Perhaps educating parishioners about wine will lead to an upgrading of the Communion wine? Wouldn’t want them to spit that, after all.

Hit the comments with your thoughts on what’s on the wine list at an Anglican wine bar!

Roederer said on Monday it had placed several dozen bottles 15 meters (50 feet) underwater in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, a rocky tidal island off the coast of Normandy, last weekend. A cellarman came up with the idea after realizing that the water temperature in the bay, a constant 10 degrees Celsius (50F), was ideal for aging wine.

But if cork lets in scant amounts of oxygen in a normal cellar, might undersea aging turn the champagne a tad briney? They will stage a tasting in a year to find out how it’s going. Assuming, that is, that lobsters haven’t opened an undersea night club where the cases are stored.

While drinking to excess without a resulting hangover might sound like something technology should have fixed by now (in a world of fat-free desserts, how could they not?), Acocella doesn’t suggest much in the way of a cures. But she does talk about various causes. To wit:

The severity of a hangover depends, of course, on how much you drank the night before, but that is not the only determinant…And what kind of alcohol did you drink? In general, darker drinks, such as red wine and whiskey, have higher levels of congeners—impurities produced by the fermentation process, or added to enhance flavor—than do light-colored drinks such as white wine, gin, and vodka. The greater the congener content, the uglier the morning.

Does that red-white difference ring true for you? What about “natural” winemaking? Partisans of sake often tout its purity and some even go so far to say that it doesn’t give headaches. I’ve never put that to the test.

And as to the cure, she suggests wearing sunglasses and moping around. Just kidding. Folklore often dictates the “hair of the dog.” But I’d steer clear of this morning-after twist from a Ukrainian in the story: “two shots of vodka, then a cigarette, then another shot of vodka.” She counsels to avoid Tylenol since it increases toxicity to the liver. For prevention, she points to advocates of drinking lots of water, a glass of milk or eating a meal prior to drinking. And, of course, consuming alcohol in moderation.

“A Few Too Many,” By Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

Yet that is exactly what might be in store for Pennsylvania wine enthusiasts as the state has proposed to allow 100 “wine kiosks” around the state. To the tape:

The kiosks, a type of temperature-controlled vending machine capable of holding 500 bottles of wine, would be placed in grocery stores and other places [malls], according to request on the LCB’s Web site. They would offer about a dozen different types of wine.

Before you think this is where all the minors are going to go before the prom, each kiosk will have “fingerprints and biometric readings” for age verification. Yikes! Retinal scan for retsina.

Making wine more accessible is a good thing. I hope for all wine loving Pennsylvanians that the selection is great! Get a little Bollinger before heading to Borders? Malbec and a movie? I wonder if they will have stemware. Or perhaps TetraPak wine so the bottle doesn’t break while being dispensed.

Would you like to see them in your state?

Related: “Poll: should the US drinking age be lowered?”
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