Dr Vino's wine blog

Pennsylvania is hardly the first state where you would expect innovation in wine retail. The state’s Liquor Control Board owns all the retail outlets and the distribution in the state. Generally monopolies are known for limited selection and high prices, not innovation.

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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Today is the deadline for tax filing. But soon enough, we’ll all be getting those rebate checks for $600! Yay! Why spend this economic stimulus on, say, ten days of health insurance premiums (grrr) when you could spend it on wine!?!

So if you could spend your whole rebate on wine, how would you do it? A case of $50 bottles (not including sales tax)? Five cases of $10 wine? Or the cork on a gold encrusted double magnum of champagne?

Hit the comments with your thoughts!

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SPIT: Food and wine gone awry
Cabernet and wedding cake, Cabernet and mac n cheese, pulled pork and Burgundy – great comments, and they’re yours! Check out all of the great and wonderful food pairings that knocked your world.

SPIT: the hippocampus!
Wine drinkers have a 10 percent smaller hippocampus than those who drink spirits or beer, researchers say! But I thought “Red wine antioxidants protect hippocampal neurons against ethanol-induced damage“! Ugh, my brain hurts.

SPIT: Chinese wine!
“Millions of Chinese will be disappointed by their first taste of wine” is Jancis Robinson’s assessment of home-grown wines in China. Reporting on a recent trip, she, too, was “disappointed” by the “chemical and occasionally rotten odours” in the wines and general lack of progress with the industry over the past five years. [FT]

SIPPED: Holy wine
In Manchester they may go for Fairtrade wine, but Craig Heffley and Seth Gross of Wine Authorities, a wine retailer in Durham, NC, have another goal in mind for the Duke Chapel: tasty. They plan to start selling a 3L bag-in-box next summer for use in the Eucharist. [Durham News]

SPIT: drinking wine
“The 2006 Insolia from Feudo Principi di Butera…can be pleasurably inhaled for minutes.” Going easy on the hippocampus, was he? [NYT]

SIPPED: understatement
Talk about an impossible food wine pairing! Wine critic and blogger Peter Liem visits a sake festival in Japan and eats live shrimp: “My first two passed complacently, but a third, a female full of salty-sweet roe, twitched a little as I decapitated her with my fingers.” What’s his title for this juicy posting? “Niigata Prefecture.” Tony Bourdain, your job is safe–for now!–until Peter recruits a headline writer from Gawker… [peterliem]

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“High-tech electronic noses and tongues are rivaling the capabilities of their human counterparts and may someday prove more valuable to food and beverage companies than living, breathing expert tasters,” writes the Washington Post.

Have your say with a caption for the above image!

Related: “Scents and Sensibility,” The New Yorker, 3/10/08
“Who’s threatening us now? Robots!” Dr. V

We saw the still version before but now we’ve got a four minute video clip from the outdoor, communal spas in Japan where you can take a bath in red wine, sake, coffee, green tea and even chocolate! (Do them all to complete the cycle.) The wine and coffee baths reputedly have anti-aging properties. A pale British reporter has the story–and provides a brief scare when he threatens to get in the bath himself.

(reading this in a feed reader? Click here for the video.)

“It’s no wonder Britain’s middle classes are getting wasted,” Trish Groves, of the British Medical Journal, told the BBC.

Why? Could it be the economic slowdown? Posh & Becks living in America? The fact that the Grammy for best album went to Herbie Hancock instead of Amy Winehouse?

No, it’s the 750 ml bottle!! “It’s all too tempting to finish the bottle there and then to avoid waste,” Ms Groves continued. Those frugal Brits are plunging themselves into the abyss just so they don’t waste 250 ml of wine. Someone airdrop them some of those vacu-vin stoppers!! And just keep them away from magnums!! Or giant bottles on the street!

Related: “Big wine glasses make you drink more: poll”
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Peter Liem found this gem of a video (54 secs). Funny, this is the EXACT SAME way that I open my 1996 Cristal! What a coinkydink! Valentine’s Day grandstanders can really impress with this method of opening–and have two bottles open to boot.

“Oversized wine glasses in British pubs cause worry among pols, health officials,” blared a headline in the NY Daily News. I have to admit that when I saw that, I feared that there had been a Riedel war in a London pub, perhaps a jousting match with broken stems.

But it turns out that “big glasses” are being blamed on binge drinking! Roll the tape:

“The glasses are larger and the wines are a lot stronger. It’s a minefield for anyone trying to keep tabs on what they’ve had,” said Srabani Sen, head of Alcohol Concern, a charity.

While binge drinking is no doubt unfortunate and apparently has risen to worrying levels in Britain, are big glasses to blame? Have your say in the latest poll!

poll now closed
UPDATE: now with intel from London in the comments – Golly and StuckatLGW
Image: John Joh, with permission