A friend of mine showed this to me the other day and I wanted to share it with you. I’m not a big fan of GM foods, I think there is still a lot that we don’t know about the effects on our own bodies, but its interesting to see that at least some GM products might have positive effects on us!

Super-wine might boost lifespan
07 January 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.

From issue 2637 of New Scientist magazine, 07 January 2008, page 12

Can you believe that it’s already 2008?! Where did the last year go? We are Finest Wine Racks would like to wish you all a very happy 2008! We hope that this new will be a successful one for everyone, we are anticipating many great things for out website! We have just added new products such as the beautiful Fuji Wine Rack and the versatile new Seven Piece Wine Set that has all you need to open and enjoy a bottle of wine!

We hope over the coming months to be adding many more new and exciting products making 2008 the most diverse year for Finest Wine Racks!

Happy New Year!

As promised last week we have recently added a brand new wall mounted wine rack to our collection! The Regatta Wine Rack is not just a wine rack but a piece of functional art. Hand crafted by an independent artist in the USA from domestic woods, this wine rack is beautiful AND functional. Available in 3 different wood finishes, it is sure to strike up a conversation at your next dinner party. Support your local artists!

Yes, I know that Thanksgiving hasn’t even come and gone yet so why am I bothering to write about Christmas? Simple, the deadline to order from us for Christmas is fast approaching, we will not be able to guarantee orders placed after November 30th will arrive in time for Christmas.  Yes, this seems very early but many of our racks and holders are custom made to order and we need to give our artists time to construct your orders without sacrificing the quality you have all come to love from our racks. So while it is likely that orders placed after the 30th might make it in time for Christmas it’s better to be safe than sorry!

Also coming in the next few weeks we are going to be carrying a new line of hand made wooden wall mounted wine racks.  These very functional art pieces are unique and beautiful and sure to be a conversation piece as well as functional so be on the lookout!

On October 1st tickets for the largest wine expo in America go on sale. The wine expo, held every year in Boston Massachusetts, is the largest trade and consumer wine show in the country. Celebrating it’s 16th year, the show at the World Trade Center is going to house over 440 domestic and international wineries from 13 countries across the globe, equalling over 1800 different wines!

Over the two day event you can wander around sampling world class wines, or watch one of the 15 celebrity chefs on 2 large stages creating delicious meals, or perhaps you would rather sit in on one of the 25 continuous tasting seminars with topics for both the novice and the connoisseur.

The Seaport World Trade Center is huge, with a 118,000-square-foot exhibition hall, a 400-seat, state-of-the-art amphitheater, 35,000 square feet of conference and meeting space it is no wonder that the Wine Expo has chosen to call it home.  And what better way to spend a cold February weekend than surrounded by thousands of your best friends enjoying some good wine?

There was an interesting article on the BBC news website yesterday with regards to the quality of French wines under the “appellation” system. Apparently over the past few years the controls of the appellation d’origine controlee have become more lax and thus causing the quality to suffer by as much as almost a third. In many cases definitive links between the regions and varieties of grapes claiming to be where the wine was from could not be established.

I thought I was the only one who realised this, and I realised this ages ago. Anyone who likes the occasional bottle of wine could see (or rather taste) that the quality of French wines was declining rapidly over the past few years. I like many other people at first thought it was simply because other regions around the world (Australia, South Africa, Napa, etc) were starting to make a name for themselves and increase the market competition. However, I now believe that the increased competition coupled with the declining quality is what doomed the French wines.

Unlike members of the UFC-Que Choisir, I am not convinced that an overhaul of the system is going to make much of a difference in protecting “wines under the most prestigious AOC label.” Why? The answer is really quite simple, because once people get a bad taste in their mouth they are unlikely to go back for seconds. People recall good wines they have had but they also never forget the bad ones.

This was forwarded to me by a friend who got it from NewScientist.com and I thought it was interesting to share:

Wine tainted with venom triggers allergic reactions
22:00 15 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi 
Wasp venom in wine and grape juice appears to have caused several cases of severe allergic reactions in people, according to a group of Spanish doctors. They suspect that the venom came from wasps accidentally crushed along with the grapes at the first stage of winemaking.

Journal reference: New England Journal of Medicine (vol 357, p 719)

In the news today I caught glimpse of an interesting article. Australian scientists have been able to identify the compound in red wine that gives it the peppery aroma.  For the last 5 years they have been working on figuring out what gave Shiraz the distinctive black pepper fragrance.  A compound called alpha-ylangene has been discovered to be the culprit; this compound is so strong that, according to the article on TheStar.com, a single drop can turn make an Olympic size pool smell of pepper.

This development means that some day in the future winemakers could alter the pepper aroma in red wine in the same way they now are able to alter it characteristics with different yeast varieties or oak barrel fermentation.

After much anticipation and hard work we are proud to announce that Finest Wine Racks as expanded and is now carrying wine accessories!  We have recently added some fantastic new bottle carriers, cork screws and decanting accessories! We will be adding more in the weeks to come so keep checking back!

While surfing the internet this morning looking for some interesting wine related gifts to get my husband for his birthday next month, I came across this nifty little gizmo called The Wine Clip.  For around $49.95 the wine clip attaches around the neck of a red wine bottle and almost as if by magic helps soften the tannins in the red wine producing mellower and much softer flavours, as if the wine is more mature than it really is.  It is thought that passing a conductive fluid through a properly designed magnetic field affects the polar molecular structure of the liquid, in this case the red wine.

I’m not sure if this would really work, but it sounds interesting!