Many of you may have already seen this if you are on the Artisan
Vineyards e-mail list. Would anyone be interested in chipping in $20
towards this event? Right now the bid is around $335 and was thinking
about bidding $400 tomorrow. The auction ends at 2:00 p.m.. I have
both e-bay/paypal accounts and can handle the $$$ upfront.
Let me know if you would like to be part of the group1
Thanks.
Bubbles
VALUED AT $500
A guided tasting of organic and biodynamic wines on Artisan Vineyard’s
Saint Paul, MN patio. The venue is Tuscan-like, replete with a cherubic
fountain and bacce court. Your hosts will be as “wine-geeky” (their
words, not ours!) as you and your guests can bear, or you can just tell
them to “Shut up and pour!” Visit their website at
www.artisanvineyards.com to view the patio and a list of wines.
Restrictions: The winning bidder should contact Larry Colbeck from
Artisanwines.com personally, after the auction, to establish date and
time for the tasting. Preferable, the offer will be scheduled before the
MN weather turns chilly, as the tasting will be held outside.
To benefit Slow Food Minnesota
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Bid on the Patio Wine Tasting
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:58:30 -0700
From: ArtisanVineyards.com <cathy(a)artisanvineyards.com>
Reply-To: cathy(a)artisanvineyards.com
To: joyce hegstrom <jhegstrom(a)csom.umn.edu>
Artisan Vineyards Logo Top
Artisan Vineyards Logo Middle
Only 2 days left!
Artisan Vineyards Logo Bottom
Only 2 days left! Bid Now!!
The Slow Foods Usa auction is happening right now on eBay and it is well
worth your time to check out all the items they have up for bid. Of
particular interest to you is the item donated by Artisan Vineyards...a
wine tasting for 20 people on our patio and a free case of organic wines
to the highest bidder. This item will benefit a Minnesota youth
program. Hurry to this eBay Auction website
<http://echo4.bluehornet.com/ct/3095148:3438372329:m:1:185133916:B176C7C9213…>
to make your bid for the best party of the summer!
Wine fermentation barrels.
Rosé Crisis Over!
We managed to circumvent the dock workers strike in France to get the
fresh Rosés to you. They have arrived and it is just in time for warm
weather quaffing. See a full listing of all the Roses
<http://echo4.bluehornet.com/ct/3095149:3438372329:m:1:185133916:B176C7C9213…>
we have in stock.
Pears fermenting in wine.
Fresh Taste Festival
Save August 17th for a fantastic event at Nicollet Island
Pavilion...Twin Cities Fresh Taste Festival presented by Minnesota
Monthly. It's a day-long event to celebrate the best in organic, local
and sustainable food products and wines. Artisan Vineyards will offer
more than 40 wines to taste through! See www.freshtaste.com
<http://echo4.bluehornet.com/ct/3095150:3438372329:m:1:185133916:B176C7C9213…>
for more details.
Artisan Vineyards, Saint Paul, MN 55103
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June 4, 2008
The Pour
Burgundy Learns to Bottle Consistency
By ERIC ASIMOV
POMMARD, France
THE black clouds gathered last week over the Côd.Or, the slender 30-mile-long swath that comprises the great vineyards of Burgundy. And for at least the fifth day in a row they burst forth, drenching the vineyards shortly before the critical period of flowering, when the grape bunches begin to form on the spindly vines.
Rain is the farmer.s blessing, when it comes at the right time and in the right amount. But when the ground is saturated and the air is warm, the resulting moisture and humidity is a curse that can threaten the grapes with mildew and rot.
In past decades such weather might have spelled doom for the year.s vintage. But nowadays it means something else entirely. .It means more work for us,. said Benjamin Leroux, 33, the manager of Comte Armand, one of the best producers in Pommard in the Côde Beaune, the southern half of the Côd.Or. .All the things we.re doing in the vineyard right now, we.re insuring the vintage..
Twenty years ago nobody could have predicted that Burgundy could be trusted to produce reliably good wines in tricky vintages. As captivating as the great wines of Burgundy could be at their heights, too often they revealed their depths . diluted, overly acidic wines that seemed to vary not just vintage to vintage but almost bottle to bottle. The only thing consistent about the region was its inconsistency.
Just last month Robert M. Parker Jr., the wine critic, repeated the old saw when he wrote in his column in Business Week, .Red Burgundy is the ultimate minefield of the wine world . notoriously unreliable, often disappointing, and rarely living up to its illustrious reputation..
In fact, the quality of Burgundy . red Burgundy in particular . has risen strikingly over the last two decades. From the smallest growers to the biggest houses, the standards of grape-growing and winemaking have surpassed anybody.s expectations. These days, Burgundy has very few bad vintages, and among good producers, surprisingly few bad wines.
The best producers, like Domaine de la RomanéConti and Armand Rousseau, always managed to achieve a high standard, but nowadays the bar has been raised for everybody. And it.s not just the Côd.Or, the heart of Burgundy, that has shown such improvement. Surrounding areas like the CôChalonnaise and the Mânnais, still part of Burgundy, are producing better wine than ever, at not unreasonable prices. Sure, you can still find bad Burgundy. But really, it.s not hard to find bad wines from any fine wine region.
.It.s not so much an improvement as a blooming,. said Becky Wasserman, an American wine broker who has lived in Burgundy since 1968. .It.s a realization of potential..
I spent five days in Burgundy last week to get a first-hand look at the reasons for the surge in quality. In traveling the Côd.Or from Marsannay in the north to Santenay in the south, visiting two dozen producers, tasting hundreds of wines and drinking not quite that many, it was easy to see that this leap upward has been 25 years in the making, an eternity in the Internet world but a split second at the rhythmic agricultural pace of viticulture.
Most striking of all was the number of young producers making superb wines, whether they have taken charge of their family domains or started out new. In Marsannay, perhaps the least-esteemed commune in the Cô de Nuits, the northern half of the Côd.Or, Sylvain Pataille, 33, is turning out excellent reds, whites and rosé In the Hautes-Cô de Nuits, once a backwater in the hills, David Duband, 37, is producing light, fresh regional wines from his ancestral vineyards, along with a series of more ambitious, elegant reds from grand cru vineyards like Éhezeaux and Charmes-Chambertin. Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, 35, in Vosnes-Romanéhas reclaimed some of the greatest vineyard property in the north, which his family had leased out for years, and is making wines of purity and depth.
Meanwhile, in Meursault in the south, Arnaud Ente, who took over his father-in-law.s vineyards in the 1990s, is turning out small amounts of whites of focus and clarity that show tremendous minerality. Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, 36, left his father.s domain, Marc Colin et Fils, and set up shop in Chassagne-Montrachet, where he is making light yet intense, mouthwatering whites.
.Half the superstar domains today didn.t exist 20 years ago,. Clive Coates, author of .The Wines of Burgundy. (University of California Press, 2008), told me in a recent interview. Few could have envisioned such a level of quality back in the early 1980s, a time when Claude Bourguignon, a French soil scientist who, with his wife, Lydia, works with numerous wine estates, famously said that the soil of the Sahara had more life in it than the soil of Burgundy.
.It was a shocking wake-up call,. Ms. Wasserman said, and it was heard by the first wave in the vanguard of the new Burgundy, young vignerons like Dominique Lafon in Meursault, Christophe Roumier in Chambolle-Musigny and Éienne Grivot in Vosne-Romané
Their first order of business was to wean the soil off two decades worth of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. The postwar dependency on science and industry had dealt a severe blow to Burgundy, which more than most wine regions prided itself on its soil. The nuances of terroir, the semi-mystical French term that encompasses earth, atmosphere, climate and humanity, were said to be transmitted to the wines by the qualities of the differing soils throughout the Côd.Or.
Over the next 20 years a great many producers turned to organic farming, and others adopted biodynamic viticulture, a particularly demanding system that takes a sort of homeopathic approach to farming. These days it.s the rare farmer who still uses chemical herbicides in the vineyard.
.The soils are alive again,. Mr. Bourguignon said by telephone last week. .They.ve really changed, and it.s one of the reasons the wine has changed..
Burgundy vignerons take pains, however, to make clear that they are not doing anything new. As Mr. Leroux pointed out, organic viticulture is simply a return to the pre-World War II methods.
.We can now understand what our grandparents were doing,. said Jean-Marie Fourrier of Domaine Fourrier in Gevrey-Chambertin. .We.re rediscovering the logic of the past..
Domaine Fourrier was moribund, with no market for its wine, when Mr. Fourrier took over from his father, Jean-Claude. Fourteen years later he exports wine to 27 countries and has just finished construction on a new fermentation room. His wines are pure and light-bodied, embodying the grace and finesse for which Burgundy.s best wines were always known.
Prosperity is evident all over Burgundy, and every domain seems to be adding on, building a new cellar or a new winery, buying a tractor, or hiring workers. It.s a far cry from 20 years ago when domains were going out of business and sales of Burgundy in the United States were plummeting.
Now, despite the plunge of the dollar, American thirst for Burgundy has never been higher, and the opening in the last few years of new markets like eastern Europe and Asia, along with demand for the widely acclaimed 2005 vintage, has sent prices for Burgundy soaring higher than ever. Much of the profit seems to be going back into the wine.
.It.s a virtuous cycle,. said Jeremy Seysses, who has joined his father, Jacques Seysses, at the helm of Domaine Dujac in Morey-St.-Denis, one of the best producers in the Côde Nuits. .Our wines have never sold so well or for so much money, which is bad for the consumer, I guess, but we can now afford to invest in the extra worker, the new equipment, in taking the time necessary to make great wine..
A decade ago you might still find cellars in Burgundy without the equipment to control the temperature in vats of fermenting wine, by then standard in the rest of the winemaking world. Nowadays that.s unthinkable. With increased knowledge has come a premium on hygiene in the cellar and precision in the vineyard. Where once farmers who sold their grapes to néciants were paid by quantity, winemakers who bottle their own production today know that they are judged and paid on quality.
.Everybody is aware that Burgundy has a lot of competition and people don.t buy it because it says on the label, .Bourgogne,. . said Vénique Drouhin, who, with her three brothers, has taken over from their father leadership of Joseph Drouhin, one of the biggest and best producers in Burgundy.
Profits and the willingness to put them back into the business have helped to save vintages like 2007, which was marked by rain and hail. Twenty years ago, said Mr. Leroux of Comte Armand, the domain would have played it safe in a vintage like 2007. It would have picked the grapes quickly over the course of a week even though ripening was uneven, both to protect itself against further bad weather and so that the part-time pickers would not have to be paid for so long. .This year it took us 21 days,. Mr. Leroux said. .We stopped for seven days and I had to pay the pickers to do nothing, but the payoff in quality was great..
Back in the .80s, a year like 2007 could have been a disaster along the lines of the notoriously poor 1984 and 1975 vintages. Instead, tasted from the barrel, where the .07s are currently aging, the Comte Armand reds were fresh and minerally, the various crus in Pommard and Auxey-Duresses differing markedly in density and nuance according to where the grapes were grown, yet all lithe and agile. When they are released next year, the .07s may not be judged among Burgundy.s best, but they certainly will be enjoyable, at least.
Mr. Leroux is typical of younger vignerons in Burgundy today. Unlike previous generations, who often began working in the fields as teenagers and never got far from their homes, they were trained in viticulture and enology. They.ve traveled the world, working in places like California, New Zealand, South Africa and even Bordeaux. Perhaps most importantly, they are not afraid to share knowledge.
.They all know how to taste,. said Dominique Lafon, the Meursault superstar whose domain, Comtes Lafon, is one of Burgundy.s leading estates. .The older generation was only tasting their own wines and were not sharing as much as now..
As consistently good as red Burgundy has become, white Burgundy still has a thorny issue to solve. The wines, when young, can be delicious and show every indication of being capable of ripe old age. But beginning with the 1996 vintage, some of the best white Burgundies began oxidizing in the bottle after seven or nine years.
Responding first with denial, then consternation, all of Burgundy now concedes the problem, which seems to have waned since the 1999 vintage. Its source has been elusive, although most people seem to blame corks treated with peroxide. Some vignerons are taking the time to hand-wax the tops of their bottles to keep oxygen out.
Regardless of the stability that Burgundy is able to achieve, absolute consistency will never be possible. It.s antithetical to the nature of the pinot noir grape, which is proverbially fickle and troublesome to grow, and to the nature of artisanal winemaking, which takes as a matter of romantic faith that greatness only comes with risks.
.Burgundy is and will always remain the anti-product,. Ms. Wasserman said. .Burgundies react differently according to their age, according to the weather, according to the ambiance. It.s nice to have natural things that react..
June 4, 2008
Bargain Seeking
By ERIC ASIMOV
FEW Burgundies are cheap, but good values nonetheless abound.
The best big houses make superb wines. They include Louis Jadot, Joseph Drouhin, Bouchard Pè & Fils and Joseph Faiveley. Drouhin.s Laforet Bourgogne blanc, a Chablis-like white, is about $10.
The CôChalonnaise has fine values like Jacqueson in Rully (the .06 La Pucelle is superb), Françs Lumpp in Givry, Michel Juillot in Mercurey and Faiveley.
Some of the best Burgundy producers also make less expensive cuvé. Look for Bourgogne blancs or Bourgogne aligotéfrom Michel Lafarge, Sylvain Pataille and Domaine Roulot, and Bourgogne rouges from Georges Roumier and Ghislaine Barthod.
Also look for St.-Aubin from Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, Fixin from Louis Jadot and Savigny-les-Beaune from Chandon de Briailles.
June 4, 2008
Recipe
Asparagus With Chardonnay Sabayon
By ERIC ASIMOV
Adapted from Fabienne Escoffier, Ma Cuisine, Beaune, France
Time: 30 minutes
Salt
24 fat spears of green asparagus, trimmed and bottom third peeled
7 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup chardonnay
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
4 large egg yolks
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground white pepper.
1. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook asparagus until just tender, about 5 minutes. Drain well and pat dry.
2. In a small saucepan, melt butter. In another small saucepan, simmer wine with shallot until reduced by half, about 3 minutes; cool. In a stainless steel bowl, with a mixer at medium speed or by hand, whisk egg yolks with 1 tablespoon water and wine mixture until foamy. Set bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water and continue whisking until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and continue whisking to cool mixture slightly, about 2 minutes. Gradually whisk in melted butter one tablespoon at a time, then lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Divide asparagus on 4 dinner plates. Spoon sabayon across asparagus. Pass remaining sabayon in a sauceboat.
Yield: 4 servings
--
------------------------------
* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
June 4, 2008
New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging
By NICHOLAS WADE
Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.
The study is based on dosing mice with resveratrol, an ingredient of some red wines. Some scientists are already taking resveratrol in capsule form, but others believe it is far too early to take the drug, especially using wine as its source, until there is better data on its safety and effectiveness.
The report is part of a new wave of interest in drugs that may enhance longevity. On Monday, Sirtris, a startup founded in 2004 to develop drugs with the same effects as resveratrol, completed its sale to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million.
Sirtris is seeking to develop drugs that activate protein agents known in people as sirtuins.
.The upside is so huge that if we are right, the company that dominates the sirtuin space could dominate the pharmaceutical industry and change medicine,. Dr. David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School, a co-founder of the company, said Tuesday.
Serious scientists have long derided the idea of life-extending elixirs, but the door has now been opened to drugs that exploit an ancient biological survival mechanism, that of switching the body.s resources from fertility to tissue maintenance. The improved tissue maintenance seems to extend life by cutting down on the degenerative diseases of aging.
The reflex can be prompted by a faminelike diet, known as caloric restriction, which extends the life of laboratory rodents by up to 30 percent but is far too hard for most people to keep to and in any case has not been proven to work in humans.
Research started nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed recently that the famine-induced switch to tissue preservation might be triggered by activating the body.s sirtuins. Dr. Sinclair, a former student of Dr. Guarente, then found in 2003 that sirtuins could be activated by some natural compounds, including resveratrol, previously known as just an ingredient of certain red wines.
Dr. Sinclair.s finding led in several directions. He and others have tested resveratrol.s effects in mice, mostly at doses far higher than the minuscule amounts in red wine. One of the more spectacular results was obtained last year by Dr. John Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. He showed that resveratrol could turn plain vanilla, couch-potato mice into champion athletes, making them run twice as far on a treadmill before collapsing.
The company Sirtris, meanwhile, has been testing resveratrol and other drugs that activate sirtuin. These drugs are small molecules, more stable than resveratrol, and can be given in smaller doses. In April, Sirtris reported that its formulation of resveratrol, called SRT501, reduced glucose levels in diabetic patients.
The company plans to start clinical trials of its resveratrol mimic soon. Sirtris.s value to GlaxoSmithKline is presumably that its sirtuin-activating drugs could be used to treat a spectrum of degenerative diseases, like cancer and Alzheimer.s, if the underlying theory is correct.
Separately from Sirtris.s investigations, a research team led by Tomas A. Prolla and Richard Weindruch, of the University of Wisconsin, reports in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday that resveratrol may be effective in mice and people in much lower doses than previously thought necessary. In earlier studies, like Dr. Auwerx.s of mice on treadmills, the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.
The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice.s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine .starts getting close. to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.
Resveratrol can also be obtained in the form of capsules marketed by several companies. Those made by one company, Longevinex, include extracts of red wine and of a Chinese plant called giant knotweed. The Wisconsin researchers conclude that resveratrol can mimic many of the effects of a caloric-restricted diet .at doses that can readily be achieved in humans..
The effectiveness of the low doses was not tested directly, however, but with a DNA chip that measures changes in the activity of genes. The Wisconsin team first defined the pattern of gene activity established in mice on caloric restriction, and then showed that very low doses of resveratrol produced just the same pattern.
Dr. Auwerx, who used doses almost 100 times greater in his treadmill experiments, expressed reservations about the new result. .I would be really cautious, as we never saw significant effects with such low amounts,. he said Tuesday in an e-mail message.
Another researcher in the sirtuin field, Dr. Matthew Kaeberlein of the University of Washington in Seattle, said, .There.s no way of knowing from this data, or from the prior work, if something similar would happen in humans at either low or high doses..
A critical link in establishing whether or not caloric restriction works the same wonders in people as it does in mice rests on the outcome of two monkey trials. Since rhesus monkeys live for up to 40 years, the trials have taken a long time to show results. Experts said that one of the two trials, being conducted by Dr. Weindruch, was at last showing clear evidence that calorically restricted monkeys were outliving the control animals.
But no such effect is apparent in the other trial, being conducted at the National Institutes of Health.
The Wisconsin report underlined another unresolved link in the theory, that of whether resveratrol actually works by activating sirtuins. The issue is clouded because resveratrol is a powerful drug that has many different effects in the cell. The Wisconsin researchers report that they saw no change in the mouse equivalent of sirtuin during caloric restriction, a finding that if true could undercut Sirtris.s strategy of looking for drugs that activate sirtuin.
Dr. Guarente, a scientific adviser to Sirtris, said the Wisconsin team only measured the amount of sirtuin present in mouse tissues, and not the more important factor of whether it had been activated.
Dr. Sinclair said the definitive answer would emerge from experiments, now under way, with mice whose sirtuin genes had been knocked out. .The question of how resveratrol is working is an ongoing debate and it will take more studies to get the answer,. he said.
Dr. Robert E. Hughes of the Buck Institute for Age Research said there could be no guarantee of success given that most new drug projects fail. But, he said, testing the therapeutic uses of drugs that mimic caloric restriction is a good idea, based on substantial evidence.
--
------------------------------
* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
Sheila Stewart would like to invite all of you to a wine dinner she has
set up on June 16th at Cafe Vin; 6:30 p.m.
$65 includes tax/tip and wine!
5555 Xerxes Avenue South in Minneapolis
Greeting
Wine: Pinot Blanc
Food: Sautéed olives
First Course
Wine: Whole Cluster Pinot Noir
Food: Sea Scallops with truffle mushroom cream sauce
Second Course
Wine: Willamette Valley Pinot Noir
Food: Grilled Copper River Salmon with arugula-grape salad
Third Course
Wine: Reserve Pinot Noir
Food: Pork Tenderloin with haricots verts, grilled
peach,orange reduction and saba
Fourth Course
Wine: Grand Cuvee Pinot Noir
Food: Rack of Lamb with wild mushroom potato gratin, mint pesto
Dessert
Wine: Pinot Noir Port
Food: Chocolate tres leches cake
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