Research carried out at the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada, Spain, shows that goats’ milk has more beneficial properties to health than cows’ milk.
Among these properties it helps to prevent ferropenic anaemia (iron deficiency) and bone demineralisation (softening of the bones).
The scientist induced iron deficient rats to goats’ milk and cows’ milk […]

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Bollinger Non-Vintage Special Cuvee, light and airy, and exceptionally easy-to-drink. Green apples and very dry. Great bubbles, small and copious: 8.9.

Yellow Label Veuve Cliquot, real ‘Champagne’ like. Crisp and refreshing, with biscuit and hints of lemon and vanilla: 8.9.

Both are made from a blend of Pinto Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. Both are a touch under £30.

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A great meal deserves a great wine…

And, while InterWined.com prides itself on discovering great wines that don’t cost a great deal, sometimes it’s nice to ‘Blow the Bank’ on something special.

So every Friday, InterWined will pair one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal. And if it inspires you to do the same, leave a comment and share it.

This week, InterWined.com wanted a quick dish for a Friday night — date food, ideally — something simple but impressive. Thus, InterWined turned to Rubber Slippers in Italy and Rowena’s fantastic-looking Canederli allo Speck (Italian bread balls with bacon — more or less).

No matter how experienced the sommelier or posh the restaurant, paring food with wine remains a skill most often complimented by a measure of inspiration and a dollop of simple, dumb luck. External factors such as the differences in years and yields, vintages and winemakers, the quality of produce and ingredients, cooking times, and countless other little things will always make certain the inexactness of food & wine pairing. Simply put: sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. And, while some wines compliment some foods better than others, there are remarkably few real rules that govern the relationship between food and wine. Essentially, it’s a matter of taste — both in terms of personal preference and the tongue.

As schoolchildren across the world can attest, there are five sensations that inform our sense of taste: sweet, sour, bitter, savoury, and salty. All serve to describe the flavours associated with wine, bar one. Wine can do many things (inspire poets, help the heart, and so on) but it cannot do salty.

So, when pairing wine with salty foods, like the speck featured in Rowena’s recipe, it’s important to try and find a wine that will enhance or compliment some of the more subtle flavours on offer in the food.

Fortunately, the 2001 Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Semillon from Hunter Valley in Australia, £13.99 from Philgas & Swiggot, managed superbly. Semillon is a wine grape with poor reputation that rarely gets much press. Most is blended with Sauvignon Blanc or else exposed to noble rot and found principally in Bordeaux and Sauternes in France and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.

The McWilliams’ Estate’s Mount Pleasant is kind of a wonderful exception. Like several Hunter Valley Semillons, the Mount Pleasant is oak-matured. The 2001 Elizabeth’s toasty flavour and subtle sweetness made a perfect partner to the sautéed onion, sage butter, and bread. The toasted quality of this particular Semillon also surprisingly helped to compliment the smoky flavour found in the speck, making the wine an all around match for the entire dish: 8.9.

This wine’s price might not technically ‘Blow the Bank’ but it might well prove difficult to find for readers. In which case, InterWined would recommend looking to winemaker McWilliams’ other wine labels, of which there are a great many (some such as their Semillon Chardonnays available in the US from Wine Chateau), or to another Hunter Valley oak-aged Semillon.

Rowena’s recipe in full:
Canederli allo Speck served with Sage brown butter, courtesy of Rubber Slippers in Italy.
Serves 2

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

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Viña Ventisquero, the Chilean multi-tiered wine producer (some good, some great)…is going Carbon Neutral.
The first for any Chilean winery. Carbon Neutrality means the winery must offset all of its green house gas emissions, even those produced during fermentation (which bubbles off plenty carbon), and those produced via transport (each bottle of wine’s so-called food miles).
This […]

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InterWined recently received a series of private messages from the United States asking for some wine-buying guidance.
In response, InterWined recommended some wines from a Houston wine retailer called Specs — mainly white wine such as Albariño from Spain and Riesling from the Mosel and Rhine in Germany. These wines are great served slightly chilled and very versatile with food.

Here’s a recommendation for those hot summer picnics:

Get a bottle of Beringer Sauvignon Blanc 2006 (or similar California Sauvignon Blanc), £7 at Tesco, and widely available in the US. Pour a glassful into a tall tumbler over ice and sip through a straw. California Sauvignon Blanc is often filled with melon and citrus, but does not have a very enjoyable aroma in this price range, so it’s best to ‘keep it real’. But don’t go adding strawberries or lime wedges…it’s not a cocktail.

Simply pour the California Sauvignon Blanc over ice and sip…simple, refreshing, enjoyable and relaxing.

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InterWined is deeply suspicious of anything that fizzes but isn’t sparkling wine or water. And now that paranoia is about to be reinforced with the latest news on health day at InterWined.com:
Drinking more than one soft drink daily — whether it’s regular or diet — may be associated with an increase in the risk factors […]

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A high and not-so-dry search for unusual grapes landed InterWined at a shop called The Sampler, where for a small price, one can sample the wine before purchasing. InterWined opted out of this option when coming across a Greek wine made from a blend of Xinomavro and Negosca grapes. The wine retailed for nearly £8, snug between the £5 and £10 range InterWined samples and reviews.

If a wine is not worth recommending, InterWined does not apply a rating. Further, in order to stay 100% positive, InterWined won’t mention the name, as in this case. But the wine was remarkable in this aspect: it tasted so much like wine.

Huh? Exactly.

A simple Web search would undoubtedly reveal the identity of the wine, but please — really — don’t bother. The search continues for fascinating wines, with unusual grapes on InterWined.com…

New World/Old World-style Greek wine: No rating.

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InterWined recently received one single, large sausage from a friend who works at the firm Societe General. Why InterWined gets non-wine related gifts from a global investment bank is another post entirely. But at any rate, this sausage, Cochonou, is the official sausage for this year’s Tour de France.
Meaty, super fatty, but light on the […]

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Often cited, somewhat patronisingly, by wine critics as a starter grape for people beginning to enjoy wine, Alsatian, Australian, and New Zealand varieties Gewürztraminer’s traditional aromatic bouquets of lychee, rose petals, and Turkish Delight would seem to make it a poor introductory grape when compared to a crisper, lighter alternative. Rather, it is Italian variety from where the traminer grape takes its name with its more subtle aromatics that would better suit the newcomer. (The direct translation of Gewürztraminer is spicy traminer.)

Take for example the 2005 Alois Lageder Single Vineyard Gewürztraminer, £12 from Planet of the Grapes ($12 US according to Wine Spectator). In recent years, Alois Lageder, situated in Bolzano part of the German/Italian-speaking region of northern Italy known as both Alto Adige and Südtirol and until 1919 part of Austria, has worked to make its operation more environmentally sound using renewable energy sources and vinification tower that purportedly uses gravity to help transform the grape.

As for the wine, its low-alcohol content of 12.5% makes it the perfect aperitif: light colour and finish, met with a slightly floral nose of subtle lychee fruits. It would also very well with a nice summer pasta (no red sauce) or a mildly-spiced, light summer curry or stir-fry.

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InterWined is an unusual beast, where coincidence is often coupled with shock.
So imagine the surprise when InterWined found that one of the best red wines to go with Turkey (the bird) is actually produced from vineyards in Turkey (the country).
The 2005 Yakut Kavaklidere is made with the Anatolian-derived Kalecik Karasi grape, from Western Turkey, and […]

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