Who’s looking out for their fellow bloggers? InterWined.com, that’s who, where we keep the job pitches coming…

So, here is another job opportunity for all you great food and travel bloggers who frequent this site…as well as any financials buffs. Good luck!

Business-industry reporter/blogger

Location: Flexible

BNET, a business-oriented news and information site owned by CNET Networks, is looking for creative and energetic freelance writers to cover business as part of its BNET Industries team of reporter/bloggers.

Launched in April, BNET Industries consists of 11 blogs that cover sectors ranging from autos and energy to healthcare, food, media and travel. The intended audience includes both industry insiders and casual readers with an abiding interest in how business ticks.

Reporter/bloggers are responsible for regular and engaging posts on the inner workings of their chosen industry, including corporate strategy, management, innovation, competition, deals and similar fundamental issues. We’re looking for someone who can turn out sharp and original takes on news of the day as well as deeper analysis and insights into otherwise overlooked developments.

The ideal candidate would have both journalistic experience and established blogging credentials, and would be ready to take advantage of the running room we’ll provide to put his or her mark on our industry coverage. Those interested should send a resume and samples of blogging and reportage to David Hamilton, senior editor of BNET Industries, at david.hamilton@cnet.com

But first, please check out the relevant industry sites at: www.bnet.com.

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Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you the cure for the summertime blues with Pork Burgers with Summer Salad and Honey-Glazed Parsnip Chips.

Each summer, people throughout the UK bet on how much or how little sun they’ll see. With the global economy is full slowdown and British politicians espousing the joys of holidaying in the UK as opposed to travelling to the US or the Continent, this year thus far has proven decidedly overcast. So when — and if — the sun shines, why not make the most of it with a good old burger and bottle of wine?

South African blogger, winemaker, and Web site Stormhoek officially launches launched its new Couture Rosé today a year ago today, August 15th, for sale exclusively at Threshers wine shops in the UK. And, as Peter May of the Pinotage Club, aka Pinotage.org noted it’s pretty risky “launching a wine…in one of the most miserable Julys on record, when sales of other hot weather items have plummeted” — especially one as gimmicky as Couture Rosé with its super stylish bottle and label, complete with cartoon and “freshness indicator”. The thing is, gimmick or no, this wine — if Threshers does its job — is going to sell (by the truckloads)!

Why? For one simple reason (Sublimelle take note!), this is a wine marketed to the most casual and easygoing of wine drinkers. The bottle reveals nothing of interest for the connoisseur. Outside of disclosing the year of production and the alcohol content (12% if you were curious), it says nothing about the grape varieties, percentages, and growing region (hell, you’d have to know that Stormhoek is a South African wine company to even know the country of origin). Instead, the bottle screams the tagline “Best Served on Ice”. Could anything be a surer sign that this wine is probably not produced with the finest grapes available? Yes, it could have no particular smell, like this wine. If nothing else, it must surely account for the wine’s unbelievably sugary flavour, mustn’t it?

Yet, for all of these things and the great many style points that it share with Bill Rolfe’s Pink Elephant, this is a wine designed for sunny days and simple pleasures (if slightly pretentious ones — the kind you’d see on a Channel 4cooking programme’s picnic or beach episode, all soft focus, smiles, and precocious children under 10 prancing about in and out of shot). And, why not? We deserve it, Britain, what with the spectre of negative equity, record foreclosures, global recession, and the veritable threat of another series of Celebrity Big Brother lurking around the corner. So what better way to give in than with a bottle of Stormhoek’s Couture Rosé 2007 (12%) and InterWined’s Own Pork Burgers with Summer Salad and Honey-Glazed Parsnip Chips?

The two are perfect partners: the high sugar, sweet taste of the undefined Rosé pairing brilliantly with the honeyed parsnip chips as well as soft, milder flavour of the pork burger and summer salad. In pairing wines with food, sweet foods prefer sweet wines. Now, this wine isn’t sweet in the sense of desert wine sweetness, it probably wouldn’t brilliantly with a pudding or desert. Instead, it sweetness is sugary — like a pixie stick. Also, because the pork mince used is quite lean and not terribly fatty, it doesn’t struggle or overpower the wine. It doesn’t require anything tannic the way that a beef or lamb burger would do.

Granted, all of the above, sounds pretty insulting — especially the pixie stick remark. However, like pixie sticks, it has its place. It’s fun. It’s throw away. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Kool Aid. It’s also pretty perfect for summer. But too much of it will probably make you sick. 7.7 points in summer with food; much, much less in winter, like 5.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Pork Burgers with Summer Salad and Honey-Glazed Parsnip Chips

Ingredients:

1 packet lean pork mince
Breadcrumbs/cracker crumbs
1 egg
Sea salt
Cracked black pepper
Bread rolls

1-2 carrots, peeled and grated
1-2 handfuls of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
½ lemon, squeezed
2 garlic cloves, peeled and grated
Olive oil to drizzle
1-2 tsp cumin

Parsnips, peeled and sliced into matchsticks (approximately 2-3 parsnips per person)
Squeeze of Australian honey or other

Preparation:
1. Combine the pork mince, breadcrumbs, and egg in a mixer or food processor
2. Once combined, shape the mixture into pork patties
3. Cover with cracked pepper and salt and set aside in the refrigerator to chill for approximately 30-40 minutes
4. Place the parsnip matchsticks in a bowl and coat with olive oil and honey; transfer to a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper and cook in pre-heated oven at 200°C for 30-40 minutes
5. In a salad bowl, mix together the grated carrots, chopped parsley, grated garlic, lemon juice, cumin, and olive oil
6. Heat a skillet with olive oil; take the pork patties from the fridge; and cook on high for approximately 5 minutes on each side
7. Slice the bread rolls in half and place on the skillet to toast lightly
8. Once cooked, remove the matchsticks for the oven
9. To make the burgers, place the patties on the bread rolls followed by the carrots salad; stack the matchsticks in bundles next to each burger and serve

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Man, that is one silly title.

I can’t believe I’m letting stay up there.

Anyway, InterWined spotted an unusual offering at the local Tesco: an Ale that is wheat and gluten free.

Now, granted we know very little about ‘beers’ (trying to learn more) but isn’t wheat a big part of the beverage?

Apparently not so for the Nick Stafford’s Humbleton GFA English Ale (should the ‘a’ in Ale even be capitalised? See, we haven’t even sorted terminology standards yet), which manages to put together a pretty sweet drink without using wheat.

Serious, it’s pretty sweet. As in, there is a lot of sugar.

But it’s not sickly white sugar, more like nice brown sugar. And the drink itself has a gorgeous reddish-brown hue. There is also plenty of citrus, which leans more to orange than, say, to lemon or grapefruit. And, I’m not exactly sure what hops smell like, but this Ale smells a lot like what we think hops probably should smell like.

Therefore, the Humbleton smells like hops.

We think.

Finally, and make what you will of this: the Ale (ale?) also carries hints of mild chilli and fairy liquid.

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Recently, InterWined mouthed off about wines served in restaurants that were too warm.

And here is another problem for you to swallow, if brought about in a long-winded fashion:

We love the Zuccardi Malbec 2006 at The Wine Sampler for £9. It’s full of blackberries, with a hint of rose on the palate. There is also some tar that bogs down the wine, overall, but the nice, long finish and polished tannins give it a solid rating of 8.6 points anyway.

But here’s the thing: it’s still too young. Sure it’s does OK now, but the wine could really benefit with another year. It would be great if wine retailers were to say, ‘buy this now, but drink it later.’

There needs to be a distinction between serious drinkers and serious collectors. We only really buy wines in the £5 to £10 range. We never look at the beverage from an investment viewpoint. The price on the Zuccardi shows that the wine is not for investing… so why not tell us the best time to drink it?

Before we buy the bottle, of course.

Even then, can we be trusted to hold it a year, I wonder?

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InterWined met last week with the owners of the excellent wine shop, Organico, located in the Lake District to talk about organic wine. Like InterWined, Organico, closely follows developments in organic viticulture (ALL of their wines are organic) as well as other green issues related to the industry, such as the transportation of wine in glass versus bulk to reduce carbon emissions.

Generally these talks are positive. Indeed, InterWined once wrote on the ability of organic farmland to produce greater yields, which the current research also refutes. Furthermore, unlike with food, decent organic wines can be had for competitive prices.

But, in what is a backtrack to the current science, new research in the latest issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals.

This is particularly galling as any people pay more than a third more for organic food in the belief that it has more nutritional content than conventional food. But the research by Dr Susanne Bügel and colleagues from the Department of Human Nutrition, University of Copenhagen, shows there is no clear evidence to back this up.

In the first study ever to look at retention of minerals and trace elements, animals were fed a diet consisting of crops grown using three different cultivation methods in two seasons.

The study looked at the following crops – carrots, kale, mature peas, apples and potatoes – staple ingredients that can be found in most families’ shopping list.

The first cultivation method consisted of growing the vegetables on soil which had a low input of nutrients using animal manure and no pesticides except for one organically approved product on kale only.

The second method involved applying a low input of nutrients using animal manure, combined with use of pesticides, as much as allowed by regulation.

Finally, the third method comprised a combination of a high input of nutrients through mineral fertilisers and pesticides as legally allowed.

The crops were grown on the same or similar soil on adjacent fields at the same time and so experienced the same weather conditions. All were harvested and treated at the same time. In the case of the organically grown vegetables, all were grown on established organic soil.

After harvest, results showed that there were no differences in the levels of major and trace contents in the fruit and vegetables grown using the three different methods.

Produce from the organically and conventionally grown crops were then fed to animals over a two year period and intake and excretion of various minerals and trace elements were measured. Once again, the results showed there was no difference in retention of the elements regardless of how the crops were grown.

Dr Bügel says: “No systematic differences between cultivation systems representing organic and conventional production methods were found across the five crops so the study does not support the belief that organically grown foodstuffs generally contain more major and trace elements than conventionally grown foodstuffs.”

Dr Alan Baylis, honorary secretary of SCI’s Bioresources Group, adds: “Modern crop protection chemicals to control weeds, pests and diseases are extensively tested and stringently regulated, and once in the soil, mineral nutrients from natural or artificial fertilisers are chemically identical. Organic crops are often lower yielding and eating them is a lifestyle choice for those who can afford it.”

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