Posts belonging to Category I.M.H.O.

[ed. tBoW webmeister Dr. Dionysus practices Chinese Medicine in his "pro" life. He shares some wisdom concerning balance in life and wine drinking.]
In the practice of Chinese Medicine the topic of lifestyle choices and their impact on health comes up on a regular basis.
Our lives can be shortened and otherwise undermined by choices such as a sedentary lifestyle, smoking cigarettes, and of course drinking. Healthy choices include the obvious ones such as exercising, quitting or not smoking and not drinking. However, a balanced lifestyle also recognizes that enjoying life also contributes to a longer and happier life.
That’s why I use the 80/20 rule. If you really want to prevent disease, live a long healthy life, etc., simply do the right thing 80% of the time, and the remaining 20% go ahead and drink wine. I still think you should get off your butt and put out the other butts, but enjoying life and drinking wine have both been shown to interact well, so 20% seems like a reasonable apportion. As long as you balance with the 80%. (more…)

tBoW webmeister Dr. D posts these thoughts on a recent research publication that has received a bit of press. Several reviews follow that further investigate these findings.
“Perceived added value” is a term used in marketing that describes how a consumer might look at oh, say a bottle of shampoo with two free ounces for the same price as the smaller sized bottle. (more…)

The popularity of Santa Ynez Valley vineyards and wineries exploded following the 2004 release of “Sideways”. [ed. especially Santa Rita Hills, aka SRH] The California Highway Patrol blames an increase in wine country drunken driving arrests and crashes on the “Sideways Effect”. [ed. Kermit Lynch covers the same story in his current newsletter] (more…)

The House of Mondavi: the Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, Julia Flynn Siler. Gotham Books 2007.
Having finished reading the unauthorized Gallo and now the Mondavi family biographies, and having earlier read the Napa book by Conaway, I pronounce myself a novice historian on the Valley and the California wine industry. I am glad I read the about the Gallos before the Mondavis. Both families were instrumental in creating the modern California wine industry. The Gallos turned jug wines into oceans of cash and the Mondavis turned Napa into a first world, first class island of luxury where you lived the highest of high living. Where the Galllo brothers made money for themselves and would have happily excluded everyone else – including their youngest brother – the Mondavis spread the green far and wide…until they fell of the cliffs of extravagance and hubris.
This book is really about Napa’s and America’s greatest wine ambassador and tireless marketing genius (click for classic Mondavi wine commercial) Robert Mondavi and how he single-handedly lifted the Napa Valley and Napa wines from a curious American region to an international destination every bit the equal of the greatest regions in France, Italy and the world. His brother Peter (and Peter’s family), with whom he battled and inflicted great financial pain as a result of Robert’s departure from the CK Mondavi company and estate, gets about 20% of the attention. (more…)

So the LA Times ran an article in the August 7 Food section on ros√© wines. Good for them. The theme is familiar to readers of tBoW….ros√©s are for summer. They connote fresh, sunny, summer splashy wines. The article went into how pretty ros√© wines can be. We have seen shimmering orange the color of transmission fluid this summer in addition to salmon pink, light copper almost terra cotta and the more standard brilliant red almost ruby. (more…)