A Brazilian company has designed a glass that only stands upright when it is rested on a mobile phone.
Designed by Fischer & Friends, the “Offline Glass” has part of its base cut away which means it can only stand when supported by a mobile phone.
The new chopp glass (traditional Brazilian beer serving) is meant to discourage drinkers from looking at their phones when they should be enjoying spending time with their friends.
Read on …
A French study found chemical residues in wines, but at low levels; experts hope to eliminate need
Disturbing reports of pesticides and fungicides in French wine have raised concerns for consumer safety, but the laboratory that sounded the alarm said the results of their study were misrepresented. The lead author said that chemical residues in wine are too small to have an effect on drinkers, but he added that vineyard workers are being exposed to a significant health risk.
“You’ll consume much more pesticide residue eating apples and strawberries than drinking wine,” said Pascal Chatonnet, Ph.D., owner of Excell laboratory, which works with wine and food industries in several countries, and runs labs in France, Argentina, Spain and Chile. “Your liver will be completely destroyed long before you’ll have toxicity from pesticide residue in wine.”
According to his analysis of 325 French wines produced between 2008 and 2010, 90 percent of the wines showed traces of up to nine molecules related to pesticides and fungicides. None of the molecules are known carcinogens, and the vast majority of wines had levels significantly below legal limits. Only 0.3 percent of the wines did not meet current regulations. “There is no health problem in drinking wine in terms of pesticides,” said Chatonnet. “We have no reason to believe there are high levels of pesticides in wines.”
For every bottle of wine drunk in the United States at least 20 bottles of beer are consumed. That means twenty-to-one your friends are drinking beer. So how do you get your friends to drink (and enjoy) more wine?
Below are six major styles of beer with a complimenting style of wine. Discover wine from a new perspective: wine for beer drinkers.
•Lager and Light Beer
•Pale Ale
•India Pale Ale
•Wheat Ale
•Belgium Ale
•Porters and Dark Ales
Read on …
The middle class knows best …
Middle class professionals who drink at home are the country’s biggest problem drinkers because they think they know better than health experts, new research claims.
The study found widespread evidence that white collar workers consider alcohol – especially wine – an everyday reward for chores such as cooking dinner or putting their children to bed, as well as to combat the stress of office life.
There was also a common perception among the group that they could ignore health warnings and that regularly drinking at home is safe and sensible, even if their intake exceeded recommended guidelines.
The researchers claim the study shows the need for an overhaul of the government’s messages about safe drinking, which currently focus more on the impact of binge drinking and anti-social behaviour.
In fact, the study – in the journal BMC – found that these public health warnings “actively reinforced” the view among the middle classes “that their own drinking was problem-free”, because the campaigns tended to depict problems associated with young people drinking.
The research, by the universities of Newcastle and Sunderland, involved a study among 49 clerical and managerial staff from a range of workplaces, including a council, a tax office and a chemical storage company.
Read on …
British air passengers have been voted the heaviest drinkers according to a survey of 700 international cabin crew by Skyscanner.
Holidaying Brits beat the Russians into second place according to the travel site, which also polled UK passengers for their reaction to the concept of alcohol-free flights.
According to Skyscanner research, over half of Brits admit to starting their holiday with a drink either in the airport or onboard the plane.
However, 41% of respondents said they would book an alcohol-free flight should it be offered – with a quarter of those saying that this was to avoid the risk of sharing a plane with drunken passengers.
A ban on alcohol advertising—and possibly articles—pits the government against a growing wine culture
Russia’s latest salvo in a long battle against alcohol abuse by its citizens is a sweeping ban on all alcohol advertising in media outlets. It’s likely to have an unforeseen victim: the country’s small but booming wine culture.
Russian governments have fought the country’s age-old culture of hard drinking for more than a century. A 2011 global report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on alcohol abuse cited Russia and its neighbors as the hardest-drinking countries in the world. Now, provoked partly by a rising tide of youthful beer binge drinking, the government is cracking down on what it sees as an important public health issue.
Few observers think Russia’s newly emerging and increasingly sophisticated fine wine scene was in the sights of the legislature, the Duma, when it enacted the advertising ban last summer. Nonetheless, the law, which took effect Jan. 1, has had an impact. It makes no distinction between beer, wine and spirits. All advertisements are banned in both traditional and online media, and state authorities have warned the ban may be applied to the editorial content of wine publications and newspaper wine columns.
“Wine is not one of the hit targets of the government … yet,” said Spiros Malandrakis, an analyst of the global drinks markets for Euromonitor International, a London-based market research firm. “They mostly focus on hard liquor and beer, but the law makes no distinction.” Beer in particular has been a sore point, and to stem the tide of its growth among young people (Russia’s legal drinking age is 18), the government in recent years has doubled excise taxes, limited hours of sale and, as of January, outlawed sales from sidewalk kiosks.
According to WHO’s 2011 study, the average Russian drinks the equivalent of about 15.7 liters of pure alcohol per year—65 percent more than in the U.S. Nearly two-thirds of the alcohol consumed comes from hard liquor, one third comes from beer and only 1 percent from wine.
Nevertheless, wine consumption is growing at a steady 6 percent a year, according to Euromonitor. At the top end of the market, fine wine is growing much faster—middle class and affluent Russians are turning away from vodka and looking to wine as a less potent, food-friendly alternative. Importers say that the market for wines from France, Italy, Spain and the New World—after a downtown following the 2008 economic crisis—has rebounded with double-digit growth. And Russians are willing to pay the price for quality. Because of high import taxes and markups, a bottle of wine sold in boutiques and restaurants is generally three to five times more expensive than the same bottle in Europe or the U.S.
Wine has spoken!
The number of pints of beer and cider consumed in the UK will fall by 1.6 billion between now and 2018 the Office of Budget Responsibility has said.
Conversely, the number of 250ml glasses of wine will rise by 856m. While the number of cigarettes smoked will also fall by 9bn.
The numbers are part of the OBR’s forecast estimates regarding social habits, which will determine future tax levels.
Read on …
Sulfur dioxide is used to stop wine oxidizing and spoiling, but it can cause health problems for some people. A three-year, $5-million EU-funded project has now discovered a potential replacement for SO2.
European researchers are close to finding an effective alternative to adding sulfur dioxide to red wine and other foodstuffs, which could make future holiday seasons happier and healthier for millions.
Sulfur dioxide (SO2), often labeled as E220, is used as a preservative for certain dried fruits and in winemaking as an antimicrobial and antioxidant. Most people can tolerate a small amount of SO2 in their food and wine, but for others it can cause allergic reactions or have other side effects such as headaches.
The European Union-funded so2say project believes it may now have identified a combination of two extracts that can be used instead. Both of them occur naturally in wine and could reduce the presence of SO2 by more than 95 percent, say researchers.
Also read:
Asian drinkers keep Bordeaux out of the red.
Bordeaux wine sales continue to rise, stimulated by a thirsty export market that is in contrast to falling French consumption of the region’s wines.
Bordeaux recorded a 2 percent increase in volume sales and a 10 percent growth in value in the year ending July 2012, according to figures released by the regional trade association, the CIVB, on Monday.
The region has defied the economic downturn, shipping 5.5m hectoliters of wine worth 4.3 billion euros ($5.6bn) in the last year.
While “the current and future economic situation remains difficult, the figures for 2012 can be considered satisfactory,” said Georges Haushalter, president of the CIVB.
The upward curve is largely thanks to massive sales growth in the Far East. “One bottle in four is exported to China and Hong Kong,” said Haushalter. “It is an extraordinary development. We have multiplied export volumes [to this market] 100 times in the space of 10 years,”
The Asian market has also evolved during this period, explained… read on
Also read:
New research finds that those who suffer from headaches would pay for less sulfites in their wine.
Sulfur dioxide use in winemaking has been coming under the spotlight as a minimal-intervention movement agitates for less reliance on the compound. Sulfur has taken flak for causing health problems, although the scientific community is divided on the issue.
That prompted a Colorado State University study of consumer perceptions of sulfites and whether drinkers would pay more for a bottle labeled “low in sulfur.”
The findings, published by the American Association of Wine Economists, are that consumers would be willing to pay a little extra — about 64 cents — for wines that contain low levels of sulfites. In comparison, the premium placed on organic wine is $1.22 — nearly double — which suggests public awareness of the addition of sulfur is embryonic.
The researchers offer an alternative explanation. Consumers, in their view, are aware that “organic production protocol prohibits, among other things, the use of added sulfites.” In other words, if drinkers pay the extra for organic wine, low sulfites will be included in the package.
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) — in the form of potassium metabisulfite — is added to most wines and many other food products for its antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. The term “sulfites” on wine labels refers mainly to sulfur dioxide, but also includes sulfurous acid and other sulfites.
But sulfur dioxide is also a natural by-product of fermentation, so it is unlikely an SO2-free wine could ever be produced. Most yeast strains yield 10–20 milligrams per liter of SO2 during fermentation, although some, such as FX10 and M69, produce significantly more than others. Without sulfur, wine is prone to oxidation and spoilage.
Consumers have been asking questions about SO2 since wine labels started to carry a “contains sulfites” message. Sulfite mentions, after all, share label space with warnings that women should not drink during pregnancy, and against drinking and driving.
Although a small number of drinkers suffer ill effects from sulfites,… read on
chantelbot
Johan Botha
SMART about wine 