GrapeStone Concepts

Wine Sensory Detection is a Practice Sport: The Tuscan Magazine - Tasting Like a Pro: Hosting a Tuscan Wine Competion at Home

In the latest issue of The Tuscan Magazine, you will find my detailed Top 10 tips on "Hosting a Tuscan Wine Competition at Home". Wine professionals recommend having tasting exercises often and recording your handwritten observations immediately. Can you image a wine judge tasting over 100 wines at a competition and not taking notes?

Our recommendations for a Tasting Competition at Home can apply to any vertical or horizontal tasting exercise. Expose your guests to some new as well as some familiar wines. Broadening the palate and "sensory rolodex" is important for improving sensory detection for any level of wine-drinker.

The Tuscan Magazine new edition for July 2011 can be found at this link. The article appears on page 17.

The Tuscan Magazine

The Tuscan Magazine now has both an iPhone and an iPad app that can be downloaded free. Check out the new articles on Tuscan wedding and travel recommendations in this terrific issue.

For a copy of the article:

Download Host a Tuscan Wine Competition at Home Tricia Conover The Tuscan magazine july2011

Calling All Wine and Soccer Fans: Wine and Snack Combinations for "Footie" Season

I was asked to put together a snack-friendly wine list for my editor at Tuscan Magazine. It's soccer/footie season in Italy. Italians have the same desire as we do in the States to find wine that is a complement to their snacks. Go Fiorentina!

 
 

Check out the Tuscan Magazine Blog at: Tuscan Magazine Blog

 

Have a Healthy Wine......for the Holidays: Excerpt from the Tuscan Magazine

During my month-long trip to Italy in October, I had the pleasure of meeting with Sarah Frasier, editor of the Tuscan Magazine. I join British, Canadian, Irish, German, and Italian writers as their sole American journalist. It's a privilege.

Sara and her husband, Richard are Brits who have relocated to Lucca, Toscana, Italy and are the authors of Tuscan Living: From the Yorkshire Moors to the Tuscan Hills. I have featured their book in my Amazon.com "I Recommend" section.

To get a glimpse of this wonderful English-speaking publication of Tuscany, go to:

http://tuscanlivingmagazine.com/\

My article appears on Page 40 of the Body and Soul section of the on-line version. " Have a Healthy Wine: Healthy Italian Wines, the Difference is Skin Deep". For a reprint of the article, write us at: maggie@grapestoneconcepts.com.

  

We're grateful for our nation and all its blessing this Thanksgivings. Have a Healthy Wine!

Page 40: the Tuscan magazine

 

It has long been realized that red wine brings to our bodies a group of organic chemicals that can serve as clot-inhibiting, bad cholesterol reducing, antioxidant-enriching properties. How do the wines of Italy stack up in delivering these benefits?

The latest studies on red wine have been truly amazing. The health effect of wine drunk in moderation are not just the anti-atherosclerotic (anti-plaque in vessels), antithrombotic (anti-clot formation), but also are the angiogenic (inhibit the production of blood vessels) properties against tumors. Many new therapeutic cancer-fighting drugs work on the premise that the prevention of growth of new blood vessels inhibits the growth of tumors. These tumors need new blood vessels to grow.

Red grapes, dark chocolate, blueberries, garlic, soy and tea are some of the ingredients that starve cancer while feeding our bodies.

 Dr. William Li, M.D., Medical Director and President of the Angiogenesis Foundation, Cambridge, MA, USA,  was recently covered by Wine Spectator Magazine  for his presentation at the TED Conference, a small non-profit where the world’s thinkers and doers gather for “Ideas Worth Spreading”, in February 2010. Dr. Li says,

“By examining the potential of antiangeogenics in food, we will find answers to cancer all around us…In our groceries, in our food, and in our glasses”.

Italy: Take the Wine Road through the Chocolate Valley

 

 

   

And go to Chocolate Atlas for the remainder of the Article: 

http://www.chocolateatlas.com/L2Europe/6BConover_Italy/Wine_Roads_and_Chocolate.html

 

Wine, Health, and La Dolce Vita

I just returned from the Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa Valley, www.winewriterssymposium.org.  Our keynote speaker was the eloquent Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, and her new book: Every Day in Tuscany, Seasons of an Italian Life.  I was encouraged by Frances and several well-know wine editors to really consider documenting the positive health effects of great wine with delicious, local food ingredients, and inspiring travel adventures….”una bella vita”.

Gary Walther, one of our distinguished lecturers and former editor of the luxury lifestyle magazine, ForbesLife, specifically discussed  the trend of pressure-strained folks to seek  a healthy, stress-reducing destination for their next escape.  These destination choices more and more include wine country travels.

One of the hottest books describing this trend comes from the successful author of Judgment of Paris, George Taber. (As you may recall, Judgment of Paris became the movie Bottle Shock. The book and the movie detail the famous 1976 blind wine tasting in Paris which pitted the best of the nascent Napa Valley wines against the top French wines. Napa surprisingly won. )  His new book, In Search of Bacchus -Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, describes the immergence in all the world’s top wine countries of businesses and events aimed to pull travelers “ in search of La Dolce Vita “off the road.

And yes, Napa Valley is now the second most-visited tourist destination after Disneyland in California.

It is with this trend in mind that I focus  future articles on the  top destinations and purveyors of healthy lifestyles.

“WINE TO ME IS PASSION.  IT'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS. IT'S WARMTH OF HEART AND GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT. WINE IS ART. IT'S CULTURE. IT'S THE ESSENCE OF CIVILIZATION AND THE ART OF LIVING.”

----ROBERT MONDAVI,  Harvests of Joy

How to Taste Wine Like a Pro: an excerpt from travellady.com magazine

 Want to make the most of your trip to Napa and Sonoma Valleys? Start out your tasting adventure with a two-hour class, “Tasting Like a Professional” at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) at Greystone.  The setting for the class is an impressive amphitheater in the Rudd Center for Wine Studies, an old stone structure overlooking the vineyards of Charles Krug winery. This semi-circular room is complete with individual stations equipped with tasting sinks, viewing lights, and rows of stemware.

At the class on a Saturday in late September, we had couples and singles from Iowa, Texas, California, New York, and Tennessee with us. Each attendee had his or her own personal goal. Some wanted to enlarge their palate. “I always drink chardonnays,” said the woman from Cedar Rapids. Some were veteran Napa Valley visitors that wanted to increase their wine knowledge. The guys from New York said, “We only drink red wines and would like to understand how to appreciate rosés and Sauvignon blancs”.