March, 23, 2015 Can Neuroscience Teach Us About Winemaking?

(Discovermagazine) - Modern winemakers may have erred when they switched to producing high alcohol wines. According to a new paper , from Spanish neuroscientists Ram Frost and colleagues, a low alcohol content wine actually produces more brain activity in ‘taste processing’ areas ...

March, 23, 2015 Parker: High wine prices creating ‘caste system’

(TDB) - The high prices set by famous wine estates is shutting people out of the market and creating a “caste system of wine”, according to Robert Parker, who also admitted that he “is part of the problem”. Speaking exclusively to the drinks business last month, the influ...

March, 23, 2015 Lawsuit against 28 California wines raises concerns over arsenic

(PRDN) - As Paso Robles Wine Country was getting ready to for Vintage Paso: Zinfandel Weekend that kicked off today, news broke Thursday of a lawsuit against 28 California wines that are alleged to contain “illegal and dangerously high levels of poisonous inorganic arsenic.” The 28 win...

March, 23, 2015 California: Wine Industry Faces New Water Reality

(Wines&Vines) - The days of “pump as much as you can get” are over in California, and it’s just a matter of time until that reality catches up with growers who rely on groundwater to irrigate in times of drought. That’s according to Chris Scheuring, an attorney with the...

March, 23, 2015 Arsenic And California Wine: Do You Need To Worry?

(Forbes) - I am what I have termed a blue collar wine snob. I’m picky about my wine and am even a member of a wine club, but I rarely pay more than $10 a bottle, mainly because I drink about two bottles a week. So when I caught a headline about popular wines supposedly containing enough arsen...

March, 19, 2015 Loosening AVA Regulations

(Wines&Vines) - An unusual proposal from the Tax & Trade Bureau (TTB) would allow wines to be labeled with the grapes’ AVA of origin, if “fully finished” in an adjacent state. TTB notice 147 was, the bureau stated, “in response to comments TTB received during the com...

March, 19, 2015 "Very high levels of arsenic" in top-selling wines

(CBSNews) - Following recent warnings about the amount of arsenic in apple juice and rice, a proposed class action lawsuit is being filed Thursday in California that claims some of the country's top selling wines have high levels of the element: up to four and five times the maximum amount the Envi...

March, 18, 2015 The Perception of Minerality in Wines: A Scientific Perspective

(Academicowino) - One of the most controversial aspects of the wine tasting note is arguably the concept of minerality. There is little scientific consensus regarding what minerality actually IS, and there doesn’t seem to be much (if any) peer-reviewed science supporting a chemical or physica...