Browsing 137 years of Popular Science magazine, I’m reminded that it’s quite a while since my ‘dupes revisited‘ post. Just to show that all is not new under the sun:

All those years years of Popular Science magazine’s scientific scoops (!) are now freely available online here.

The format is similar to Google Books – you make a search and your chosen result is displayed in a viewer. I played for only 5 minutes, but was instantly drawn to the following link:

May 1929, page 67
Ages Wine by Electricity in a Few Hours FOR literally hundreds of years, the only method used by European wine growers to accelerate the natural ripening or aging process of wine consisted of drawing wine from one cask to another, a system known as “racking”…

I would have been interested in “the manufacturers of devices mentioned in the issue“!

Nothing new under the sun…

Just a few things that have passed over my desk in the last week:

• Tim Atkin has more free time. I really don’t know if it due to the growth of wine-writing on the internet, or whether it is the more simplistic (general) loss of revenue suffered by traditional news media at the hands of the internet, either way, one of our best wine communicators has found himself with more leisure time. I read that he regularly received 500 emails a week from the paper’s readers – I wonder how many of the paper’s remaining journalists are so ‘interactive’ with their audience(?)
• “The cork industry is preparing a €20m advertising campaign using cork’s ‘scientific background’ to convince the public of its benefits.” It seems that they have (already) largely lost the battle for the ‘pop and pour’ market, only great performance will (eventually) save them in the high-quality area. I am the first to admit that DIAMs are great and that quality bottles seem to have a much lower incidence of TCA in the last vintages – but my 99 Pavelot Dominode was corked yesterday!
• Romanée-Conti 2007. It must be that time of year, the first notes for the 2007s are beginning to creep out. Looks like I didn’t get my invite this year after declining last year – though I did only decline due to a heavy cold – I assumed it would have be frowned upon to cough and sniff over Aubert 😉
• Eric LeVine’s CellarTracker. I can’t believe Jancis didn’t mention that I was partnered up with CellarTracker long before Burghound and Vinfolio 😉 Anyway this is a nice portrait of a genuine and enthusiastic guy…

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Comments for this entry

It’s easy to throw bricks at the demenour of many participants on the eRobertParker web-forum, but it is (sans doubt) one of the best sources of info – provided you follow the right people 😉

Kevin Harvey is a winemaker whose posts on burgundy I enjoy following. Here he is, just back from a trip to burgundy with tons of useful and interesting information; 2007,2008,2009 vintages, p.ox and even “Gout Moisi-terreux” – frankly something which I haven’t heard very much about. It’s worth you working your way through the (currently) 2 pages as conversations develop and are added to by other winemakers like Blair Pethel.

NB: I didn’t point you in this direction just because everything he says is pretty-much in-line with what I’ve been writing here for months 🙂

Back from a long weekend – more of that later – and two new things in my inbox that you may be interested in:

1. Adopt a vine in Santenay? I don’t know the people, but it may be of interest to some…
2. Salon des Vignerons de Nuits Saint Georges et Premeaux Prissey: if you can’t wait so long to get your hands on a glass and will be in the Côte d’Or at the end of March, maybe this will fit the bill…