The world in a glass

By JACK HEEGER

They call the wine Mariah

A story has been passed around via numerous publications and picked up on the Internet over the past year or so indicating that pop star Mariah Carey has invested in a vineyard in Mendocino County that bears her name. But Jim Caudill, spokesman for Brown-Forman, the distributor of Mariah Vineyard zinfandel, said that other than drinking the wine and liking it, Ms. Carey has no connection with the wine.

How does something like that get started? “Some blogger in the UK saw the TV show ‘MTV Cribs’ where Sir Richard Branson was showing some celebs, including Mariah, around his private island and she started talking about how she liked this wine and was shown drinking it,” Caudill said.

(Robert Louis Stevenson called wine “bottled poetry.” Is Mariah “bottled music?”)

Beer tries to

catch up with wine

As wine sales continue to increase, beer sales seem to remain unchanged, and Anheuser-Busch is trying to battle back with commercials by “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli, who nominates Humphrey Bogart and film director Spike Lee, whose choice was baseball legend Jackie Robinson, as the people they’d most like to have a beer with.

The firm invites consumers to enter a contest and name the person with whom they would like to have a beer.

(Personally, I’d rather have a glass of wine with Mariah Carey.)

Elvis has left the vineyard

This seems to be celebrity week. Graceland Cellars has just released its new vintage of Elvis wines — Blue Suede chardonnay, Jailhouse Red merlot and The King cabernet sauvignon — in Las Vegas (where else would you expect?).

The wines, sourced mainly from the Central Coast area, are produced by Signature Wines, which also produces wines for such diverse organizations as the Sierra Club and Ducks Unlimited.

Of course, all feature likenesses of Elvis on the label, and one of the wines, a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon, comes in a magnum with a velvet label and is encased in a velvet-lined box. Cost is $99.99.

(What’s next? Shake, Rattle and Roll syrah?)

Red, white or blue?

Last week we wondered why Three Thieves winery, which professed to making an environmentally-friendly wine container and referred to it as green wine, didn’t release it on St. Patrick’s Day.

Now comes an announcement in mymotherlode.com, from the Sierra foothills area, that researchers have traced the color of wine to a specific gene. “The gene causes white grapes to have little color, and also influences the color of red and green grapes. By identifying that gene, scientists say they might be able to breed color-specific grapes. Researchers add that the knowledge might enable them to develop grapes with unusual colors.

(Now we can really have a Blue Suede chardonnay. I guess it would use blue genes.)

Can something

so good be bad?

Literally hundreds of scientific studies have concluded that wine, consumed in moderation, has numerous health benefits, ranging from lowering the risk of heart disease and preventing cancer cells from metastasizing to increasing bone density in women and reducing the risk of gallbladder disease.

Now, Newsday.com reports on a study from the UCSF School of Nursing that indicates much of this research may be based on flawed data. The research team, led by Kaye Fillmore, looked at 54 published studies that examined the effects of wine and health and found that people who had quit drinking were included among those who were listed as abstainers in the majority of them. Only seven studies involved only long-term abstainers, and of those, Fillmore said, none showed a benefit from moderate drinking.

Fillmore acknowledged that the new study didn’t disprove the idea of wine being beneficial to health but said it opens the debate about the subject.

(To play safe, have an apple a day, along with a glass of wine.)

FFA makes expensive zin

The Future Farmers of America chapter at St. Helena High School’s recent fundraiser featured a three-liter bottle of zinfandel, along with other farm-related pieces of equipment, all made by the students. The zin was sold for $19,000, with Koerner Rombauer making the winning bid.

Laura Mendes, who teaches a college prep course in ag at St. Helena High, said about 24 cases remain to be sold — all proceeds go toward expenses for a student exchange trip to Australia next year. If you’re interested, call the school at 967-2740.

(They’re going to show the Aussies how to make a $19,000 bottle of zinfandel.)

Quick notes

The Walt Klenz Lecture Series at UC Davis will kick off Tuesday with a presentation by Klenz himself. The series was established to honor Klenz, former CEO of Beringer, now Foster’s Wine Estates.

Larry Cherubino and Sean Foster have been appointed winemakers at Merryvale Vineyards. Cherubino will oversee production of the winery’s prestige wines in St. Helena, while Foster will work out of the new winery under construction at Stanley Ranch in Carneros, responsible for the Starmont and Reserve Varietal wines.

Domaine Chandon was named Winery of the Year by the California Travel Industry Association, which cited the winery’s contributions in innovation, commercial success and commitment to the travel and tourism industry.

Jack Heeger can be reached at jheeger@napanews.com

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