My friend Thierry sent me a link to the following article from the BBC:

• Raising a glass to pricey wine – Wine, we know, gets better with age – but now it appears it tastes better the more it costs.

I would have loved to have been the researcher who wrote up the grant proposal for this one. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have shown that there are influences (ala brain scans) on the ‘taste’ of wine based on if someone is convinced that a wine is more expensive. An excerpt:

The volunteers’ brains were scanned to monitor the neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the area of the brain associated with decision-making and pleasure in terms of flavour. Higher ratings were given to the more “expensive” wines.

Eric Greenberg, the former Scient/Viant founder, is in some hot water. A complaint has been brought against him by William Koch, the renowned wine collector who was recently profiled in the New Yorker for his attempts to get back lost $$$ for buying, among other things, Jefferson 1787 Lafite of questionable origin.

The same Eric Greenberg sold $15 million worth of wine over the weekend at the Acker Golden Cellar sale.

Hello from Tokyo,

I am reporting the first NY Grapes outing in Tokyo. Brian Quinn was visiting Tokyo last week and we were able to connect for a quick drink and a light dinner.

The picture

was taken at a wine bar in front of a wine server where we buy with prepaid cards. You can choose from approximately 60 bottles with three amounts, sip (20 ml), taste (50 ml), glass (90 ml) for each bottle. For example, a bottle which is worth 200 dollars, you can sip it for 10 dollars.

The machine is said to be made in Italy.

Since there were only two drinkers, we didn’t go for the bottle, but went for three glasses. White, Pinot, Bordeaux.

I look forward to seeing some of you in November and hope to see another person coming to Tokyo.

– TK

One of our West Coast brethren was recently interviewed/podcasted on Dishy Mix. You can listen here:

Dishy Mix, Episode 17

I came across Dr. Vino’s wine blog today, an entertaining wine blog by Tyler Colman, who is the winner or the Best Wine Blog from the American Wine Blog Awards (I didn’t know such an award even existed).

On Dr. Vino’s site, Sub-Zero has an online ad marketing the Sub-Zero line of wine refrigerators. I really like the ad and how various elements of the online program came together. First, the ads, apart from being sweepstakes in nature, also include information about guest wine bloggers at Sub-Zero’s site. Today for example an ad is running with Jay McInerney as the guest blogger. The site itself, far from it being purely brochure-ware in nature, contains rich content on the enemies of wine (e.g. humidity, temperature), friends of wine including facts and tips from a wide variety of wine experts, and a blog with wine expert tips that appears to include almost daily updates.

I have my own wine fridge, but still entered the contest…who wouldn’t want a Sub-Zero wine fridge at home?

Sites:

– Dr. Vino
– Sub-Zero Wine