News about wine making and wine appreciation by our Deaf fellows and friends, news not about people
Editor: Rusty Wales, the vintner of Prince of Wales wines
Wine Quotation: "Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder."
Aldous Huxley English-born novelist who wrote the classic "Brave New World". 1894-1963
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Editor Rusty's Rap: Wine and Sulfites
Some people have reactions to sulfites BUT these reactions are not headaches. The most common reactions or allergy to sulfites are rash or itch, diarrhea, stomach cramping and a wheezing or cough. To test yourself as whether you have an allergy to sulfites, taste dried fruits. If you don’t have any reactions eating these fruits, then you are ok with wine and many other food. Why headache after drinking wine? It is simply because of alcohol and the sensitivity of your brain cells. Other compounds in wine, histamines and tannins, may more likely connected to the headache effects. As I have always emphasized in my wine workshops, it is best to enjoy wine AND water, drinking in turn wine and water all night long. And then in morning you will wake up smiling without any headache! IMAGE #2
View the video of grapes harvesting with new technology! Harvesters have picked grapes for decades, though high-end wine grapes are still mostly hand-picked. But new harvesters could change that. New harvesting technology makes grape harvesters gentler. They are also able to optically sort grapes during harvest to remove material other than grapes and inferior berries, and can even de-stem when desired. Picking grapes by hand costs up to $250 per ton in labor costs, compared to the labor cost of operating a mechanical grape harvester that's around $35 to $40 per acre. The purchase cost of a new harvest machine, with sorting capabilities, can be around $350,000. Some vineyards, built on extremely steep slopes, have been in trouble for years. Cultivating and harvesting grapes on hillsides is elaborate, expensive and dangerous. Machines and tractors that cut, spray and harvest the rows of vines on flat land are of hardly any use in such hills.
Winemaking:
IMAGE #3 For Step 2, I had Teresa, the chairlady of Deaf StompFest 2015, assisted me racking/siphoning from Primary fermenter to a carboy (oh no, no photo!). Then on to bottling, I had Paul McComb from Bakersfield, CA (originally from Washington State) lend his hand.
PHOTO or VIDEO #4 Those who helped me learned something about making wine. And I actually learned from them during the process of wine making! What fun! Fun Fact:
News in the Deaf Community:
FLYER #1 A self-guided tour through Willamette Valley on Sunday September 20 (day after StompFest) is being established and a pamphlet will be shared with StompFest guests soon.
Wine Folly:
1 or 2 CARTOONS
(thanks to Vadja for his submission)
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