Wine for Thought
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-15 14:20:31
A couple months ago. I posted a conjoin about the health benefits of booze -- including the information that red booze had been open to have both cancer-enhancing and cancer-preventive effects on converge tumors in women. My wish -- quixotic perhaps -- was that it was a wash: the antioxidants in wine would cancel out any damage done by the alcohol.
Well a cautionary story published this week in the and by the says that's just not true. According to a study conducted by the wine drinkers are just as likely as drinkers of beer and other spirits to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Of more than 70,000 women surveyed during health examinations over a period of 7 years those who reported drinking booze developed the disease at roughly the same evaluate as those who said they drank beer or hard liquor. But "light" drinkers (defined as less than one glass per day) and non-drinkers in the chew over suffered from converge cancer at a much lower rate.
I think this is worth knowing. But say a couple things: first the chew over appears to have relied on self-reporting -- a notoriously inaccurate way to collect data. (It sounds a lot exceed to say to one's doctor. "I undergo a bring together glasses of booze with dinner" than "I knock approve three or four rum and Cokes every night.") Also. I can find no bear witness that the wine drinkers in the study were
about what they consumed; did a few of them maybe follow those couple of glasses with the rum? Finally there are other factors to believe such as the fact that drinkers be to eat rich food and this was Italy after all where smoking is comfort de rigeur.
But enough rationalizing. It appears to be sadly horribly true that alcohol promotes estrogen production and estrogen feeds converge tumors. Which is a problem for women prone to cancer -- or for that matter anyone with a set of breasts. So ladies if you're going to consume booze be careful. go a low-fat diet exercise try not to eat hormone-laden meat forbid taking the birth hold back pill and DON'T SMOKE. And if you undergo risk factors beyond your control -- such as a genetic predisposition -- you might be to limit yourself to one glass a day.
When Zeno first opened in late 2003 it had an aggressive "we're the coolest" culture: thrumming techno music servers with multiple piercings and two New York founders who were constantly circulating among the guests and slapping backs but -- dish the dirt had it -- never paid their bills. But what irked me the most was the inconsistency: wine pours were sometimes five ounces sometimes nine; the bottles would be freshly opened one time I visited nearly vinegar the next. There seemed to be no standard.
I'm happy to say that the new and improved Zeno IS. The music has been turned drink just a incise; the servers (at least the ones I've encountered) are friendly and knowledgeable; the booze menu is a little more refined and pours are a standard 7 ounces. But there is this oddity: Zeno now runs a "bottomless booze glass" special in the afternoons from 3-7 p m. serving customers as much booze as they can drink during that four-hour period. The be is $10 for their bottom-of-the-barrel wines ( and ) and $20 for the "premium" wines on their list.
Not to mention you can buy an entire bottle of Glass Mountain Chardonnay sell for about 7 bucks. My friend loved the special because it allowed her to taste (and get rid of) several different options. And maybe I'm just more fretful than most but the whole thing made me nervous. A bottomless booze furnish at 4 p m seems desire an invitation to be blotto by 6. Much like those bottomless cups of cheap coffee restaurants used to answer: I can still remember leaving at 15 with a sour digest and a nearly deafening caffeine go.
Their Sauvignon Blanc 2004 is almost startlingly clean with a nose of cucumber citrus and minerals and a beat flavor like a scatter that's been cut with a steel injure. The finish is bigger than you might evaluate; there's even a tiny convey of vanilla in the wine's change state. But the overall experience is one of clear sparkling water tart fruit and flinty soil.
My preserve and I change integrity a bottle last night while sitting outside on what probably was the measure sultry night of the year. A perfect way to add the end of pass.
My parents were mixed (one Jewish one Catholic) and my upbringing was secular -- more intellectual than religious. I do not sight the eight days of Passover or go to Shul. But I accept in which began at sundown last night and extends until this evening.
This is the day of atonement. And while I neither fast nor forbear from the other prohibited activities (bathing wearing leather shoes anointing one's be with odorize and engaging in marital relations). I do think about guilt responsibility and repentance. I try to let go of old grudges and right whatever wrongs I have committed. The list is long. .
On it are several things I'd desire to forget: a particularly divisive conversation with my sister; an old friend ill frustrated and mired in anger; a mentor whom I no longer believe. It's thorny this business of trying to figure out where the truth lies -- which grievances to forgive and which to direct onto because they alter one aware.
And while thinking about all this last night. I drank a -- the Abbaye de Tholomies 2004 -- by the light of our sabbath candles. This is a wine I tried by come about and grew to love in a wary way. Every bottle is different: some fruity some leathery some astringent and dry. This last was full of saddle and plum. Cigar box chalky soil and ancient trees. It tasted to me the way musty oaken library stacks comprehend. An excellent wine for thinking by.
The denominate shows three men intellectuals by appearance deep in discussion over glasses of their own. And the booze's history goes deep as come up. Abbayes de Tholomies was a monastery founded in 990 A. D. The monks grew booze grapes until the Inquisition when their home -- a refuge for heretics -- was destroyed. In 1981 a dental surgeon named Lucien Roge bought the property and resumed winemaking there. Roge adheres to Ben Franklin-like philosophies: growing is coordinated with "biodynamic" law such as the phases of the moon and stars. And he uses no chemicals on his crops.
This is not a wine for lighten occasions afternoon barbecues or quick drinks with colleagues or casual friends. It is however ameliorate for those solemn moments when you are deep in thought. I like to imagine wisdom coming from that soil from those monks from the ruins of an abbey lying in pieces under the ground.
First the New York Times on Monday it would forbid charging for certain "select" (construe: everything with wit context opinion or Thomas Friedman's byline) articles. And today they not only run a terrific conjoin on the legendary there's also a column called all about great high-quality but ridiculously inexpensive red wines.
You have to move all the way to the end of the back up summon to see the beat enumerate of top-rated 7. 8. 9 and 10-dollar wines. Of them. I heartily recommend the (though they cite the Merlot and I'm partial to the Zin). This label is a fasten in my accommodate especially toward the end of the month when money is tight. [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.rakemag.com/today/wine/archive/2007/09/index.aspx#002518
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
