If there is one diet book that you must buy, for yourself or as a present this is it, the Wine Diet by Professor Roger Corder, and yes this is very serious! Normally there is no way I’d recommend a diet book as I don’t believe in them but this one I can get behind. Roger Corder is a professor of experimental therapeutics at the William Harvey Research Institute (part of Barts and the London School of Medicine), he is also a cardiovascular expert so not a bad person to be writing about how the good stuff is well, good for you. At least it can be depending of course on the dose you apply. Corder got facinated by wine and the chemistry of it back in 2001. He and his team of scientists uncovered that wine can halt a molecule called endothelin-1, which is associated with heart disease. Further to this Corder discovered that there are types of plant chemicals called procyanidins that are key to the health giving properties in wine. The procyanidins are the ones to pick out as red wines have plenty of them but additionally wine that has been made without intererence of other chemicals improves the function of the linings of blood vessels, protecting against the danger of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, dementia and possibly some cancers. What a great discovery!

It may or may not be scientificallyt proven that the more natural the wine the more the benefit, I’d like to think so. I’d also like to think that low amounts of added sulpher dioxide could also be proven to be an extra benefit, why wouldn’t it? I’d like to be able to back it up with some more fact though and so I’ve written to Roger Corder to see what he thinks of natural wines and champagnes, I wonder if he has tried any of them. In fact I wonder if there is a test that would show the differences in levels of Procyanidins between mainstream wine and natural wine. Without the use of herbicides and pesticides in the vineyard would the grapes be scientifically be better for you? More to come on this subject and hopefully some insight from the man himself…..

Oh yeah - What does the great man drink himself? 3 glasses of red. He also recommends that chocolate has a benefit and gets through a 100gram bar per week. The other recommendation is cranberries, which I hate, still 2 out 3 isn’t bad eh!

You gotta read this.

Carrying on with the theme of small independent wine shops another shop worthy of a mention here, especially to Brighton based folk is the wine merchant Red, White, & Rose. You’ll find Red, White, & Rose on Ditchling road in Brighton with another newer shop on Queen’s Road, just down from the train station. In addition to more popular brands you’ll also find some very interesting wines including a range of Organic and Biodynamic wines, plus some low sulpher wines from SIP. I’m told by the owner of the shops that more and more of his customers are getting interested in the low sulpher wines and are asking for more, which of course is good news!  Apparently the initial interest was from a health point of view but now people have tasted low sulpher wines they have realised that these wines offer a different style of wine that has real depth of flavour. It’s also good to see that a wine merchant is introducing these wines to customers and not playing safe with the same old brands that you see in most wine shops. If you live in Brighton and want to buy a single bottle of low sulpher wine now you can. Happy tasting!

Over the past coupld of weeks I’ve been transferring loads of my bookmarks over to delicious the social bookmarking site. I really like this site as a good way to pick out some very interesting and niche sites, now including some decent wine sites!! I have added my favourite wine site - www.wineterroirs.com check out the blog, many of the wines and winemakers are featured at SIP Wine.

You can see the rest of the SIP Wine bookmarks here

A a Small Independent wine Merchant that trades online gives me the advantage of lower costs from not having to rent a shop with all the bills but I do miss out on meeting and talking to customers about SIP Wine and the wines I sell. To be able to meet customers that share the same interest and passion for wines made from the smaller producer would be a great thing but the costs are just too high. One Brighton based wine company that operates as an Independent wine merchant is St Martins Vintners just below train station in Brighton on Trafalgar Road. Personally I’m a fan of this wine shop, the range of wines offers some interesting lines that are outside of the bog standard supermarket list. The guy that runs the shop, I think his name is Amir, is a really helpful guy and in no way a wine snob. Just tell him how much you want to cough up and he’ll point out a few options, depending on the style that you like, or as something new to try.

They don’t do too much in the way of organic but that’s okay with me, I don’t restrict myself to drinking just organic, biodynamic, or natural wine, otherwise I’d be shutting myself off from a nicer part of life right! although I do admit that I mainly stick to the more naturally made wine, partly because I think it’s better for you but also natural wine gives more flavour and more individual style. You can add to that the eco benefits from not spraying planet with chemicals. I read the other day that grapes are the most widely planted crop in the world at 500 million acres, imagine the damage to the environment if every acre used chemical herbicides and pesticides.

So back to St Martin’s, I just managed to catch the shop open on Friday and spoke to Amir again about the wines from Italy, last time he recommended a Barolo and based on this I went back for more. This time he suggested a Corvo 2004 from Sicily (about £10.00). This is made from the grapes Nero d’Avola, Nerello Mascalase, and Pignatello, no Italian pig jokes. I really like Nero d’Avola but not had it as a blend before, and I hadn’t tasted Pignatello before as far as I know. This wine delivers though, very fruity and smells like warm jam. On the palate the fruit comes bundling through followed by the tanin and acidity to keep the flavours going and give it decent length. It’s lighter than I thought it would be, a medium body but the tanins are developed and this gives it balance with the fruit. I’ll be checking in again with Amir soon, if you are put off by wine merchants don’t fear this place, embrace it and get in there.

When it comes to personal consumption on the wine front I would say one of my favourite styles of wine are the syrah/Grenache based wines from southern france. I love the deep cherry of the Grenache and the spicy syrah, although I will always go for a higher proportion of Grenache - say 80-20 Grenache and I’m in. So it wouldn’t be much of a surprise that the Domain La Roche Buissiere cuvee Flon Flon is my favourite wine. In fact I love it so much that I have ran out of my personal stock/stash. This was causing me some bother at the weekend as I really wanted to crack a bottle open and have a relax after a tough day looking after Stanley, he’s nearly 5 months!

For a little while I scratched my head thinking up a wine plan whilst Stan scratched my neck, perhaps he detected my quandary, as I read they can at this age. In need of something decent to sooth the nerves of listening to high pitched wailing for a number hours the night before my mind turned to M&S - yep Marks & Spencer. The reason for this I reasoned was that I had recently read that Marks’s had won supermarket retailer of the year. So I took a swing by the bigger one in Town and picked up a bottle of Le Bosquet de la Dame Cotes du Rhone 2006, I think £5.99 or thereabouts.

not too bad at all