Tag: Wine

Health Food Hoaxes – Is Red Wine Really Good For You?

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Is red wine really good for you? Red wine is made from red grapes. Red grapes are powerful nutritional boosters and are loaded with antioxidants that slow down the aging process when eaten with other antioxidant type foods and on a consistent basis. But is wine created from grapes good for you? Absolutely not!
 
The amount of wine you would have to drink, to receive any nutrition value from the grapes, far exceeds the legal limit. And by then it surely would be counterproductive on your health since alcohol abuse is the cause of many health ailments.
 
Why Don’t They Tell Us That Grapes or Grape Juice Is Good For Us?
 
It is so discouraging to keep hearing how red wine is good for you. I bet the alcoholics just eat these advertisements all up. What happened to the part about how alcohol causes liver, brain, kidney, vein, skin, and eventually system failure? If they continue telling people how good wine is for your health it may very well create alcoholics in people.
 
Why don’t they make such a big fuss about how good red grape juice is for you? At least you can drink five glasses of grape juice and not be harming your health or anyone else’s health for that matter. Besides that you may even benefit from the antioxidant power of the grapes. Better yet, why not just go straight to the source? Grapes!!
 
Juice from Organically Grown Grapes Each Morning

Even better than concentrated grape juice is juicing your own grapes and other berries, or simply just popping those little red juicy berries right into your mouth. Juicing gives you the most antioxidant effect from the grapes? When you juice the grapes you are juicing the seeds right along with the grapes. The seeds and the skins carry the most antioxidant properties.
 
Now were talking-let’s get healthy! Red grapes are excellent for your health and juicing grapes three or more times a week may make your skin look better and may even make you feel better, if…if…if you are already eating a good daily diet. But grapes alone are not going to prevent disease anymore than drinking a glass or two of red wine each night will. 
 
The key to good health is lifestyle. To get positively healthy one must participate in good eating habits and make it a regular lifestyle.
 
What Is The Big Deal About Reserveratrol Found In Grapes?
 
Last week 60 Minutes had a scientist raving about the anti-aging powers of an agent in grapes called reserveratrol that prevents disease and aging in mice. They are going to make a pill using reserveratrol and like magic this pill will make us look and feel younger, and help us to live longer too.
 
The seeds and skin of the grapes is where reserveratrol is found. Do you know how many natural foods have an agent in them that has the same antioxidant effect? Let me just name a few.
 
Kale, almonds, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, broccoli, apples, spinach, cabbage, strawberries, pomegranates, avocadoes, alfalfa sprouts, brussel sprouts, seaweed, and sweet potatoes. But wait, there’s more!
 
The pill is not natural. Would you rely on a pill to prevent disease? Why take an unnatural substance when you can eat your way to good health through natural foods? I don’t believe there will ever be a pill that will live for us. The best way to take control of your health and overcome disease is to take control of your health through personal responsibility. 
 
That means to eat a good daily diet. Incorporate foods that are high in antioxidants together with eating a balanced whole foods diet. Exercise, de-stress, juice, sprout, and drink lots of pure water, and get plenty of sunshine on your skin.

5 Common Wine Myths Debunked

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Don’t let some snooty ‘wine snob’ scare you away from all the fun you can have by exploring wine. There are countless varieties of wines that you can learn about and try. It can be very relaxing to have some friends over, open up a bottle of your latest ‘find’ and sit back and enjoy the company and the wine.

Today more than ever a lot of the old ‘rules’ about wine just don’t matter. The single most important rule you need to remember is that you are supposed to enjoy your wine. It doesn’t matter how expensive it was or what you’re having for dinner. You need to enjoy the flavor of the wine you are drinking.

Here is a list of the 5 most common wine myths — debunked…

1) Good wine has to be expensive. Nope. Good wine is whatever you like the taste of even if it comes in a box!

2) You have to take out the cork to let it breathe. While it is true that many wines will benefit from adding oxygen to them, just taking out the cork won’t allow enough oxygen in the bottle to do any good. If you want your wine to breathe pour it into a wide mouth wine decanter or glass prior to serving.

3) You can’t store an open bottle in the refrigerator. As long as you put the cork back in a bottle of wine should be just fine in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

4) You can tell if the wine is good by smelling the cork. Generally the only thing you will learn by smelling the cork is whether or not the cork is moldy. If you want to know if the wine itself is any good smell it. And then taste it.

5) You have to have white wine with fish and red with meat. This is probably one of the best known ‘wine-isms’. And it’s true, to a point. It’s all about combining the flavors of the wine with that of the food for the maximum enjoyment of both. You don’t want one flavor overpowering another, you want them to compliment each other.

It’s important to keep in mind though that just adhering to this guideline might get boring and you should never follow it if you don’t like a certain type of wine.

Let’s say you’re having a nice steak for dinner. According to the guideline you should have a white wine with dinner. But what if you don’t like white wine? Wine is all about enjoyment and relaxation. So have the type of wine you prefer no matter what you’re having for dinner.

There you have it, 5 of the most common wine myths debunked. Just enjoy your wine and your friends and family. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t get caught up in all the wine etiquette. Enjoy your wine and enjoy yourself!

Choosing the Ideal Summer Wine

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If you plan to go on a picnic during the summer, packing a dependable wine bottle is a must in order to enjoy what the season has to offer. This is especially true if you plan to around some exotic locales and try to enjoy the best of what Mother Nature has to offer.

Your choice of wine, however, will dictate how well it will taste in the summer heat. Make the right choice, and you will be able to savour the flavour as best you can. Make the wrong one, though, and you may end up feeling terribly heavy and lousy for the rest of the trip. It is for this purpose that you need to select either a lighter wine or a heavier wine, and your choice will dictate how much you will enjoy them:

The lighter, fresher wines

White wines or red wines with a more fruity and tangy bite to them are the most common wines that can be found during summer. Their refreshing taste helps to uplift the spirits, while the low acid and alcohol content make them ideal for light snacking and picnicking.

These lighter, fresher wines are thus recommended for outdoor excursions that will either require a lot of activity before or afterwards, or for those who want to enjoy their summers sitting lazily on the beach or on the park. These come highly recommended for anyone and everyone who plans to enjoy the great outdoors during summer, and should definitely be selected over their heavier, headier cousins if any activities are scheduled for the day. The wine, of course, must match the food you plan to bring during your summer activities. White wine and the lighter red wines really do not go well with intense foods, so pack food that is easy on the tongue and light on the stomach.

The heavier, headier wines

Deep, dark red wine with high alcohol content is generally not recommended for summer activities. The heat will get to you even faster when you have a lot of alcohol in your system, and you may just end up feeling sluggish even when you still have a lot of things left to do in the day.

The exception to this, though, is the classic barbecue with huge chunks of beef steak on the grill. A few glasses of well chilled red wine will go well with the barbecue, provided you have little else to do during the day except wind down and relax. If you wish to do so, just make sure that you stay nice and cool if you do not want to feel like a huge sack of potatoes in the middle of the summer heat.

All in all, the lighter wines like white wine or fruity red wine are best enjoyed during the summer. Their light flavour helps to add some zing without putting you down, but may prove to be bland when mixed with heavier, more intense foods. If you plan a major barbecue with some dripping T-bone steaks at the side, then you may want to set aside a bottle or two of deeper, darker wine for that meal alone.

Resveratrol Level – Highest in Grapes Or Red Wine?

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Red wine has a higher Resveratrol level than white wine. This is due to the fact that red wines are fermented extensively with the grapes skin on, than the white wines. As a result, a lot of the antioxidants including the product’s substance that are naturally found in the grape peels are taken out into the wine.

Also, grapes cultivated in moist surroundings have a propensity to have more of the substance than grapes cultivated in more dry surroundings. The assumption at the back of these events is that grapes produced in damp locations make more of it so as to combat harmful fungus. Grapes produced in dry locations do not have to make so much of it to live.

Wines that have been discovered to contain some of the most levels of the substance are Muscadine wines which come from the Muscadine grapes local to the moist South Eastern US; and pinot noir, from the fine Vinifera grape local to Burgundy, France. However, it is successfully grown in Oregon, California, Washington State, and New York as well. Pinot noir cultivated in more damp areas have a tendency to contain more of it.

The substance is present in the peels, seeds, and Pomace of grapes, but it is present in utmost strength in the peels. In this way, it is present in grape juice at the same time. The prominent grape types with comparatively increased levels of it are pinot noir grapes, Muscadine grapes, and concord grapes.

In most cases, grapes are excellent resources of vitamins C, B6, and B1 also potassium and manganese. Grapes are a good resource of in between meal alternative when calculating calories. Concord grapes have approximately sixty calories per cup.

The quantity of the substance in products can broadly differ. In pills there can be as small as five milligrams each pill at a pureness of ten percent or lower. On the other side of the scale, there are pills that offer close to 1000 milligrams of the substance per pill at a pureness of 99 percent.

What Is Great Wine Actually?

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If you ask someone what actually Great Wine is, then you should know that this question has both no answer and about a zillion answers at the same time. Why is that? The answer, in fact, depends on the person you ask, particularly the time of asking.

 

There is no one type of wine drinker first of all. With that fact as our basis for moving ahead, you can see where you might come up with a gazillion different answers. I know there is no number relating to a Gazillion, but let it be enough that there are plenty of different types.

 

The range extends from the down and out street wino to the extremely upscale wine clubs found in the eastern seaboard of America. And then of course there are our European cousins that consume much more wine than we Americans do routinely. So who you ask about great wine will definitely influence the answer you get back.

 

So is the question even worth asking? From my perspective it is in fact. But who you ask may come as a surprise. You should ask yourself. That’s right. What you think is a great wine is all that is really important when it comes to drinking the grape nectar. After all, it’s your taste buds you are concerned with and not someone else’s. You want to please yourself. You want to experience pleasure when consuming a glass of wine.

 

What will play into and affect that experience is the surroundings with which you find yourself when drinking some wine. Why is that important, well there are some wines that just do not fit some occasions. And if you don’t know at least some basics, your wine selection could end with a very discomforting result.

 

Wine basics 101: there are White, Red and Rose’ in the color realm. There are desert wines, wines that typically go well with certain types of foods and then there are wines that can be enjoyed just by themselves. Actually all wine fits this last category. It just depends on your mood and taste.

 

The days of wine snobbery are for the most part over. As the 21st century progresses, it has become more important for the individual to enjoy their selection than fitting a predetermined set of circumstances dictated by wine snobs. Those supposedly in the know.

 

While everything up till now is true, it’s pretty much an open game, there are a couple of things that you want to keep in mind. One is, you don’t want to select a desert wine such as Muscat to drink with dinner. That may seem like common sense and it is, but if you don’t know what Muscat is, then you could be at the front end of a very big surprise. Muscat is my favorite desert wine. As a child, I use to eat Muscat grapes fresh off the vine from wild grape vines that grew in our neighborhood. It was like free candy.

 

Up until recently, it was sort of taboo to drink white wine with red meat such as Beef, Veal, Venison or other game meats. Red was strictly the wine of choice. And to drink anything other was frowned upon by almost everyone. That is no longer true. It is completely acceptable to drink a white with a dinner steak. If that wine is to your liking, then do it.

 

So the old guidelines of food and wine pairings are not so much in vogue anymore. You will find that attitude at some upscale eateries that provide a wine Somalier. When faced with that situation, you just have to do what you feel comfortable doing. But other than that, great wine is the wine that makes you smile. Maybe even giggle a bit. Champagne bubbles popping about your nose is likely to cause that reaction more so than any other.

 

So….Great wine, what is it? It’s the wine that you love to drink, regardless of other’s opinions and ideas. So go ahead and have that Merlot with sauteed Prawns over Linguine or a nice Pinot Gregio with your Rib eye. You have no one to please but yourself.