Pama, Mount Gay offer fine liquors without the hefty price

Pama for her, Mount Gay for him.

The world of fine spirits and liqueurs is still within easy reach with the planet's first true pomegranate liqueur, Pama, and the king of rums, Mount Gay Eclipse.

Pama is a seductive, silk-textured, sweet-tart liqueur, made with pomegranate juice emboldened with vodka and a splash of tequila. The 375 ml bottle is $13.95. You can drink it on the rocks, use it to spike a berry compote, or better yet, add an ounce of it to sparkling wine or Prosecco. It's sweet, but not like port.

Mount Gay, $14.98 for the 750 ml bottle, is produced by Mount Gay Distilleries in Barbados, where it has been made for 300 years. It has a luxury-brandy quality to it -- smooth, bracing and smoky vanilla in character. The sweetness is subtle.


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Crusaders preparing for Wine Tasting Weekend

Wine lovers in the Mohawk Valley have a full weekend to take advantage of their favorite wines during the wine tasting weekend, March 14-16. The festivities begin Friday when Vintage Spirits in Herkimer and Ilion Wine and Spirits host a wine tasting from 5-8 p.m. On Saturday there will be a dinner for the winemakers at the Crystal Chandelier restaurant, then Sunday is the culmination event at Herkimer County Community College where a wine tasting will take place, judging and awards will be given out, and even wine classes will be held in the Cogar Gallery at the college. The event is being sponsored by the Crusaders, a men’s group from Sts. Anthony and Joseph’s Church. Organizer of the event and vice president of the Crusaders, John Piseck says more than 40 kinds of wine will be available for guests to sample and all will be judged by a panel of celebrity judges who will be behind closed doors. Full story at the Herkimer Telegram.


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Bees to help sniff out quality wine

Scientists at the Queensland Brain Institute are using bees' noses to help develop a machine that can smell the difference between a good and a bad wine.

University of Queensland researcher Doctor Judith Reinhard says the tests are carried out by blowing different scents over the bees and measuring how they react.

Doctor Reinhard says a bees' sense of smell is so precise it can distinguish between hundreds of different aromas.

She says the research will define how the CSIRO builds an electronic nose. "The plan that CSIRO has is to design a specially sensitive electronic noses which you can hold over a wine bottle and tell what kind of chemicals are in the wine and if it's going to be a good wine or a bad wine," he said.

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The Sipping News: Italian wine online

With Wine Country in our backyard, it's easy to get caught up in local news and forget about the wine industry in Italy.

Recently, however, Italian journalist and wine critic Franco Ziliani and American writer, blogger and translator Jeremy Parzen launched VinoWire.com, a new Web site that focuses solely on that region.

Italian wine lovers will find a live newswire with industry-related events and breaking stories, tasting notes and recommendations. Check out longer editorial pieces and commentary from visiting journalists, and links to other blogs devoted to the Italian wine culture.

- Amanda Gold .


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Wine exports volumes drop

A report shows Australian wine export volumes dropped five per cent in the past year.

The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation says at the same time, the average price of wine increased by five per cent.

The Corporation's Lawrie Stanford says the volume decline is due to short harvests.

"Volumes have declined as we have been expecting with two short harvests," he said.

"The 2008 harvest is coming in short and it follows up from a short harvest last year, which means that the industry is having the opportunity to draw down the oversupply of wine that we have had on hand for several years now."

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The Wine Guys: Your questions answered

Sometimes we get questions that send us searching for answers. Here are a few that we have collected over the last several months.Q: I have heard that immersing plastic in corked wine will remove the off flavors. True?A: We thought this was crazy until we heard the same from Rick Sayre, winemaker at Rodney Strong Vineyards. He said small plastic pellets are used in the winemaking process now, so he joined others in trying to use plastic on a smaller scale to remove trichloroanisole - TCA - in a bad bottle of wine. He says you can use a wad of plastic wrap, but a better idea is to pour the wine into a plastic mug of some kind.Pete Finkelstein at Bay Ridge Wine & Spirits says he too has tried the technique as a last-ditch effort to save a corked wine. Both men say the technique will make the wine drinkable - but it will not restore the wine completely.Q: Is TCA found only in wine?A: No, TCA is a common characteristic of many foods.


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France's wine exports hit record $13.8B; China big buyer

PARIS -- France's wine and spirit industry scored record exports in 2007, with triple-digit surges in China and an exuberant performance from the star of French wines, Champagne.

France sent nearly 9.4 billion euros, or about $13.8 billion, worth of wines and spirits abroad in 2007, an increase of nearly 7 percent year-on-year, the French Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters announced Wednesday.

Growth in China more than doubled to nearly 247 million euros ($364 million) worth of alcohol. The country of 1.3 billion people, and a growing middle class discovering a taste for wine and already fond of cognac, was the 11th-largest market by value for French wines and spirits in 2007. Barely a decade ago, wine buyers' choices outside of the poshest hotels, restaurants or stores were mostly limited to Chinese-made rot-gut.


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