Guest Author: Valery Fortie is the national awareness coordinator for the preservation of the Italian healthy eating traditions board.
People from all around the world are developing more and more health issues, due to being overweight. There is a knowncorrelation between heart problems and obesity, but people do not heed the warnings. These illnesses being left untreated or unmanaged, is a leading cause of premature death all around the world.
Being overweight leads to a variety of diseases and illnesses that attribute to poor health. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, clogged arteries and diabetes are just some of the health issues an overweight person may face. These health problems can also lead to a stroke. Strokes can be deadly or lead to severe debilitation.
It is a known fact that lycopene, a compound found in tomatoes, can help lower cholesterol. Dr. Andrew Carson, a senior lecturer at Birmingham University, has asked for further research to investigate the compound.
People who have been following the Mediterranean diet are much healthier than the average person. The Mediterranean diet includes a lot of tomatoes. The hope is to use lycopene as a way to lower a person’s cholesterol. The current medications used to manage a person’s cholesterol are very expensive, and not always effective. Lycopene would be much
cheaper, and save millions of dollars in medical costs.
The Mediterranean diet can lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. The diet is simple and easy to follow. It involves using herbs and spices to flavor food, instead of salt. A high salt diet can lead to high blood pressure. Using healthy fats like olive oil and canola oil to cook food. The Mediterranean diet calls for a very small amount of red meat.
Meats like fish and shellfish are used in place of red meats.
Raw fruits, vegetables, pasta, rice and nuts are a big part of the Mediterranean diet plan. These foods can help lower the bad cholesterol levels and reduce high blood pressure. A woman can cut her chances of having a stroke by as much as 40%, just by following the Mediterranean diet. The diet itself is full of tasty food, and does not restrict any particular foods. It is simply using healthier food to cook or flavor the food you would normally eat. The diet also allows for an occasional glass
of red wine with your meals.
About the Author
Valery Fortie is the National Awareness Coordinator of Mediterranean book.com. She is also the blogger behind its directory of news focused on healthy eating ways to prevent high blood pressure pain to live longer and better.
Mediterraneanbook.com is a non profit blog founded in 2004 to preserve the Italian Healthy Eating Traditions and inform consumers on duty in all healthy eating fields.
Nowadays it’s women who spend more time shopping for alcohol.
Wine distributors are targeting women because they want women to chat amongst themselves about their bottle.
Marketers are aiming to please women by creating less expensive bottle with screw caps. Screw caps require little effort to open and women usually spend less than men on a bottle.
Impress your guests with your knowledge of wines. In this video WatchMojo.com finds out everything there is to know about wine. We sit down with Sommelier Carola Price for advice and tips to serving and keeping your wine
He was an original member of the Saturday Night Live cast. He is a talented writer, comedian and musician. And now, Dan Aykroyd is a wine maker. Partnering with Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits, Aykroyd is now bringing mid-priced and premium wines to the market from his vineyard on the Niagara Wine Route, in his native Canada. In this video, WatchMojo.com chats with Dan Aykroyd about how he became interested in wine-making, and his other partnering ventures with Crystal Head vodka and Patrón Tequila. For more information, click Here
Reason No. 1,247 on why it’s great to live in the Bay area – you can be talking (or writing) about a winery one day, then visiting it the next. While drinking one of our favorite Malbecs from our recent trip to Argentina, we did a little research and found the winery in Argentina actually was owned by Hess Family Estates, which also owns The Hess Collection Winery in Napa Valley.
With that in mind, we headed to Hess to check out their wines and their fabulous art collection. We were pleasantly surprised on both fronts. Hess immediately sets the mood for a great experience with a walk through a gorgeous courtyard that takes you to the tasting room. The bar area, unfortunately, was closed this trip while they replaced the floor, but it is one of the nicest tasting areas, a large round bar that can accommodate a lot of people and not leave you cramped as many other tasting rooms.
Hess makes a number of wines that can be found all over under its Selection brand. The wines are decent and fairly priced. But Hess makes a number of other wines that can only be found at the winery or through its Wine Club that not only are fantastic, but very reasonably priced by Napa Valley standards.
Among the wines that particularly stood out were two Petite Sirahs. Reason No. 2,372 why it’s so fun to visit wineries is that sometimes you get a chance a chance to taste the same varietal with fruit coming from two different vineyards, which gives you an idea of the different climates in those vineyards. The tannins in the 2006 Artezin Mendocino Petite Sirah hit you right away. They were big and bold – no way to miss them. There was also a nice fruit taste, but it was overpowered by the tannins, which should mellow out as the wine ages. The Artezin retails for $25.
The real standout was the 2006 Allomi Vineyard Petitie Sirah. The Allomi Vineyard is in Napa Valley and is the source of a few different Hess varietals – Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc to name two. The Allomi Petite Sirah is a wine you don’t want to finish in fear that the whole bottle is gone before you can get another glass. It was much less tannic, with smells of leather and tastes of slight berry fruit. The Allomi retails for $36. Jill’s sister bought a bottle and then quickly took it back to Chicago with her so we’re hoping she opens it during a holiday when we’re back home. Thanks Hess for making both wines available to taste side-by-side and to the Hess servers, who were quite generous with their pours.
Other standouts were the Hess Small Block Series Viogner ($28 retail) and the Hess Small Block Series Zinfandel. The Zinfandel was a dark magenta color and had the perfect blend of jammy fruit and white pepper. It retails for $36.
We also were able to secure a bottle of one of our favorite Malbecs, from Bodega Colomé, an Argentina winery owned by Hess. The tasting room manager went into the depths of the winery’s cellar to find us a bottle, though a quick Internet search also turned up the wine at K&L Wines in San Francisco (yes, they ship). However, we weren’t able to convince anyone to sell us a bottle of the Artezin Charbono, a red wine that is rare in these parts. The bottle is only sold to members of the Hess wine club.
Hess also has an art gallery, which contains Donald Hess’s private collection. It is worth a tour either before or after your trip to the tasting room.
We were impressed with Hess and the number of wines we were able to taste. The prices are incredibly reasonable for Napa Valley and I’m sure we’ll find ourselves back there soon.
We have many reasons to enjoy living in the East Bay of San Francisco. We can be in the city in 15 minutes, visit wine country in a little over an hour and have access to an abundance of regional parks all within a 15-minute drive of our house. Lately, we’ve also discovered a small number of wineries in the area who are making pretty exceptional wine. This Saturday, we decided to stay local by barbecuing in one of our favorite parks while opening a bottle from Broc Cellars.
Broc Cellars is a small winery in Berkeley, Calif. We first discovered Broc and its owner, Chris Brockway at an East Bay food and wine pairing event a few months ago. Broc blew away the competition away with his incredibly rich and complex wines, as well as his food pairings, which included both venison and duck.
Brockway introduced his first vintage in 2004 and yesterday, we had the great fortune to drink his 2007 Vine Starr red blend. It was the perfect wine to sip as we enjoyed the view in Redwood Regional Park and fired up the grill for some tri tip.
The smell and taste of the wine is distinctly Zinfandel, but much more complex. There are notes of blackberries and a fruit jam smell and taste that makes you come back for more. Jill also tastes a little bit of licorice on it – but strawberry licorice. It could be because she loves Twizzlers and wishes that flavor was in everything, but it seems to really be there. The wine notes list the blend’s varieties as 67% Zinfandel, 30% Syrah, 2% Petite Sirah, 1% Mourvedre. We love that Brockway makes his wines in the Rhone style. You can’t beat getting great French-inspired wine from a local winemaker (and at a reasonable price). The Vine Starr is currently selling for $25.
As you can imagine, Brockway doesn’t have his own vineyard in his backyard in Berkeley. He sources the grapes from growers across Northern California and produces his wine in a Berkeley facility shared with a few other wine makers.
Wine is currently being produced in all 50 states in the United States. Our advice – check out your local producers and get to know them. The winemakers are often products of great enology programs and are striving to bring great wine to their local market. As we all “go green,” let’s continue to “go local” and support these up-and-coming wine producers.
Jill and David Shabelman
We went to a wedding in St. Pete Beach, Fla. over the weekend and made a few interesting discoveries. The first, is that St. Pete Beach is not really a wine-drinking city. At least not from the wine lists I saw at a couple of restaurants in town. I asked one server for their wine list and the response was, “We have white, red, and white zinfandel.”
The second is that every wine story can have a happy ending. Jill went to the liquor store across the street from our hotel. It was your run-of-the-mill liquor store, but Jill came back excited because it not only had the wonderful Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc for a very reasonable $12, but also one of our favorite Malbecs from our recent trip to Argentina. Before I get into the Malbec, it’s worth noting that Sauvignon Blancs from the Marlborough region in New Zealand are often crisp and delicious in addition to often being great buys for under $15.
The Bodega Colomé Estate Malbec is a truly wonderful wine. The dense purple color you see on the pour carries over to the taste, a rich, deep fruity flavor with a fantastic finish that stays with you until your next taste. Even the crappy plastic hotel cups we were drinking from couldn’t mask the wonderful taste.
Looking to get some more information on the wine, I Googled it and was surprised to see the Bodega Colomé Estate winery actually is owned by The Hess Collection, a beautiful Napa Valley winery on Mount Veeder that is a wonderful place to visit and taste. I phoned the winery and they said they only get the wines from Argentina sporadically and they typically sell out fast. I was able to track it down on Wine.com, though at $27.99 it’s about $5 more than we paid in Florida.
Still, Malbecs are some of the best bargains out there and the Bodega Colomé Estate Malbec could stand up to some of the more mid-priced California reds out there. It’s well-worth searching out. You might even find it at your local liquor store.
David and Jill Shabelman
Before people begin sending nasty comments (ok, we’re not even sure anyone is reading), let us state that we’re well aware that Mendoza is the premier wine growing region in Argentina and we do have hopes of one day making the trek there to taste their lovely wines. Nevertheless, a recent trip to Argentina included an interesting few days in the country’s fledgling Patagonia wine region, where we found wines that were good, though not quite up to the quality of some of the more established Mendoza wineries. We did, however, meet some of the nicest people in a very friendly country, which in the grand scheme of things may be more important than the quality of the wine.
First off, a brief explanation of how we found ourselves in what some call “the end of the world” wine region (the region is the closest wine growing region to the South Pole in the entire world). Our trip to Argentina began in Buenos Aires before we flew to Patagonia to enjoy the country’s beautiful lakes region. Rather than hopping a plane back to Buenos Aires, then flying to Mendoza (Argentina is a huge country), we decided to drive to Neuquén and check out what was going on. Wine Spectator did a fine review of the region that you can find here.
We stayed at a beautiful new wine resort, Valle Perdido, where the staff couldn’t have been any friendlier, the food was first rate and wine certainly pleasant enough to drink in the mass quantities in which we were served.
We recently drank a bottle of Valle Perdido’s 2006 Malbec Reserva that we brought back and the first taste sent us right immediately to our memories of Argentina. The Malbec was rich and dark, with a smoky smell that made you want to indulge in something off the grill. Nice plummy Malbec taste, though perhaps not with the sophistication of its Mendoza brethren. But we’re here to praise, not criticize, and considering that wineries in the region began making wine in the early 2000s and basically sit in the middle of a desert, it’s certainly as good as many other reasonably-priced Malbecs out there. We discovered that one of our local wine shops, K&L in San Francisco, is selling the Valle Perdido Pinot Noir so we’re excited to continue drinking Patagonian wines and monitor their progress as they evolve.
If you ever find yourself in the Neuquén area of Patagonia, the few wineries there are worth the trip. You won’t believe that really affordable tasty wine is grown in this desert region and you also will be blown away by the winds that engulf the area some days. In addition to tasting at Valle Perdido, we visited Bodega NQN and Familia Schroeder. Our lunch at NQN was out of this world delicious and the wine selection at Familia Schroeder rivals any Sonoma winery. Don’t forget to brush up on your Spanish though, the locals speak little English.
In preparation for our trip to Argentina we drank some Malbecs and are hard-pressed to find wines that offer better value for the money. We would not hesitate to buy a $10 Malbec, and most wine stores and grocery stores (at least where we live) are littered with them. With barbecue season upon us, they are the perfect accompaniment for grilled meats. Enjoy!
Jill and David Shabelman
Bad traffic through Sonoma County pushed back the time of our canoe trip down the Russian River on Saturday, and subsequently delayed our visit to wine country. With the 5 p.m. tasting room closing time looming, there was only time to visit one place, so we couldn’t make a mistake. It’s why Sbragia Family Vineyards was the easy choice.
Nestled on top of a hill on the way to beautiful Lake Sonoma in Geyserville, Calif., Sbragia is, as its name suggests, a family-run winery that produces some of the best reds and whites in the Dry Creek Valley. The patriarch, Ed Sbragia, has a top-notch pedigree as the former winemaker at Beringer, where he won Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year for a 1986 Private Reserve Cabernet and a 1994 Private Reserve Chardonnay. Not surprisingly, the Sbragia Chardonnay shares many characteristics with the one from Beringer.
Sbragia’s white wines, and its Zinfandels, are the draw. The Home Ranch Sauvignon Blanc is perhaps our favorite wine from the winery, in part because it delivers the most bang for the buck and comes in comfortably below our $20 comfort zone for white wines. Sbragia also participates in the Sonoma County Vintners Visa Signature program that gives users a free tasting and 10% off all purchases.
The Home Ranch Sauvignon Blanc is the perfect warm summer day wine. It’s bright and crisp with a definite citrus flavor. It never disappoints. The other interesting thing about the Home Ranch Sauvignon Blanc is the reusable glass stopper they use in place of the cork.
The Gamble Ranch Chardonnay most resembles the wines Sbragia produced at Beringer, most likely because the grapes are sourced from Yountville in Napa Valley, but the wine lies just outside of our price range at $40. It’s creamy and rich, but doesn’t taste overly oaked. It’s always a treat to taste it at the winery.
All under $30, the three Zinfandels at Sbragia also provide good value. On this visit, the $28 2005 Gino’s Vineyard Zinfandel stood out. The extra year in the bottle than the 2006 Italo’s Vineyard Zinfandel brought out more of the wine’s character and gave it a little extra zip during the tasting.
The wines are reason enough to visit Sbragia, but an added bonus is its fantastic deck that sits high above the valley and provides a gorgeous location to hang out, drink wine and have a picnic. Many people believe that the enjoyment of wine comes not just from the wine itself, but also from where you are, who you are with, the setting, the food you’re eating – virtually everything that you’re experiencing at that moment.
Sbragia’s wines are good with or without an experience. Visiting the winery only enhances it.
Jill and David Shabelman
With the Red Wings beating up on our Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Playoffs it may be time to take a break from red and taste a little pink. Rosé that is.
Rosé’s have grown in popularity the past couple of years and they’ve become kind of trendy. But there’s a good reason. The easy-to-drink pink is very refreshing, among the most food-friendly wines out there and have become popular enough that you can find a wide variety at your local wine shop. Best of all, it’s not your mother’s White Zinfandel.
The 2008 Toulouse Vineyards Rosé of Pinot Noir from California’s Anderson Valley is an excellent example of everything that’s good about rosé. The first thing that lets you know you’re not drinking White Zinfandel is that it’s very dry – no sweetness here. The wine is crisp and has a lovely berry flavor, strawberry in particular.
Anderson Valley is one of the best places in California to grow Pinot Noir, which no doubt also makes for a great Rosé. The area is also famous for other varietals that thrive in cooler climates like Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris. The most famous region for Rosé in the world is the Tavel region in southern France. Tavel Rosés also can be found at many wine shops.
This all leads to something we will harp on in future blog posts. For those who become intimidated by a wine list or a wine shop, you should spend some time finding wines that you enjoy and learning where they are grown. When you’re struggling with a wine decision, you’ll know what wines and regions you can fall back on. We also recommend knowing your price point. The Toulouse Rosé is $24, which hits our sweet spot of good wines for under $30.
We were lucky to get friendly pour of the Toulouse Rosé at the winery during a recent trip to Mendocino County. The tasting was in a barn and winemaker Vern Boltz was actually pouring and educating visitors about his wines when we were there. It made for a great experience. Look for a review of the Toulouse Pinot Noir in a future post.
David and Jill Shabelman
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