Wine Loft News Blast Week of June 23rd

The 2008 Australian Harvest: Trials & Tribulations

Wow...mother nature strikes again - this time with the 2008 Harvest in Australia! Heat, frost, snow, drought, floods, and brushfires! Although this devastation will directly impact what we see coming out of Australia per the 2008 release in several years, the concern lies more in the future. The Aussies are having to learn very quickly how to deal with tricky and challenging vintages. Whether you blame it on Global Warming or not, the trend is not letting up in the least and the future will require some drastic adjustments in the land down under.

"This year we picked less than 15% of our usual Hunter reds," said Tyrell's chief winemaker, Bruce Tyrell. With water supplies at their lowest in history, growers watched their crops shrivel right in front of them. Cab production in the south was cut by three-quarters and following a small 2007 vintage, Australian exports are down in its biggest markets of Britain and the US, dropping 8.5% overall. If 2008 is the new norm, the year's to come are not going to easy.




*Taken as an excerpt from Wine Spectator July 31, 2008: Australia Grapples with a Calamitous Year*

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?

CELEB
Jennifer Aniston seen taking photos backstage at John Mayer's London show.

FERNANDO MARTINEZ

According to BMets.com, outfielder Fernando Martinez has been selected to participate in the All-Star Futures Game on July 13th at Yankee Stadium. Martinez will play for the World Team under Tino Martinez.

I'd love to get this kid in left field for 2009!!!

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NOT BAD FOR A 4 YEAR OLD

MIKE AND MAD DOG UPDATE

WHY CAN'T THIS BE ABOUT BENIGNIO INSTEAD?




Mike Francesa on WFAN/YES Friday:

Dog got it in his lap on Monday. I made sure I was near a TV at 1 o’clock when he came on. I thought he handled it well. Everything he said as far as the relationship was true. You know, we’ve been together 19 years. That’s a long time. And in a very visible position for 19 years, so we’ve kind of carried on this relationship in a very public way, so that when there’s been fights they’ve been made public and when there’s been battles they’ve been made public.

Now there haven’t been many in recent years. The last bad one before this was probably about eight years ago. I think it was in 2000 we had a bad one. And I’d say in the last 19 years we’ve probably had four or five bad ones. This one was pretty bad.

He gave you the timetable. I would say we did have a meeting in May where we decided we had maybe carried it onto the air and we were not being very professional so we apologized. He apologized, I apologized, because I thought I had handled myself terribly. I apologized for that. I thought I carried it onto the air and was very unprofessional, which is something I don’t want to ever try to be.

When you do this this long, you are going to have problems. I think we’ve patched it up on the air. Have we patched it up off the air? Not really, to any real extent. I’ll give you an example: We haven’t spoken this week. So that should give you an indication. With everything that’s going on, we haven’t spoken this week. So I think that’s a pretty good indication of where we are right now.

Um, about everything else and all the conjecture, I haven’t spoken to anybody else about that. I haven’t spoken to anybody about the story. I’ve had plenty of requests about it this week. I would just say this: In 20 years of being here – I came to the station in ’87, I’ve been with Dog since ’89 – I have never, not once, discussed my contractual relationship with FAN publicly. Not on the air, not in the newspapers. I’ve never negotiated publicly, I’ve never negotiated on the air, I’ve never negotiated in the newspaper.

I’ve had a great relationship with the station. I’ve never had any contract battle in 20 years. I’ve had four or five contracts. They’ve all been handled very, very well. I’ve never had a bad day with them in 20 years. So I’ve never discussed that and I never will. So I have no interest in discussing my contractual situation and where it is or will I ever do that publicly.

As far as the “Mike and the Mad Dog’’ program and where everybody thinks it may be going, all I will say is this: You know, we’ve done 19 years together, which is a very long time. We’ve had a lot of different things happen in our lives. We’ve had seven kids in recent years. You go through a lot of changes, a lot of things happen, a lot of things are said.

You don’t know everything that’s going to happen day to day. Life’s not that predictable. Nothing is that predictable that you know there are any certainties of what’s going to happen day to day. I would say this: I think our relationship would never be a sole reason that we would ever part. I don’t think it would ever reach that level. I think we could always work well together. I think we’ve worked well together.

I think even our most severe critic would say that we have produced something pretty special over the last 19 years, pretty special and pretty successful and pretty special. It’s something that I’m proud of and I hope he’s proud of.

Where it goes from here, I’m not sure. I think, to be fair with the audience, I think we have reached a crossroad. I think we’re at a crossroad. I think this will play out over the summer and we’ll see what happens. I’m not going to sit here and say something couldn’t change. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know that yet. If it does I will be very proud of everything we accomplished here. And if it doesn’t we’ll be back and do hopefully 19 or 20 more years together. I don’t know, you know?

I don’t know how long is long enough, you know? You wait and see how it happens. Would I guarantee anything? No. Would I make any declarations today? No. Eventually all things have to pass. If we’re at that time, I’m not sure. We’ll see what happens. It’ll be an interesting summer. Next, Met baseball.

METS

I think Pedro is done

Hangovers

It’s not even January 1 and there’s an article about hangovers! Joan Acocella writes in the New Yorker about the phenomenon that Egyptians call “still drunk,” the Japanese “two days drunk,” the Chinese “drunk overnight” and the Danes “carpenters in the forehead.”

While drinking to excess without a resulting hangover might sound like something technology should have fixed by now (I prefer a huge glass of water and 2 Tylenols before bed (my poor liver)) Acocella doesn’t suggest much in the way of a cures. But she does talk about various causes:

The severity of a hangover depends, of course, on how much you drank the night before, but that is not the only determinant…And what kind of alcohol did you drink? In general, darker drinks, such as red wine and whiskey, have higher levels of congeners—impurities produced by the fermentation process, or added to enhance flavor—than do light-colored drinks such as white wine, gin, and vodka. The greater the congener content, the uglier the morning.

Does that red-white difference ring true for you? I have to admit Vodka has been prety kind to me over the years...well at least with respect to the morning after. What about “natural” winemaking? Sake drinkers often tout its purity and some even go so far to say that it doesn’t give headaches. I’ve have nothing to add to that thought.

And as to the cure, she suggests wearing sunglasses and moping around. (Just kidding). Jay swears by the “hair of the dog.” But I’d steer clear of this morning-after twist from a Ukrainian in the story: “two shots of vodka, then a cigarette, then another shot of vodka.” She counsels to avoid Tylenol (uh oh, I'm not happy after 20 years of post drinking tylenols) since it increases toxicity to the liver. For prevention, she points to advocates of drinking lots of water, a glass of milk or eating a meal prior to drinking. And, of course, consuming alcohol in moderation. (that's just plain silly).

MIKE AND THE MAD DOG

Now I know alot of people bash these guys and their show, but I for one am a very loyal listener, and would have a huge void in my mid day radio if the pair was to no longer be on WFAN.

According to Newsday the guys have done their last show together and:

Francesa and Russo are believed to have other job opportunities, but to take advantage in the short term, either would have to buy out his deal. Russo's, with a non-compete clause, runs to October 2009.

It is not clear when Francesa's deal expires, but he is not known to have signed beyond this year. An industry source Monday said satellite radio is the likeliest destination for Russo.

Steve Cohen, Sirius' VP of sports programming and a former longtime WFAN staffer, did not return calls. Neither did Patrick Reilly, the company's senior VP for communications.

If Francesa leaves, he could draw interest from TV in addition to radio, perhaps NBC, where he has a local show on Sunday nights.

WFAN staffers have said for months that the relationship .between co-hosts is strained, but neither discussed that publicly until Monday.

The dog seemed genuinely surprised on Monday addressing the report and confirmed on WFAN that he and co-host Mike Francesa feuded for much of the spring, but he insisted their relationship since has improved.

As for me, I know the show gets repetitive, and at times arrogant and condescending at times, but just as I still listen to Stern I will always listen to Mike and the Mad Dog. I grew up listening to them everyday, and there is no place else to go to listen to baseball and football in this country and get some honest, knowledgeable sports views.

They've fought before, hopefully this will pass and they'll be back on the radio together angering all the Met and Yankee fans.

Danilo Gallinari

The Knicks drafted a big white kid from Italy with their first pick last night in the NBA draft.

Fran Fraschilla says that his nickname is "The Rooster" but we all know it's "The Big Cock". Oh and he already has a shoe. That's nice.

I'm not going to waste alot of my limited blog time these days talking about the knicks, but I couldn't pass up the guys nickname.

Carlos DelgottaGo

Rep for Ben Affleck denies rumor he and Jennifer Garner are headed for a split.

IT HAD TO BE DONE

Ok, so I missed it by one day.

Unfortunately the story today will not be about replacing Randolph with Jerry Manuel and moving forward, it will be about the way this situation was handled, but in reality, it had to be done. This team was under performing and someone had to take the hit. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the team was going south and something had to be done.

Wille ruined my September last year and I couldn't have him ruin my summer this year. He won't be missed, he’ll get another job in baseball, and he’ll ten times more than you and I ever will so I don't really care that he had to fly to California and get let go in the middle of the night.

And as for the Yankee fans calling this classless and embarrassing, mind your business, your organization isn't that far removed from running Joe Torre out of town, and all the Billy Martin insanity.

Willie fired jerry manuel manager by sunday. Remember where you heard it first.

I WOULDN'T WANT THAT "DIRTY" YANKEE $$$ EITHER

READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM THE DAILY NEWS...AND IF ANYTHING EVER HAPPENS TO ME AND JOBA CHAMBERLAIN REACHES OUT TO HELP MY WIFE AND KIDS, PLEASE TELL HIM TO KEEP HIS $$$.


The fiancee of a crane operator killed in last week's tragic collapse on Wednesday rejected an offer of help from Mets star Ryan Church because her future hubby was a Yankee fan.

A day after burying Donald Leo, Janine Belcastro said she couldn't accept the offer from the right fielder and his wife.

"Don was a die-hard Yankee fan," Belcastro said in a statement. "It would not respect his memory if he accepted this."

The grieving Belcastro added that she "greatly appreciated" the offer.

The money was to come from Church's participation in a Mets' fund-raiser for a variety of causes. A spokesman said Church will choose another charity.

Sorry i have been unable to keep up with the blog. In training for another 2 weeks and have no internet access.

There are so many things wrong with this team I can't even begin to list them all

The Mets bench is hitting .165

GOOGLE EARTH GETS BETTER AND BETTER

Not only is Google Earth an awesome way to kill time when you're bored, but now they have a Sports feature. You can now kill time by checking out 3D views of your favorite Football Stadiums (both College and Pro).

Google has just released the Google Earth Plugin for Internet Browsers. The Plugin currently only works for Windows computers. Pick up the Google Earth Plugin and check out some of the great stadiums and 3D animation from around the country: Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Stanford, USC, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, Tulane, Hawaii, Colorado, Nebraska, Southern Mississippi, Oklahoma State, South Florida, Texas A&M, Michigan State and Iowa. Drop us a line if you come across a cool 3D stadium that's not listed above.


I'm already addicted to this. Download that plugin as fast as possible and I promise this last hour at work (or at home) will go be fast.

SUPER TUESDAY

Who will win more games in 08? Pedro or Joba?

I really believe Pedro’s got one more run in him.

While Joba’s figuring out how to be a starter and having to go through batters 2 and 3 times a night, which is something he didn’t ever have to do when he was dominating as a one-inning guy, Pedro will be making one more run through the National League, winning games with his stuff and smarts. Pedro will win more games in 2008 than Joba – by a wide margin.

Pedro’s arm is healthy and has had a year and a half off. Pedro is also motivated by the need to earn one last big payday. Pedro wants to leave NY the hero is is, and will always be in Boston.

Neither pitcher is going to do very deep in games, and the Mets’ bullpen is better than the Yankees’ specially with Joba not in the 8th anymore (how are they going to get through innings 6-8 without Joba? Kyle Farnsworth? Latroy Hawkins?)

Also the Mets are the better team and are going to finish with the better record. And they play in the National League. Pedro can work a line up, and use 80-mile per hour fastballs against the eight and nine hitters for easy outs. Joba will need to use all of his energy to get through five innings.

Either way, today is Super Tuedsay, as both guys take the mound, for New York, and baseball, it is a very exciting night.

Noel cutting wood

wood

THE MAN LOVES TO PASS GAS

Former Twins pitcher, Bert Blyleven did an interview with Yahoo's Big League Stew and right away the conversation was weird. Not as weird as this section on his love of farting though....


Q: Speaking of pride, what about this T-shirt you've been photographed wearing that says, "I [heart] to fart"?
BB: I LOVE to fart.

Q: What's wrong with you?
BB: I'm honest. Have you ever farted?

Q: One or two times.
BB: And did it feel good?

Q: Always.
BB: Probably so. That's why I wore it. I love to fart. I do. When the time is right, I do it. I'm not going to hide it.

Q: You're so blunt about your love for flatulence.
BB: Yeah. Well, someone gave me the shirt because of my history of farting, so I wear it. I LOVE to fart. I think I still have it.

Q: What gets you really gassy?
BB: Anything. The air we're breathing right now.

Q: Should I be ready for something?
BB: I have no trouble. It's not one thing that I eat, it's just passed down from my father. My father was a very good farter. I have a sister who's very good at it, too. Probably better than I am.