Aussie red wines are better than american red wines

Try RavensWood Zinfandel

Either you're a smoker, or you aren't spending enough.

A quick check on our empty bottles waiting to be recycled produced two Australian reds, a Brown Brother Victorian Cabernet Sauvignon 1995 and a Stonier Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2003 - both excellent wines in their very different styles, but really very different.

On the wall behind me are photos of lots of bottles of Grange Hermitage

- a few years ago we bought our way into a vertical tasting of some 25 years of Grange Hermitage (the organisor wrote it up for the Decanter wine magazine) and that was another wine again, with an impressive capacity for development in the bottle. Even within that particular (rather special) wine there were real differences in taste from year to year, some of them due to maturation, some due to the variation in the grapes one year to the next.

--------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Look for a Virginia Cabernet Franc. Around here, the Franc grape is used in some wonderful reds.

There are many small vineyards in Virginia that produce small quantities of excellent wine. There must be a dozen vineyards within an hours ride of here that have free wine tasting sessions every day of the week except for Wednesdays, (or is it Tuesdays?). I have a bottle of Spicy Rivana (a prize winning spiced red wine) that is delicious hot or cold, packed in the saddle bag to take to my Dad's place this weekend.

Aussie wine all tastes the same. I prefer spanish or Portuguese, preferably slightly brutal.

You folks. (I guess it's not enough that some people moved the wine newsgroup over to the "alt" net a few years ago, to its current home alt.food.wine . Now you want to move it over here to SED, to make things even more subtle.)

Cheers -- Max

You shouldn't buy the cask wine, but the bottled one. Spend 12 dollars a bottle and you're in.

Rene

Be careful. Aussie antifreeze is red too. Its easy to get them confused.

"The Real Andy"

Yawn .......

Not bothered with them or any of the wimpy Froggy ones either.

............ Phil

Banrock Station tonight.

You must be thinking of Austria, where someone put ethylene glycol in their white wines to make it smoother and sweeter - a famous scandal in its time (1985).

----------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

in news: snipped-for-privacy@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

The 1985 Austrian so-called "anti-freeze" wine scandal is a true scandal, but it's about journalists, not winemakers. The additive that a handful of winemakers used was diethylene glycol, a sweet food additive that is not anti-freeze. _Ethylene_ glycol is anti-freeze and is poisonous. However, some people publicized the additive wrongly as ethylene glycol (after all, if they themselves don't know one glycol from another, how could it be important?). "Diethylene glycol is in fact less toxic than alcohol, so adding it actually made the wines less poisonous." (From Tom Stevenson, _New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia,_ Third edition 2001, ISBN 0789480395.) Amazingly, the link above repeats this same long-discredited error.

The actual addition of d.e.g. was illegal I believe, via wine-nomenclature and labeling laws, but not a health issue. I recall one interesting side story as that some of the adulterated Austrian wine surfaced under German labels, via blending I think (another wine-labeling violation).

I'm cross-posting to AFW where this may belong (and where many knowledgeable people read, including from Austria).

Cheers -- Max

Sorry,wrong. It was on the Simpsons years ago. Bart sorted them out

It Was The French...........

martin

Diethylene glycol can be used as an anti-freeze, like a number of other water-soluble chemicals

Thanks for the correction. I've got a Ph.D. in chemistry, and do understand the difference between monoethylene glycol, diethylene glycol and triethylene glycol (Ethane-1,2-diol, 3-Oxypentane-1,5-diol,

HO-CH2CH2-OH, HO-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-OH, HO-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-OH

This advantage won't have been shared by the British reporters who wrote the articles (in the Guardian and the Observer) where I originally heard about the scandal, and I'm not surprised that I wasn't exposed to this information at the time.

It may seem odd that British science journalists don't have to have had any kind of science education to qualify them for the job, but it is part of the same delusion that lets the British establishment see themselves as omnicompetent superior people, rather than slap-dash amateurs. The most intelligent British manager I ever worked for still managed to make the occasional idiotic decision because he didn't have the time to work through the detailed reasoning that had led us to specific recommendaions about (crucial) matters of detail that didn't fit his (necessarily) over-simplified global model, and was arrogant enough to over-ride our recommendations.

------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I recall the ethylene glycol scandal---it took almost 15 years for Austrian wines to be any factor in the market.

Talk about overkill a few stores in Maryland didn't remove Austrian wines from shelves. Instead they put shrink wrap around them and hung signs saying something like "Sales of these wines suspended until further notice" This left an impression with consumers and of course wine buyers that something was wrong with wines from Austria. The irony was there could be

in

scandal,

of

all,

wine-nomenclature

side

German

knowledgeable

Hi Bill -- of course my posting on this wasn't aimed at you at all, but at the misconception behind the "anti-freeze" story, which somehow refuses to die. It is an unusually harmful example of a technical misconception becoming popular. My point is not so much about journalistic technical hubris as journalistic irresponsibility. This created a public perception of poisoned products that wrongly stigmatized a whole nation's wine and killed its sales dead. I don't know the whole history of the case, but isn't this exactly why many publications do fact-checking, and why we have libel laws?

in news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

I for one am surprised that what wine experts consider a long-discredited harmful misconception, which popular wine reference books clarify plainly, is still asserted in a February 2005 article by a current journalist, Jeni Port (in article cited in the earlier link). And who knows where else.

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it's far less toxic than alcohol. With an average adulteration of 3 g/l of DEG, to get toxic effects, you have to drink something like 30 to

M.

Twit. DEG is less toxic than the ethanol .

Those Potential Health Effect reports are always alarming. Have you found the one on the dihydrogen oxide also present in every bottle of wine? This potentially lethal chemical kills thousands every year

------------ Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Hi Leo, please also see my recent AFW posting on this subject, not cross-posted to SED.

I'll confirm Cwdjrx's February citation of a recent Merck Index oral rat LD50 (50% lethality level) for diethylene glycol of 20.76 g/kg of body weight, and add the badly needed comparison, which I haven't seen in the technical citations so far here, which is ethyl alcohol's corresponding LD50, "13.0 ml/kg" (same source -- these are standard sources, rather than online ones), which at anhydrous density of 0.80 g/ml is 16.25 g/kg. In other words it takes more ethylene glycol than alcohol to kill a rat.

(I am missing the appeal of the minutiae of, or what look almost like defenses of, the old misconception -- as if it were an old friend. This is all Very Old News, discussed for years among people acquainted with the Austria episode. No, I don't advocate drinking diethylene glycol. No, that's not the point.)

Cheers -- Max

"Max Hauser" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Sorry about the arithmetic above. 13 ml/kg x 0.8 g/ml = 10.4 g/kg for alcohol's LD50. The case is stronger than stated above.

• * * Re. diethelene glycol
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  Potential Health Effects

---------------------------------- Ingestion: Low acute toxicity. Probable lethal dose to humans is 0.5-5 g/kg. Causes nerve depression, liver and kidney lesions and anuria (urination retardation). Causes irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms may include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Skin Contact: May be an irritant to skin on prolonged exposure. Eye Contact: May be an irritant to eyes and surrounding tissue. Chronic Exposure: Liver and kidney lesions and damage. Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions: Persons with pre-existing skin disorders or eye problems or impaired liver or kidney function may be more susceptible to the effects of the substance.

• * * Do you really want to ingest it?
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1. Blood concentrations of ethylene and diethylene glycol were evaluated in Sprague-Dawley rats at varying intervals following oral dosages of the glycols. 2. Ethylene and diethylene glycol in rat blood stored under refrigeration at 4 degrees +/- 10 degrees C for a period of 30 days exhibited minimal concentration losses, contrary to previous reports. 3. The amount of oxalate in the blood and kidneys of Sprague-Dawley rats doses with ethylene and diethylene glycol was quantitated. The animals dosed with ethylene glycol demonstrated significantly higher oxalate levels, particularly at 8 hr post-dosing, than similar animals dosed with diethylene glycol. 4. Ethylene glycol induced oxalate deposition within the kidney without significant histologic changes. Diethylene glycol induced histologic changes within the kidneys without kidney oxalate deposition. 5. Maximal kidney oxalate levels, following ethylene glycol dosage, occurred concurrently with peak blood oxalate concentrations. In the case of diethylene glycol, kidney oxalate levels did not peak until 4 hr after maximal blood oxalate levels. 6. Ethylene and diethylene glycol induced different modes of death in Sprague-Dawley rats.

• * * Is it really a food additive? I.e., is the monoethyl ether the same as DEG?
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  DIETHYLENE GLYCOL MONOETHYL ETHER

Biological Data

BIOCHEMICAL ASPECTS

Diethylene glycol monoethyl ether administered orally or subcutaneously in doses of 3-5 ml/kg BW to rabbits produced an increased urinary excretion of glucuronic acid. This increase could account for only 0.8-2.3% of the dose administered. (Fellows et al., 1946)

• * * Do you really want to take a chance?
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  Encephalopathy and peripheral neuropathy following diethylene glycol ingestion

The authors report a 24-year-old man who developed encephalopathy and rapid quadriplegia following ingestion of a solution containing diethylene glycol (DEG). As quadriparesis evolved, motor response amplitudes were markedly reduced with preserved conduction velocities. Studies during clinical recovery revealed marked motor conduction velocity slowing and prolonged distal latencies. These data indicate that DEG intoxication may cause a primary acute axonal sensorimotor polyneuropathy with demyelinating physiology during recovery.

• * * Sounds like this stuff *is* toxic.
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  Editorial Note Editorial Note: DEG, a known nephrotoxin and hepatotoxin, is used in industrial solvents and antifreeze. The mechanism of toxicity is unknown but probably is different from oxalate toxicity associated with ethylene glycol poisoning. Management of patients with DEG toxicity relies on early diagnosis with supportive and symptomatic care for multi-organ failure. Although data on outcome are limited, survival with resolution of signs and symptoms has been reported (1).
• * * Toxicity not high?
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  In 1985 a scandal broke when diethylene glycol appeared to be added as an adulterant by a number of vintners of Austrian white wines, in order to make them sweeter and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. The amount added was not high enough to be immediately toxic (one would have to ingest about 28 bottles per day for two weeks), however the adverse worldwide publicity caused very high export losses and led to adoption of severe wine laws in Austria.

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