Get The New Short Course in Wine for your 'phone or laptop!

Want to carry your wine smarts around with you? Would you like to have an expert advisor in your pocket when they hand you the wine list? You can get an e-book edition of The New Short Course in Wine in any of the popular formats for under five bucks. Remember, this is the first wine textbook that included Austrian grape varieties among the world's finest.
We're hard at work getting The Short Course in Beer ready for its electronic debut: stay tuned.

Wine Glasses and Tongue Maps

Manufacturers of wine glasses-including some in Austria- sometimes try to promote their product by claiming that some particular design is better for wine because it delivers the wine to a different part of the mouth, thereby increasing one sensation (the one whose receptors are concentrated in that part of the the tongue).

You may have even seen a drawing of the tongue with different areas assigned to different taste sensations. Sweetness is on the front tip, bitterness along the sides in the back and so on. It's an interesting thought, it sounds like it could be useful, for anyone trying to amplify the experience of one taste or diminish another. Unfortunately, it's dead wrong.

Before we talk about it any more, it might be worth taking a second right now to touch, let’s say, a bit of salt to the front of your tongue where the sweet receptors are supposed to be. Taste salty? You bet it does. In general, we taste most tastes everywhere on the tongue. The story of how this particular weird idea has been passed down and accepted uncritically is a good cautionary tale.
The tongue map dates back to research by D.P. Hanig that was published in 1901. Hanig set out to measure the relative sensitivity on the tongue for the four known basic tastes that were then known in Europe. Based on his subjects’ reports, he concluded that sensitivity to the four tastes varied around the tongue, with sweet sensations peaking in the tip, etc.
In 1942, Edwin Boring took Hanig's data and graphed the levels of sensitivity. Boring’s graph made it seem like areas of lower sensitivity were areas of no sensitivity. The modern tongue-map was born as an artifact of the way the chart was presented.
In 1974, a scientist named Virginia Collings re-examined Hanig's work and agreed with his main point: There was some difference in sensitivity to the four basic tastes in different parts of the tongue, but the variations were too small to matter. Collings found that all five tastes (she included umami) can be detected on taste buds anywhere: all over the tongue, on the soft palate and in the flap that blocks food from the windpipe.

Later research has revealed that taste bud seems to contain 50 to 100 receptors for each taste. There’s still some uncertainty about the distribution of taste receptors, but the map itself is a pure myth.
In fact, there are enough stories like The Tongue Map that they have their own category: they're called fakelore. You may have heard that you can tenderize meat my marinating it or that browning ‘seals in juices’. Maybe you’ve put a spoon in a bottle of Champagne to conserve the sparkle. Or perhaps you believe the one about spices originally being used to conceal the taste of rotten meat. Beware of folks who want to sound smart by passing along the bull: watch out for the Tongue Mappers! (Oh, and try to be aware when you're being one yourself.)

For more on the taste of wine and beer, check out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601641915

On the matter of Austrian Beer

If you're going to Austria to eat and drink, chances are that you've got wine on your mind. As a wine destination, Austria has it all: autochthonous varieties, perfect winemaking, gaspingly beautiful scenery, elegant cities, tiny independent wineries and very reasonable prices. The same spirit illuminates the brewing scene and Austrians are the world's fifth most enthusiastic beer drinkers: they down 109 liters per head per year. The styles are a combination of German pilsner and international innovation. You can tour a monastic brewery, listen to Gregorian chant and then head back to Vienna to have a sunset beer in a chic brewpub.
Be sure to check out the Mühlviertel, between the Danube and the Bohemian Forest. This region includes Austria’s only monastery brewery in Schlägel Abbey; the country’s oldest brewery, the Gutsbrauhof in St. Martin; the long-established Municipal Braucommune in Freistadt; and countless castle breweries, palace breweries and other small breweries. And of course, it's a short train ride to the original Budweiser brewery in Budvar, Czech Republic.

For more on beer and beer travel, check out: The Short Course in Beer

A Triumph for Heidi Schröck

I'm just back from my annual harvest-time tour of Austria. (There's nothing like annoying the wine makers when they're really busy!) The good news is that the 2008 vintage is looking good, with lots of grapes still hanging as of October 1st. The better news is that some of the 2007's are remarkable.
One that's especially worth mentioning is from Heidi Schröck, one of the lights behind Eleven Women and their wine. It's a field blend of white varieties that she's calling Vogelsang. It's a white with arresting concentration and structure and a commanding bouquet of pears and floral notes with an attractive minerality.
Along with her neighbors in Rust, Heidi is still making gorgeous Ausbruch dessert wines (her '06 is a beauty), but whites like this may well steal the show.

Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine and the sexy wine and food novel, bang BANG.

Finding Austrian Wine in the US

There's still not a lot of Austrian wine making its way over here. Those pesky Austrians seem to insist on drinking most of it themselves. Fortunately, there are some internet tools that can help. If you live in one of the 'control' states where the distribution of wine is controlled by the government, you usually have a website that shows what's available. In Pennsylvania, that site will also allow you to order wine for delivery to a store near you.
In the rest of the country, you can use a site like WineAccess.com to search for wine by country, region, grape type or winery name. Your results will show you who stocks the wine and will compare prices. Of course, since this is a national database, it may not help you to know that the St. Laurent of your dreams is available in Texas if you live in New Jersey, but even if you're not within driving distance, many retailers are glad to ship within the continental US.

Grüner Veltliner Gets Dirty

Deep in the middle of the novel bang BANG, there's this guy Cardoso. He's not really in the center of the action, but until he is, we watch him cook a seductive dinner for the woman of his dreams. Her name is Concetta, Connie and she's radically candid-open, that is, a woman incapable-no, not interested in- the ordinary deceits that make ordinary life possible.
So he, disabled he, cooks her asparagus. Little skinny phallic asparagus. It's not exactly a dirty joke, it's just a pointer. Here's how it goes:
He picks some really skinny spears, three-quarters of a pencil, breaks off the woody part. He puts some water in a broad shallow pan and a steamer basket over the water. The 'ragus goes in as soon as the water boils, cover goes on. Two minutes, the crunch is soft, yielding but still fresh and live, just like, well never mind. Then the whole pan goes in the sink and the cold water rushes over and the sulfur smell is washed down the drain. Cardoso, who's now thinking about Connie so intensely that it's hard for him to remember the ordinary thing that he wants to do. But the green reminds him and he hits the dried pan with a shredded garlic comma and some butter and a squirt of olive oil from this little cylinder that would remind him of something if he weren't immersed in the dairy-tree smell coming off the pan as it heats and the cold bright green hits it with a bitty squeal.
Shaking the pan the pan's shaking him back roasting browns getting to them both. A spoonful A of his forearm and then out and on to a plate.
Salt. By God salt. There's a Grüner Veltliner from some guy he knows in Austria and he doesn't pour it in the pan, but in the glass and he looks at her and she's laughing like a crazy person who's used to being nuts, no big deal and he puts the plate between them and she reaches for a spear and smiling wickedly bites the damn head off.

Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine and of course, the novel bangBANG.

Alois Kracher Dead at 48

Austria’s dynamic wine community is mourning the loss of one of its most
consistently successful producers with the death of Alois Kracher on December
5th from complications due to cancer.
In 1986, "Luis" Kracher, who was educated as a chemical engineer, went
to work at his father’s winery. Kracher was already known for its sweet wines
and the young chemist quickly added to the winery’s reputation. His timing was
as good as his winemaking skill: he became a leader of the Austrian wine renaissance
as well as its most recognizeable spokesman. Alois Kracher was named Winemaker
of the Year" by Wine Magazine in London six times. Inaddition to the national and international awards, his wines receivedthe highest scores from some of the world's
most influential wine critics. All of this success and appreciation had turned Alois Kracher into Austrian wine's most globally-renowned luxury brand name.

Alois Kracher had worked tirelessly, not only for his own winery, but
for the reputation of Austrian wine overall. He opened the door to the
international markets for many of his fellow winemakers. His son,
Gerhard, with the support of the Kracher family, will carry on the work
of the great wine pioneer from Illmitz.