Wine Varieties

In a move that’s sure to delight way too many people, IHOP is adding booze to the menu at select locations. But settle down—there won’t be bloody Marys just yet. For now, the restaurant chain will serve beer, wine, and bubbly. (Toss some seltzer in, please.) CNN reports that for the very first time, IHOP is giving its franchise owners the option to add an alcohol menu designed by the company.

It’s worth noting that some IHOP franchisees have already been selling alcoholic beverages on their own, but it’s been their responsibility to pick the menu and manage the offerings themselves. If this beverage program rolls out at a location near you, expect to see beer like Blue Moon, Bud Light, and Corona, along with Barefoot wine varieties such as Bubbly Brut, Bubbly Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. There will be no hard liquor, as IHOP is trying to preserve the family restaurant feeling and avoid a bar-like atmosphere. No pancake fights for you!

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IHOP’s hope is to get more business during non-breakfast hours, and if you remember, it has already tried various strategies to do this: most recently, it announced a Chipotle-style pancake bar concept called Flip’d. Then there was that whole jokey-looking “IHOB” rebrand that we all secretly knew, deep within ourselves, couldn’t be real—but the brand’s expansion into burger territory showed a desire to break out of its breakfast rut.

Right now the booze concept is in testing mode, and the first three restaurants to adopt the alcohol menu are doing so on a voluntarily basis. Two are in New Mexico, and one location in San Diego will be offering alcohol in September. I wouldn’t be surprised to see if this took off in many markets; alcohol has a higher profit margin than food, so franchise owners stand to make some money.

IHOP President Jay Johns confirmed to CNN Business that if this test run goes well, “we’ll hit the gas pedal and we’ll go much faster.” It’s likely not every restaurant will be suited to carry alcohol; Johns estimates that up to 1,000 out of 1,750 locations might eventually serve booze. It’s not just a plug-and-play operation, because IHOP has to convince franchise owners that the additional investment on their part is going to be worth it, with liquor licenses and staff training. And if that involves hiring new staff members, that might not be so easy at the moment. Are there any other chain diners you’d like to see serve alcohol? Denny’s? Waffle House? Waffle House is a good one.

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In 1961, Adam Tolmach planted a five-acre vineyard on land he had inherited from his grandfather in the wine-growing region of Ventura County, California, a few miles east of Santa Barbara. As an undergraduate, Tolmach had studied grape growing and winemaking (areas of study known as viticulture and enology, respectively) and then worked for a couple of years at a winery not far from his grandfather’s land. In 1983, he started producing his own wines, which he sells under the Ojai Vineyard label.

Over the years, Tolmach’s grapevines began to suffer. The plants lost vigor and the leaves dried. It turned out the vineyard was affected by Pierce’s disease, a sickness that had long plagued southern California, but had become more severe in the 1990s after the invasion of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, a large leafhopper insect that feeds on plant fluids and can spread a bacterium known as Xylella fastidiosa, usually just called Xylella (pronounced zy-LEL’-uh). This bacterium has existed in the United States since as far back as the 1880s, and over the years, it has destroyed at least 35,000 acres of the nation’s vineyards.

Adam Tolmach. Credit: Ojai Vinyard

Tolmach witnessed the slow but certain death of his grapevines. By 1995, there were just too many missing plants, he said. So he decided to pull out the infected vineyard. To continue making wine, he bought grapes from other producers. Tolmach became a winemaker with no vineyard of his own.

Every year, American winemakers lose about $56 million worth of vines, while government agencies, nurseries, and the University of California system invest another $48 million in prevention efforts, according to research published in the journal California Agriculture. At least 340 plant species serve as hosts to Xylella, though the bacteria only harm some of them. Across the globe, Xylella has devastated orange trees in Brazil and olive fields in southern Italy, and recently a newly identified species, Xylella taiwanensis, has been infecting pear trees in Taiwan. As of now, there is no permanent solution. Each time a Xylella species has invaded a new region, it has proved impossible to eradicate.

Countries have long fretted about the potential for infected plant imports to spread the bacteria, and more recently, climate change has been identified as an additional threat, pushing the disease vectors’ habitat north, both in Europe and in the U.S. As winters become warmer, experts say, Xylella could enter new territories, upending their regional economies and landscapes.

Yet there might be some hope. After 40 years of crossbreeding European grape varieties with wild grapes, a plant geneticist recently patented five hybrid grapes that appear to be resistant to Pierce’s disease. While scientists caution that it’s not yet clear how long the resistance will endure, wine producers like Tolmach hope that these new grapes will allow their vineyards to flourish once again.

A variety of grape species are indigenous to America, and a recent study suggests that Native Americans might have used them to make alcoholic beverages more than 500 years ago. In North America, native varieties tend to have thick skin and an astringent, peppery, acidic taste that is quite different from the grapes used in most wines.

In the 1500s, Spanish settlers brought Vitis vinifera, the common European grapevine for winemaking, to Florida. Farmers never succeeded in cultivating European grapes in the new territory — after a few years, the plants would just die. Then, in the 1860s, the Los Angeles Vineyard Society led grape-planting efforts in the Santa Ana Valley. By 1883, there were a total of 50 wineries and 10,000 acres of grapevines. Then, just a couple of years later, the grapevines had all died inexplicably.

In 1889, the U.S. Department of Agriculture instructed one of the first formally trained American plant pathologists, Newton Pierce, to figure out what was killing the European grapevines. Pierce studied the disease, eventually speculating that it was caused by a microorganism, but he never identified one. Still, in recognition of his effort, the disease was eventually named after him.

In the 1970s, a University of California, Berkeley entomologist named Alexander Purcell helped solve the mystery. At the time, researchers were beginning to think Pierce’s disease was caused by bacteria but had yet to pin down a culprit. Purcell and his colleagues proved the then-unnamed Xylella was responsible by growing the bacterium from samples taken from plants infected by blue-green sharpshooters, and then directly infecting healthy plants with the lab-grown pathogen. Over time, a more complete picture of disease transmission emerged.

The glassy-winged sharpshooter feeds on the green stems and leaves of grapevine plants, which contain water and dissolved nutrients, Purcell told Undark. If the plant is infected with Xylella, some of the bacteria linger in the insect’s needle-like mouthparts. The next time the glassy-winged sharpshooter feeds upon a grapevine, the insect can transfer the Xylella to the new plant. Inside the plant’s vascular tissues, the bacteria multiply, obstructing the normal flow of water and nutrients and interfering with the plant’s metabolism and physiology — a process that ultimately kills the plant.

In the late 1980s, Purcell mapped swaths of the U.S. and Europe by how conducive they are to disease spread. Knowing that Xylella do not thrive in regions with cold winters, that are far from large bodies of water, and that lack a disease-carrying vector such as the glassy-winged sharpshooter, Purcell drew out maps by hand. He then marked the regions with the right combination of geographic and climatic conditions to allow for Pierce’s disease to spread, noticing a pattern emerge.

At the time, the European Union was not very concerned about Xylella, though Purcell contends that the bacteria had almost certainly arrived in the region. In talks and at conferences, he warned that European countries were facing a great danger. He urged the E.U. to increase its regulations of plant imports. Those warnings went unheeded, Purcell said, and in 2017, Pierce’s disease was first detected on the grapevines of the Spanish island of Mallorca, jeopardizing the future of winemaking there. Today, Xylella is spreading through the Mediterranean region and other parts of Europe — just as Purcell predicted.

The glassy-winged sharpshooter spreads Xylella bacteria when it feeds on the vascular tissues of plants. Credit: Courtesy of University of California, Riverside

Alberto Fereres, a Spanish entomologist and researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, is concerned about the devastating effects of the European outbreaks, including one in southern Italy that has infected and killed 20 million olive trees, more than a third of the region’s population. “[Xylella] is present in many more countries than we indeed thought,” Fereres said, adding that his research group recently discovered that the bacteria have been present in Spain for more than 20 years, but for much of that time it only lived in plants that don’t show symptoms of the disease.

Fereres hopes at least some plants will adapt to the presence of the bacteria and that farmers will be able to control the indigenous European vector, the meadow spittlebug, by tilling the land to kill the bug’s juveniles and placing barriers or nets to separate the insects from susceptible plants.

So far, the U.S. has largely used insecticides to get rid of infected insects. The Temecula Valley in California, for example, experienced a severe outbreak of Pierce’s disease in the late 1990s. Back then, stakeholders managed to defeat the disease in less than two years by introducing specific pesticides into the farming of grapevines.

Matt Daugherty, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, studied the resulting decline in Temecula’s glassy-winged sharpshooter population. He said the insect’s numbers remained low until around 2017, when the population exploded for a second time.

“Now the bad news is this,” Purcell said: “After about 18 years, the insect is now resistant to the insecticide.” In entomology, Purcell added, such resistance is common if the same insecticide is used year after year. He and Fereres maintain that pesticides are not a viable long-term solution to the problem. In some countries, this approach has also run up against public opinion. In Italy, for example, consumers have strongly opposed the use of pesticides on olive trees threatened by Xylella.

Rodrigo Almeida, a plant pathologist at the University of California, Berkeley, warns that climate change might worsen the situation: While low winter temperatures in many grape-growing regions have traditionally limited the spread of Pierce’s disease, the past few years have brought warmer winters, allowing Xylella to spread.

“With warming temperatures and warmer winters, you’re going to have sort of more disease where you already have it, and you’re probably going to see the range expand north as well,” Almeida said. Warmer temperatures favor greater survival of the insects and increase the likelihood that an infection will persist through the winter. Almeida added that it’s difficult to predict precisely how much the disease will increase and how it will impact the new territories, but that there is the possibility that the disease will find a home in areas where a dry climate combines with warmer winters.

“We’re expecting things to get worse and worse,” Daugherty said.

Yet, in territories where European grapes die because of Xylella, wild indigenous grape varieties that are not a good fit for winemaking thrive. Those plants bear a unique gene that prevents them from succumbing to the disease, and that specific gene could be a counteroffensive to the bacteria and might well change the future of winemaking.

In 1989, University of California, Davis plant geneticist and viticulturist Andrew Walker inherited grapevine seeds that he was told were produced from crossbreeding two known Vitis species. But as the plants grew, he soon noticed they were behaving weirdly. For one thing, their vines had sprouted fine hairs along the stems. More importantly, the plants proved resistant to Pierce’s disease. Walker decided to investigate. Perhaps, he speculated, the parent plants, which were still flourishing in an abandoned vineyard owned by his university, had accidentally crossbred with the native grapevines that were growing wild nearby.

Indeed, this turned out to be the case. Vitis arizonica grows wild in the southwest U.S. and Mexico, and Walker matched the genetic fingerprint of the male V. arizonica in his own plants. The wild plant carries a dominant gene that passes along Pierce’s disease resistant traits to its offspring.

Sensing that this could lead to breakthrough for new varieties of grapevine, Walker began the slow process of crossbreeding. This technique goes back about 10,000 years and involves selectively breeding plants and animals with desired traits. In this case, Walker wanted to cross disease-resistant V. arizonica with winemaking varieties like cabernet sauvignon.

A grapevine leaf affected by Pierce’s disease. As the plant’s vascular structure is obstructed by bacteria, the flow of water and nutrients is impeded, and the leaves become brown and dry. Credit: Agricultural Research Service/USDA

The first generation’s seedlings all carried the gene for disease resistance. Walker selected the highest quality among them, and when the plants flowered, he crossed them again with various V. vinifera varieties. He did this for four to five generations, reaching a point where 97 percent of the plant’s genome came from V. vinifera and 3 percent came from V. arizonica. It took Walker about 20 years to develop these new plants, five varieties of which have been patented and given out to a few producers, and sold through a handful of nurseries. Tolmach, the winemaker from Ojai, was one of the few lucky ones to receive them.

“I guess what’s shocking to me is that the quality is there — these can be standalone wines by themselves,” said Tolmach. In 2017, he planted about 1,800 plants on 1.2 acres with four of Walker’s varieties, and he recently bottled the 2019 vintages. (These vintages won’t be available until this fall, when they will be priced between $30 and $40 per bottle, which is comparable to his vintages that use traditional grapes.) Tolmach said that his new plants are healthy and thriving with no sign of the disease, and he’s now thinking of planting more on a 10-acre vineyard that he purchased in northern Santa Barbara County.

Matt Kettmann, a California writer and wine critic who has been following Tolmach’s work for years, tasted Tolmach’s wines produced with resistant grape varieties. He said they are unique and interesting wines with characteristics reminiscent of wines of European heritage. He described Tolmach’s 2019 wine using Walker’s paseante noir grape as tasting of “black cherry, mocha, clove, baking spice,” while praising its “smooth texture and rich mouthfeel.” “That one,” said Kettmann, “was really kind of impressive to me.”

Kettmann anticipates that the new wines will be appreciated by connoisseurs, but he wonders how the larger American market will respond. Europeans emphasize the value of terroir — the taste imparted to a wine by a particular region’s soil, topography, and climate. Americans, on the other hand, tend to care more about the variety of the grape, like pinot gris, cabernet sauvignon, or zinfandel — and Walker’s varieties are entirely new.

“Tradition is a huge consideration in choosing wine varieties for winemaking. Can you name any new grape varieties introduced during the last 50 years that are now widely used for wine?” wrote Purcell in an email.

It’s also not clear whether new genotypes of Xylella might evolve to infect the hybrid grapes, Purcell and Fereres wrote to Undark. Currently, only a single gene confers the resistance. For this reason, it might be necessary to incorporate new resistance genes by crossbreeding additional varieties of grapevine, said Purcell.

Still, growers like Tolmach are excited by Walker’s resistant varieties, and some are planting them in areas that have been impacted by Xylella, Walker said. Though Tolmach has made wines with the new grapes exclusively, he suggests many wineries may opt to blend the grapes with other mainstream varieties.

For his part, Walker believes that any skepticism about his grapes’ novelty will fade in the face of climate change. “It is going to force people to reevaluate how we improve grapevines,” he said.

Agostino Petroni is a journalist, author, and a 2021 Pulitzer Reporting Fellow. His work appears in a number of outlets, including National Geographic, BBC, and Atlas Obscura. Find Agostino on Twitter @PetroniAgostino

A version of this article was originally posted at Undark and is reposted here with permission. Undark can be found on Twitter @undarkmag

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Champagne vineyards have faced a difficult year due to incessant rainfall and climate change in the past months. This has led to fungus infestation in grapes and leaves. The period after heavy rainfall has caused leaves to dry up due to mildew fungi. Earlier, about 20-25 percent of the Champagne vineyards had been damaged by frosts in the previous season.

Climate is both friend and foe for the Champagne-making industry. Producers have contended a potential threat of global warming on a daily basis. Climate change has largely affected Champagne vineyards in the past three decades. Grapes are susceptible to changes in climate. The average rise in temperature has been recorded as 1.1° Celsius, which has led to the early ripening of grapes.

Grapes grow in narrow geographical and climatic ranges where temperatures during the growing season average 12-22°C (54-72°F). It means global warming could impact the yield and quality of established wine varieties that were selected to best suit the local climate at the time of planting. “We know that ripening characteristics or profiles have changed. We’ve been accumulating more sugar and producing slightly higher alcohol wines and therefore wine styles have changed,” says Gregory Jones, professor and research climatologist in Environmental Studies at Linfield University, Oregon, in his TED Talk, ‘Climate, Grapes, and Wine’.

Downy mildew infestation in Champagne vineyards

Downy mildew is a disease native to North America, it is caused by the fungus Plasmopara viticola. Downy mildew infects young leaves as well as flower and fruit clusters. The disease mainly occurs in warm, humid regions such as Europe, and Eastern US. “Infections are most common on the foliage, especially young leaves while they are expanding. Leaves usually appear to be the first infected with light green or yellow spots on the upper surface. Lesions on older leaves in late summer have a characteristic “oil spot” appearance and a somewhat “mosaic-like” appearance of small angular yellow-brown spots confined by the leaf veins,” the Grape Grower’s Handbook informed.

The most expensive sparkling wine, Champagne covers only 9 per cent of the global consumption but 33 per cent of its value. About 250 million bottles are shipped every year from France to buyers across the world. The accidentally created drink now is one of the most expensive drinks in the world that has often been associated with royalty since the 17th century.

(Image: Johny Gorerend/Unsplash)

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For decades, California winemakers have long thought of the Winkler Index as gospel. Developed in the 1940s by two professors at the University of California at Davis (U.C. Davis), the Index uses regional climate conditions to determine the best places to grow a wide range of wine grapes.

With increasing pressures from heat and drought bearing down on the state, however, the Index may currently be horribly out of date. On July 22, U.C. Davis announced it would update the Index for the first time in more than 75 years. This new reality has profound implications for what we grow, make and drink in the future.

Professors A.J. Winkler and Maynard Amerine founded the Index to help the California wine industry recover following the repeal of Prohibition and loss of vines due to phylloxera. The Index became a standard way of thinking about which wine varieties to plant where and, over time, it was adopted worldwide.

A Stag’s Leap vineyard / Photo courtesy Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars

The Index classifies regions from I to V, going from coolest to warmest. It specifically tracks the amount of heat from the sun via average daily temperatures above 50°F between the months of April and October, the typical growing season for grapes in the northern hemisphere. These heat units are commonly referred to as “degree days.”

The original ranking classifies Region I as areas with less than 2,500 heat units. This includes Anderson Valley, Carneros, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Maria in California, and Mosel, Burgundy and Champagne in the Old World. The Index lists Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer as suited to these growing regions.

Region V places have 4,001 or more heat units, with Fresno and Merced as domestic examples and Algeria and Palermo, Italy abroad. Sweet and/or fortified wines made from Grenache, Muscat Blanc and Palomino are recommended.

In between are such world-renowned places as Russian River Valley and Bordeaux (Region II) and St. Helena and Tuscany (Region III), where heat units/degree days range from 2,501 to 3,500.

This new reality has profound implications for what we grow, make and drink in the future.

When the Winkler Index was developed, the Napa Valley was considered predominantly a Region II and III, and deemed ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon. Today, 50%, or some 22,868 acres of it is planted to Cabernet.

But things are changing. Between 1895 and 2018, California has warmed an average of 2.3°F during the growing season, according to the 2018 Napa Vintage Report by Dr. Greg V. Jones. Now most of the valley falls within Region III and IV,  and some wonder if it’s at risk of reaching even beyond.

The Fay Vineyard was one of the first to be planted to Cabernet Sauvignon in southern Napa / Photo by M.J. Wickham

Environmentalist and legendary Napa Valley winemaker Warren Winiarski, 92, who produced the winning Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon of the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, advocates for updating the Winkler Index. In July, he donated $450,000 to fund U.C. Davis’ research.

“Because we are in a period of climate change, we need more refined and comprehensive ways of measuring the effect of heat on plant physiology and grape maturity,” says Winiarski. “The development of new methods of measurement would be extraordinarily helpful. With better knowledge of changes in the compositional elements in the grapes in the vineyard, we’ll have better guidance on how to respond in the winery and create the wines we want to make.”

From the purview of his home above Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Winiarski has lived through both the 2017 and 2020 fires that affected the Napa Valley. He suffered the loss of a barn and two residences at his Arcadia Vineyard in Coombsville and had to evacuate during these events.

Warren Winiarski donated $450,000 to support U.C. Davis’ research / Photo by Robert McClenahan

Data collection has begun this season with Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Remote sensing and sophisticated monitoring technology will capture plant growth, berry chemistry and other conditions more effectively than when the Winkler Index was created.

Growers and producers in the Napa Valley are expected to share some of the data from their own weather stations with the U.C. Davis researchers.

“There is a renewed interest to understand how to best mitigate climate change effects on existing vineyards and choose appropriate cultivars for the future,” says Beth Forrestel, an assistant professor in the U.C. Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology who is leading the research. “The new methods and data sources we’re bringing to this project will help us do just that.”

Others who support this refresh include Winiarski’s successor at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Marcus Notaro. He oversees the historic Fay Vineyard, among the first sites to be planted to Cabernet Sauvignon in the southern reaches of the Napa Valley.

“When Nathan Fay first planted the vineyard in 1961, common thinking was our area in the Stags Leap District was too cool for Cabernet Sauvignon,” Notaro says. “Updating this index using modern technology will be a great new tool to support our industry.”

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AN independent fine wine merchant is extending its ‘wine experience’ for customers by opening a dedicated bar next door.

Whalley Wine Shop, which also sells spirits and craft beers, is expanding into the on-trade by taking over the former Barclays Bank next to the shop in King Street, Whalley.

Owner Tom Jones said: “2020 was supposed to be a year of celebration for The Whalley Wine Shop, as it was our 10th anniversary with loads of events and tastings planned.

“Covid struck and all our plans were shelved. However, this gave us the opportunity to look at our long-term strategy, and how we could add something new and exciting for customers and for Whalley.

“Right from the outset we tried to make a visit to The Whalley Wine Shop an experience, creating a buzz, by encouraging customers to taste new wines through our ‘by the glass’ sampling machine, to explore new wine varieties and new wine countries and to learn about food pairing.

“We found that our customers absolutely loved the ambience of tasting and drinking wine in the shop, but with over 1,000 different wines on display and often over 20 wines to taste, the shop was frequently packed and it became clear we needed more space.

“We recognised that customers were having to stand and drink wines in a retail environment and what we needed was a dedicated space that wasn’t a shop.

“When the Barclays next door closed it seemed the perfect solution.”

Mr Jones and his wife, Jen, did not take lightly the decision to open a hospitality venue in the midst of a global pandemic, with sleepless nights aplenty throughout the process.

He added: “We had many a sleepless night debating whether it was a brave or a foolhardy thing to do, but everyone I talked to said it was such a good location and the shop has an excellent reputation.

“So we signed the lease on the day that Boris Johnson locked down the country for the second time. Crazy or what?”

Recruiting staff could also have been very difficult for the couple, as many in the hospitality sector have left the industry to pursue other careers as a result of the pandemic – though Mr Jones said he’s been ‘lucky’ to recruit such a good team.

Every drink customers enjoy in the bar will be available for sale next door in the Wine Shop – as well as a ‘tasting vault’, showcasing the bar’s rarest and most valuable beverages.

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Five of the best Maribor festivals

Locals will tell you that there’s no bad time to visit Maribor because there’s always something to celebrate. The city hosts dozens of events throughout the year, from classical music concerts and puppet shows to grape-picking ceremonies and street food festivals.

1. LENT FESTIVAL: Hosting more than 500,000 visitors each summer, the Lent Festival is one of the biggest multi-genre performance events in Central Europe. For two weeks at the end of June, a number of venues operate in the neighbourhood, including a floating stage on the Drava that hosts jazz concerts, ballet performances, theatre shows, folk music, comedy and much more. Street food stalls, meanwhile, serve regional delicacies from around the country. festival-lent.si 

2. THE OLD VINE FESTIVAL: This festival in late September serves as a tribute to a local vine that’s said to be the world’s oldest. Celebrations include wine-tasting events led by the region’s vintners. There are also food stands, brass bands and folk dancing. The event concludes with the ceremonial harvesting of the 450-year-old vine, followed by a public tasting of the freshly picked grapes in front of a crowd of hundreds.

3. FESTIVAL MARIBOR: Slovenia’s most famous classical music event sees the country’s biggest chamber and orchestral music stars come together for two weeks of nightly performances in September. The shows are staged in venues across the city, including the fin-de-siècle Union Hall and the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor. festivalmaribor.si

4. SUMMER PUPPET PIER: For over a century, puppet theatres have been a popular form of entertainment in Slovenia. Every August, Maribor Puppet Theatre hosts national and international puppeteers, who stage shows for adults and children alike. Puppet-making workshops and exhibitions are also on the programme. lg-mb.si

5. INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CHILLI AND CHOCOLATE: It was Trappist monks who first introduced chocolate-making to Slovenia, in the late 19th century, yet few people outside the country have tasted Slovenian chocolate. This festival, held in October, aims to raise the profile of independent chocolate-makers in the country. Expect spicy chocolate cocktails, chilli-eating competitions and live music.

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The Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Mendel University in Brno has developed a simple procedure for identifying liquids, including food and drugs. The technique has promising implications for criminal investigations. Photo Credit: Mendelu.cz.

Brno, Jul 30 (BD) – Scientists from the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Mendel University in Brno have developed a simple technique for identifying samples of food and drugs according to their fluorescence, known as a “UV fingerprint”. This allows detection of cases where, for example, the technological process has changed during the production of juices, and also allows analysts to determine the origin of wine or drugs. 

This new procedure has a wide application, said Lukáš Nejdl, the head of the bioanalysis and imaging laboratory at Mendel University’s Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and also has promising implications for criminal investigators.

The technology is based on a simple principle, using the spectral characteristics of the sample. “We illuminate the sample with UV radiation and thus cause a number of interesting photochemical reactions that are specific to the sample,” said Nejdl. “After a few minutes, it is possible to say from where and what it originated, depending on the spectral characteristics, for example, whether it’s a variety of wine or a type of juice.”

Based on this principle, virtually any liquid sample can be illuminated, including biological samples, pesticides, food, clinical samples such as urine, serum, plasma, blood, or medicine, including drugs.

“We test individual samples and try to find applications in practice. We are also looking for partners in the commercial and public spheres,” said Nejdl. His team is so far working mostly with wines, specifically analyzing white wine varieties. From just a drop of commonly sold white wine, the UV fingerprint can identify the wine by comparison with the database. The new method can assist significantly in the area of ​​wine authentication, identification, and fingerprinting.

Researchers are also starting cooperation with the Czech Police, who have a new department trying to develop new analytical procedures from the work of forensic scientists, which could be used in the course of their investigations. The method is also suitable for detecting counterfeit drugs or profiling addictive substances in order to determine who prepared the drug.

“This method could have a very interesting future in forensic practice, as we would be able to detect different types of poisons and certain groups of drugs in the field. An interesting idea may be its use in the biological sector,” said Radim Pernický from the Prague Police Presidium’s Department for Science, Research and Innovation.

As with penicillin, the original discovery of ​​the Mendel University scientists was an accident. When they needed orange juice for their experiments, they noticed that samples of this drink always behaved differently. What seemed like a complication for the original experiment raised the unexpected question: what if someone needed to detect differences in seemingly identical substances?

Scientists are now expanding their efforts to include material chemistry, specifically the UV synthesis of a number of interesting nanomaterials.

https://brnodaily.com/2021/07/30/brno/uv-fingerprint-developed-by-scientists-from-mendel-university-may-help-with-criminal-investigations/https://brnodaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/UV_Fingerprint_Credit_Mendelu.cz_-1024×683.jpghttps://brnodaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/UV_Fingerprint_Credit_Mendelu.cz_-150×100.jpg2021-07-30T12:30:09+02:00Basak YirmibesogluBrnoNewsBrno,News,ScienceThe Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Mendel University in Brno has developed a simple procedure for identifying liquids, including food and drugs. The technique has promising implications for criminal investigations. Photo Credit: Mendelu.cz.

Brno, Jul 30 (BD) – Scientists from the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Mendel University…Basak YirmibesogluBaşak
Yirmibeşoğlubasakkyirmibesoglu@gmail.comAuthorA Communication & Design student and feminist activist from Turkey. Passionate about journalism and love to write about politics, art & culture.
Brno Daily
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Ashley Ratcliff: a serious award-winning winemaker who doesn’t take wine too seriously.

Julz Recsei*

As I navigate the vast world of wine, I am constantly looking for something new and I found this a few years ago when I met Ashley Ratcliff. Mad as a bag of cats, he shares my philosophy on winemaking, and an attitude of ‘don’t take wine too seriously – just make it tasty and fun’.

Last year I went down to the Riverland, South Australia, where he grows and makes his wine, Ricca Terra (meaning Rich Land). The Riverland is a wine-growing region set on the banks of the mighty Murray (Murrundi) River. The soil has a rich red sandy base, the temperature ranges from -5 to +47 degrees Celsius and there’s an average rainfall of around 200mm a year, the same that we got in this Shire in three hours during Cyclone Debbie. So, it’s a hot/cold/dry/sandy area – sounds pretty glum! However, it is the largest grape-growing region in Australia that no-one knows about, even though traditionally the great Australian invention, the Goon Bag, is filled with Riverland fruit.

If you drink a wine that’s labelled ‘Wine of Australia’ then there’s a high chance it was grown in the Riverland. Ash started Ricca Terra Farms in 2003 with a belief that he could do something bigger and better, and a philosophy of growing wine grapes that are both more sustainable given Australia’s environment, and also a more suitable match to our Mediterranean diet. 

Traditional wine varieties need 1200mm–2000mm of rainfall annually to bear healthy fruit. The Riverland gets 200ml of rain, do the math; the rest is made up by pumping from the Murray, not so healthy for Pachamama. So, Ash started to rip out these thirsty vines and plant more sustainable varieties that require much less water, such as Fiano, Vermentino, Nero d’Avola and Tinta Barocca that are grown in hot dry areas of Spain and Italy. Much of our diet in Australia is influenced by these regions. Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc are more suited to a French style of cooking with lots of butter and richness – made to be warming food. So, these dry-climate wines are, in a way, made for Australia. 

As Ash started to plant these new varieties, new age winemakers started to pay attention. His fruit is being used by some of my personal favourite natural winemakers: Unico Zelo, Patrick Sullivan, Dawning Day and Brash Higgins, to mention a few, along with his own brand, Ricca Terra. His wines are vegan and totally ‘smashable’.

While I was down in the Riverland, Ash showed us around the different plots where he has 40 different varieties planted that are flourishing in the arid conditions. We tried countless grapes straight from the vine, which were all different shapes, sizes and flavours and it was amazing to try them off the vine and then try those grapes in the final bottled wines.

His pride and joy is his ski boat that he took us out on – the true majesty of the Murray can be experienced only from the water. As a testimony to his success, he was awarded the Innovative Vineyard of the Year by the Young Guns of Wine. Check out Riverland wines, a hidden gem of the wine world.

*Jules Recsei is a ‘Purveyor of good booze.’

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Maryville Academy will host its second Wine Tasting and Garden Tour Saturday, Aug. 7.

The event will benefit Jen School students and their programs.

A donation of $35 will include a sampling of several wine varieties with appetizers, touring the Jen School garden and winning raffle prizes.

The outdoor tent event offers two time slots: 3 to 4 p.m. or 5 to 6 p.m. on the Des Plaines campus, 1150 N. River Road. Register for a specific time and available event sponsorships:

For 3 to 4 p.m., go to bit.ly/3rgwjx4. For 5 to 6 p.m., go to bit.ly/2UIH9Q5.

“We are very excited to host this event again this year,” Director of Development Megan Biasco said. “The inaugural launch last year was successful in spite of the challenges we all faced.”

Biasco said that people really enjoyed themselves last year.

“We hope to see our friends and supporters at the event again this year. Hopefully, more people will come now that health restrictions have been lifted.”

        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        

 

Jen School is an eight-time National Association of Special Education Teachers School of Excellence award recipient. It is the only school in the country that offers vocational education for young children with special learning needs.

It works with young people ages 10 to 21 who face academic, emotional, behavioral or intellectual challenges. For information on Jen School, visit www.maryvilleacademy.org.

Contact Tina Hock at restivo-hockt@maryvilleacademy.org or call (847) 294-1982 for more information.

Learn more at www.maryvilleacademy.org.

        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        

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• Former Goa agricultural officer, Miguel de Braganza, has doggedly pursued goals of sustainable agriculture for over four decades and is an executive committee member of the Botanical Society of Goa (BSG).
• BSG, instituted in 1990, is a Goa-based society that works at the grassroots level in cultivation and conservation.
• The society organises an annual Konkan Fruit Fest, launched by Braganza and his team in 2003.
• The event has brought together ordinary citizens and tourists, committed environmentalists and farmers and was curated with the motto to preserve, celebrate and propagate the region’s rich storehouse of local fruits and vegetables and its corollary food heritage and culture.

The Konkan Fruit Fest (KFF) is an initiative of Miguel Braganza and his team from Botanical Society of Goa, to preserve endangered food biodiversity by providing fruit growers a forum to market lesser-known fruits.

KFF connects farmers, government agencies such as the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), agricultural colleges, scientists from regional fruit boards, technology and machine manufacturers, and fruit sellers, providing a space for them to exhibit their produce and technology. The event has attracted huge footfalls from tourists, locals, plant-lovers, environmentalists and other stakeholders, sparked the interest of the scientific community, generated a cottage industry for wine makers and influenced the demand and supply chain of locally grown fruits.

India accounts for 8% of total global biodiversity and has an estimated 49,000 species of plants, 4900 of which are endemic. But industrial urbanisation and land use change have put at least 10% of India’s recorded wild flora on the list of threatened species, according to a recent study.

The realities of biodiversity loss have hit the regional food basket too. A 1997 study by the ICAR discovered that 31 species of local mango varieties recorded in 1979 in Goa, are now “not found.” It thus becomes important to look at the best practices in the industry that are successful in food biodiversity preservation.

Students marketing microgreens and seedlings at the Konkan Fruit Fest in 2017. Photo by Konkan Fruit Fest/Facebook.

Botanical Society of Goa (BSG), instituted in 1990, is a state-based voluntary association that works at the grassroots level on planting methods, awareness and conservation. With the objective of engaging Goan citizens in the field, the society hosts a variety of programmes in collaboration with a gamut of central and state government agencies, municipalities, NGOs and civil society that promote awareness, understanding and love for plants and the environment.

Participants get access to hands-on training, demonstrations, workshops, exhibitions of domesticated plant diversity, competitions, hikes, nature trails and more. The driving force behind this change-making society has been Miguel Braganza.

Braganza worked with the Agriculture Department of Goa for 15 years as an agricultural officer and served as the Secretary of the Botanical Society of Goa (BSG) from 1996 to 2019, when he stepped down. He continues to be an executive committee member since 2019. By expanding BSG from 10 academic botanists, to 300 lay plant lovers; and on-boarding 40 nature and eco clubs of schools/ high schools, central and state agricultural agencies and prominent foundations, Braganza broad based and galvanized tree lovers.

He is the driving force behind the famous Konkan Fruit Fest, an event that revolutionised the perception of organic farming and native food in Goa and the country. He has also served as Secretary of the Organic Farmer’s Association of India (OFAI).

Miguel Braganza. The Konkan Fruit Fest (KFF) is an initiative of Miguel Braganza and his team from Botanical Society of Goa.

Goa’s ecological history

Braganza talks about Goa’s recent ecological history saying, “before mining, tourism and the realty sectors got traction by the year 2000, the traditionally-close-to-nature local Goan population was mindful of their field, plantations, crop, horticulture and plant wealth.”

Fifteen villages are named after the mango tree, two after kokum, ten after tigers, one each after the banyan, tamarind and tulsi, three after peacocks, and five after snakes, while others are named after anthills, forests, gardens, waterfalls and water bodies, the Goa State Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan report notes.

“At the onset of each monsoon, home-owners would go plant-mad, rushing to markets to get fruit, vegetable, flower seeds, grafts, and would stick lakhs of coconut, cashew, mango, jackfruit, chickoo and other fruit saplings into the soil. By 2000, that earthy culture had taken a backseat to malls and multiplexes,” rues Braganza.

“The building and deforestation frenzy, meant that wild hillside fruits, like the charam (Cuddapah almond), jamun (Java plum), bheddsam (small jamun variant), chunna (Zunna berry, Ziziphus rugosa) and others that were a part of our food heritage, and earlier a part of our childhood hillslope summer berry hunts, were in danger of going extinct. There was a real need to arrest the drastic decline of horticultural diversity,” he explains.

Read more: Community farming in Goa emerges as a tool against land conversion

BSG and its effort in food biodiversity conservation

The BSG is always busy with new kinds of events. The pandemic hasn’t slowed down their activities. “We have been running weekly webinars on all things horticultural or green with agriculture graduates taking the lead. This way locked-down citizens, and those who have lost their jobs during this challenging year, can find inspiration for self-employment and practice cultivation right in their front or backyards,” says Braganza. Webinar topics range from growing fruit trees in pots, grafting and layering techniques to vegetable propagation, medicinal plants and garden maintenance.

BSG’s tour de force, however, is its multi-edition annual Konkan Fruit Fest launched in 2003 by Braganza and his team. The event brought together ordinary citizens and tourists, committed environmentalists and farmers. BSG’s Konkan Fruit Fest (KFF), was curated with the motto to preserve, celebrate and propagate the region’s rich storehouse of local fruits and vegetables and its corollary food heritage and culture.

Stalls at the Konkan Fruit Fest of 2017. Photo by Konkan Fruit Fest/Facebook.

“We believe that food is a critical and an integral part of our cultural heritage. While art, music, dance, drama, museums and architecture are given importance in the discourse of cultural heritage, food is one that is often overlooked by all major stakeholders. This has led to the decline of our food heritage, especially among the young people of Goa and a drastic decline in our horticultural biodiversity. The Konkan Fruit Fest is an initiative to preserve and enhance this endangered aspect of our cultural heritage by providing fruit growers a forum to market these lesser-known fruits (jungli badam or wild almond, gulabi zaam or Malay apple, zogma or Indian plum, chaferam or coffee plum, AmBoram or white mulberry). Customers also learn about these fruits and enjoy them.”

KFF roped in a diverse stratum of 64 exhibitors in its most fruitful year.

Konkan fruit fest: One event with multiple benefits

With lots of music and fancy-dress competitions, KFF is now a street-side festival that attracts not only plant-lovers but also random walk-ins, market shoppers and curious tourists. The prizes that are sourced from the money raised from sponsors and community buy-ins, attract farmers to bring the best of their produce.

For Braganza the highlight of the fest is the knowledge exchange. He is in awe when scientists learn from farmers about the best varieties to propagate and farmers in turn learn technical solutions from the scientists. “The festival became a better enabler for information exchange than any seminar or workshop,” he says.

KFF also impacts demand and supply mechanics. “If there’s an increased awareness about the sheer multitude of delicious fruits that grow in the region, local demand will increase, local farmers will be incentivised to grow them and we will benefit from having a much wider, rich array of healthy, safely grown and nutritionally diverse fruit,” opines  farmer and festival supporter Peter Fernandes.

The other multiplier effect of KFF was scientific. Prize winning germplasm have been picked up for genetic research, development and propagation. A case in point: In 2003-2004, local farmer Prabhakar Keni’s prize-winning cashew apples were picked up by ICAR and developed and propagated as Balli 1 and Balli 2 (renamed Goa 1) varieties for the entire country.

Local farmer entrepreneurs identified superior mango germplasm from fellow farmers and began producing and marketing premium grafts. In 2013, the Central Registry of Germ Plasm registered a superior mankurad mango variety, in the name of its owner Armando Cardozo. The Cardozo mankurad was first promoted by KFF, from where it evoked scientific interest.

In 2011, the fest promoted jackfruit, spawning a fresh interest and a stand-alone jackfruit festival. KFF’s promotion of jackfruit as a potential commercial crop in 2013-14, and its demonstrations of processing and marketing of jackfruit chips, caught on with local self-help groups. Currently, 25 SHGs and one multi food processing unit make and market the product.

When in 2003, KFF awarded the ‘Best Fruit’ prize to a kokum (Garcinia indica) variety, indigenous to the Western Ghats region, it surprised many. That recognition, however, set the ball rolling, towards the first Kokum Seminar and, later, the establishment of the Western Ghats Kokum Foundation. Kokum was recognised as a fruit in 2012, by the National Horticulture Board. An export order of dried kokum to the USA, sent its price from Rs 35 per kg to a standard Rs 200 per kg.

Kokum fruits on display at the Konkan Fruit Fest of 2014. Photo by Joegoauk Goa/Flickr.

KFF facilitated intra-regional exchange of plant material. Mangosteen grafts from the Vengurla Research Station, rambutan grafts, and superior local velvet apple germplasm, began being commercially planted in Goa.

Home based wine making, from varied fruits, which has now become a viable cottage industry, got an impetus at KFF. “When we first held the festival, there was just one fruit wine maker present. Several years later there are many wine makers who come together to contribute to this cottage industry,” shares Braganza. When microbiologist and wine maker John Carmo Rodrigues supplanted Pectinase for Pectin, a medicinal wine from kokum, became possible as well.

KFF is now on a pandemic-induced pause. But its Facebook page is updated with a constant stream of know-how, seed/graft sources, events and useful plant-related information.

(Left) Lumina Lobo from Siolim with her homemade fruit wines at the 2015 Festival and (right) stall listing of homemade wine varieties, 2005 Festival. Photos by KFF/Facebook (left) and Frederick Noronha (right).

Read more: [Photos] The invisible farmers of Mumbai

Banner image: Stalls at the Konkan Fruit Fest in 2017. Photo by Konkan Fruit Fest/Facebook.

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