"WineLabels" news and stories

In today's Los Angeles Times Food Section:

The sweet side of rhubarb - and I was literally just thinking that I should try my hand at rhubarb pie like mom used to make (er, not MY mom). Russ Parsons examines the many faces, sweet and sour, of this complicated veggie.

Accompanying recipes include rhubarb crisp a la mode with strawberry sauce (please! It's too early in the morning to be reading such things!) and rhubarb-strawberry sorbet.

Perfecting Chicken: Roasted or otherwise. And a recipe for roast chicken with fried artichokes and lemon. Other recipes include: braised chicken with capers and a Basque-style chicken.

S. Irene Virbila reviews the new Citrus at Social Hollywood, chef Michael Richard's experiment with running a successful restaurant from across the country.

Meet the man who's going to revamp your wine label -- complete with calories and nutritional information. You mean wine has calories...? And a sidebar with the history of U.S. wine label regulations.

A lively but not too complimentary review of the Top Chef Cookbook.

Wine of the week is a 2006 Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso.

Finally, Susan la Tempa looks back at several easy late-night recipes here.

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When you see the alcohol percentage noted on the side of a bottle of wine, you probably don't think too much of it, but it may not be as accurate as you might think. The alcohol content is required by law by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau (TTB) to be listed on the front of a bottle, but there is a range allowed. The benchmark for the alcohol content of wine is 14% because that is the level at which taxes go up. For wines that have less than 14 percent alcohol by volume, they are allowed to have plus or minus 1.5% of the content listed. So, for example, a 12.5% wine could actually have either 11% or 14%, which can be a fairly significant different if you're having more than one glass with dinner. Wines over 14% alcohol are allowed to be plus or minus 1%.

In general, the more precisely the alcohol content is written, whether it is 12.9% or 14.2%, the more accurate it is likely to be. If nothing else, you can always estimate based on the 14% benchmark if you really need to know how much alcohol you're consuming.

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