"vineyards" news and stories

• Science claims that men really can drink women under the table.
• An elderly couple commemorates Veteran's Day with homemade Danish Peppernuts.
• At Parkville's Iron Horse your seating options are "car" or "caboose."
• A roundup of festive, locally made foods, including some non-perishables.
• A blue cheese dip made with turkey bacon, skim cheese and non-fat milk is not so bad for you.
• A Missouri winemaker attempts Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Mourvedre, all on his 10-acre vineyard.
• Students of the Broodmoor Bistro host a James Beard Night.

Here's a clever idea: online wine videos! It's The Winery Channel, and they have everything from instructional videos that teach you what foods go with what wine to visits to various vineyards and vacation spots.

The site has a sense of humor too. Make sure you watch Rex Havoc (and his horse "Brokeback"), who shows you the best wine bottles to use for shooting practice, and Dave in Los Angeles, who rants about his neighbor Walter, a wine snob. The stuff he says...well, you know people like Walter (and not just when it comes to wine). You'll be quoting a couple of Dave's lines to your friends later this week.

There are many "shows" to watch, including "Hot Legs," "The Wine Bar Show," and "Got Wine?" (the videos can be kinda glitchy - took me a few clicks to get each video working, but it's worth it).

Don't tell me that after watching the mvie Sideways you didn't have the teeniest tiniest inkling of a fantasy of dropping everything, moving to wine country and making your simple living as a winemaker. Heck, I had that dream. I even had that dream back when I first saw French Kiss.

But that was a dream. Reality is you have a career, a family, friends, and a whole host of other responsibilities.

You may not be able to go and live on a vineyard, but San Francisco company CrushPad can at least get you as close to making your own wine without leaving your real life. Crushpad provides grapes from California vineyards, and from there, you decide how much you want to be involved in making your own wine, using resources like their team of winemakers. You don't even have to live in California!

According to Chuck McMinn of Vineyard 29, his winery in Napa Valley, high tech wine is better.

Chuck is one of many "Silicon Valley refugees," who, after success in technology, leave Silicon Valley and pursue a second career in making wine. However, rather than technology behind, this new breed of winemakers is taking the technology right along with them. They use all kinds of high-tech gadgetry in the wine-making process - everything from moisture probes monitoring water use to weather stations to sap-flow sensors to Tanknet, a system that manages software at 80 vineyards. Tanknet links thermostats on the tanks to Web-based software to regulate fermentation and aging.

The question is, how does this high-tech wine match up against, say, French wines, which have been made for hundreds of years without so much as irrigation? Some experts believe that high tech is the future of wine, but you be the judge. Here are three they recommend you try: Clos De La Tech (www.closdelatech.com), Clos LaChance (www.closlachance.com), and the aforementioned Vineyard 29 (www.vineyard29.com).

If you've got millions of dollars, you could probably buy a winery somewhere in the south of France to make wine yourself. But then again, you've got to not only know about wine, but how to make wine. Come to think of it, you're probably going to need to grow some grapes, too.  

If that's a problem for you, then you can buy a $1,999 WinePod from ProVina instead. The WinePod is a complete state-of-the-art winery all rolled up into a tiny four-foot-tall pod that fits inside your home. You don't even have to hide it in your garage because it's not ugly. If you're into the Jetsons, that is.

The San Francisco Chronicle has some details about how the WinePod works, from ordering grapes all the way to bottling. If you want one, you have to act fast. There's already a waiting list.