Don’t Cry For Me Walla Walla

Wine and roses? That’s already had its day(s). Wine and cheese? Been there, done that. Wine and onions? Okay, you’re listening. Walla Walla Valley–the tiny wine region in southeastern Washington–is perhaps the only wine region in the world that is famous for both its delicious red wines and its delicious, jumbo-size sweet onions, more than 24 million pounds of which are harvested each year. Like the Vidalia from Georgia and the Maui from Hawaii, Walla Walla onions are low in sulfur (the compound that makes you cry) and so sweet they can be eaten out of hand, as you would an apple.

Walla Walla sweet onion harvest usually begins the first week in June and there will be the “Sweet Onion Festival” on the 18^th & 19^th this month!

Champagne and sparkling wines don’t ever get “corked.”

Answer: False.

Both sparkling wines and Champagne can be “corked”—that is, tainted with TCA, the chemical that creates a funky odor that makes wines smell like a wet dog sitting on wet newspapers in a damp cellar. In fact, according to the French consulting oenologist and TCA expert Dr. Pascal Chatonnet, TCA is actually easier to smell in sparkling wines than in still wines. This is because sparklers are more aromatically delicate and also because the bubbles have the effect of volatilizing the compound, that is, making it smell more pronounced.

According to Dr. Chatonnet, TCA can be smelled in still wines at a threshold of 2 to 5 nanograms per liter, whereas TCA can be smelled in sparklers at a threshold of 1 to 1.5 nanograms per liter.

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Number of millions of shoppers estimated to have bought wine online at Alibaba, during the company’s 9-day fall sales festival which ends today. According to China Business Network, 47 percent of wine purchases in China… Continue reading

Don’t Cry For Me Walla Walla

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