Gong Xi Fa Cai, Robbie Burns

Hey! Your end is draggin'!

At the end of January I'm always pulled in two competing directions: jau gok and a nice bottle of Tsing Tao, or haggis and a wee dram? It's not only Chinese New Year on January 26th, but also it's Robbie Burns Day on the 25th.

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Of Wine and Werewolves

Nice doggie!

Man, it's like news stories are designed to scare me--me, personally. According to the Daily Mail if you've got the right sort of liver, and enjoy a bit too much wine, it can turn you into a werewolf.

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Politics, Wine, Bowling and Kindergarten

That's how I chill, that's how I roll

While I don't think of myself automatically as a generous guy, I do like to share wine with other people. In fact, I rarely drink anything special when I'm alone–can you imagine hoarding your wine and rubbing your hands with greedy glee over the cork?

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Why Is the Sky Blue?

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Irving Berlin was a lyricist, not a physicist, but he knew a good thing when he saw it. Blue skies turn out to have a precise connection to the colour of wine. No, not blue wine--that's for Romulans and cosplay geeks, but rather why wine made from my kits is darker after it's been filtered, and why the sky is blue and not some other colour.

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Faster Than a Speeding Bubble

I once popped a magnum in Reno, just to watch it froth

Ooh, those kooky, flighty Germans! What will they think of next? According to Decanter Magazine, German Scientist Logs Champagne Cork Speed.

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Kitties, Bugs and Chrysanthemums

I'd hide around the corner too.

For years I've advocated the use of pyrethrin-based insecticides as one of the few safe remedies for fruit-fly infestations. Melanogaster drosophila (the mug on the left) can be a real pain in the carboy. Not only are they unsightly, they carry the hazards of a schnozzle full of bacteria wherever they go, and can (at least potentially) transfer it into your poor innocent wine. They ignore flypaper, are too small to swat, and seem to appear out of thin air whenever there's fermentation going on.

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Gumming Up the Works

Mmm, there's nothin' like home cookin'

One of the things I hear from consumer winemakers is that their home wines sometimes don't measure up to their expectations (well, I hear that a lot, actually, from people who are tasting it during primary fermentation or from the carboy, a week or so after pitching the yeast. 'It tastes sharp and funny! What's wrong?' Well sir, perhaps if you took a pork roast out of the oven when it was half-cooked and tried to cut yourself a slice, you'd find it odd-tasting as well).

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Tox Talks

Just looking at this picture makes me want to take up smoking and drinking bourbon.

I love modern journalism. So much of it has been streamlined to make way for more advertising and less budgets for research, follow-up and analysis that the most errant nonsense shows up as gospel, and gets recirculated by other news services eager for cheap and usually sensational pronouncements that sell papers (or increasingly, pixels).

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Happy New Year

Coffee, the most important meal of the day for a Santa Claus in training

The Annual White Rock Polar Bear Swim was a success. My pal David couldn't swim, as he came down with a rotten cold at the last minute, but he did show up to take pictures for me, which does show a lot of fortitude. It was one of the coldest swims I can remember--less than 2ºC out there!

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