Welcome to the Le Tastevin Wine Club

Upcoming Events

The 2023-2024 season is officially in the books, and we now look forward to an enjoyable spring and summer. The schedule for the 2024-2025 season has been posted. Our next wine tasting is scheduled for September 11, 2024, where Dr. Bob will continue his onslaught of Burgundy wines. As a reminder, our club treasurer will be collecting membership fees. We are hoping that our meeting place at LTU will continue as before.

Past Tasting

Our traditional summer dinner took place on July 10, 2024 at Eddie V's Prime Seafood in Troy, Michigan. A wonderful evening of wine, food and comraderie was enjoyed by all.
Dr. Bob hosted the traditional April tasting of Burgundy. We tested the aging limits of some very good producer's wines from the mid- to late-1990s, and learned why 2004 was a very challenging year. Our wines were paired with three delicious cheeses.

Club and Website News

• Recent Update! The sortable and searchable tables for both wine tastings and cheese pairings have been recently updated, and made more useful when browsing with multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets. With the addition of information provided by Joe's winetasting notes, the list now includes almost every wine tasted since September 1998. As of July 2024, the table now has 1,917 entries. With so many entries, there are undoubtedly errors and/or omissions, so please bring them to my attention so that corrections can be made.
• Im Memorandum: We are saddened of the news that our dear friend and supporting member Ken Cook has suddenly succumbed to illness. Publically this has been announced by Lawrence Tech, where Ken taught, in a short obituary. We are all profoundly saddened by our friend's passing.
• Current members (those who have paid their dues) have been issued new usernames and passwords. All old usernames and passwords no longer work. Contact the webmaster for more information or if you have problems loging in. Enable your browsers' javascript function for the membership page to properly display.
• Meeting Location: Club meetings are held at the Lawrence Tech Alumni House (GPS coordinates: N 42.4740, W -83.2523), off of 10 Mile west of Lasher Rd, at 7:30 pm.

Other News

• Great site on grape varieties from INRAE Centre in Montpellier
• Jancis Robinson's website has a nice elucidation on the history of Zinfandel/Primativo/Crljenak Kaštelanski.
• Helen Czerski writes in the WSJ about molecular and physical properties affecting the ability of a knife - and wire - to effectively, or not, cut cheese. (Thank you Ron for sending me this article!)
• Well written article decribes why the occurence of ice wines in Germany are being seriously impacted by climate change, whereas climate and geography favor Ontario, Canada.
• The excessive heat and fires effecting Australia's spring and early summer - due to the Indian Ocean dipole as well as effects of climate change and landscape alteration - are beginning to hit hard a number of wine producers. Wine Spectator has an article with some more details.
• A number of articles are predicting a rise in wine prices in response to 2017 extreme weather events, particularly in Europe
• Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are investigating the use of grape waste (pomace) extractions for cosmetics, nutrition and food preservation.
• Article on why a bottle of wine costs what is does
• Famous Paso Robles wine producer facing backlash for tree-clearing practices
• The historic drought affecting the American west, California in particular, is now resulting in wildfires that are threatening many of California's famous wine-producing regions. Recently, the storms barrelling through California may promise relief.
• Peer reviewed article in PNAS on a modeled impact of climate change on ecosystems and wine production: Hannah et al. (2013) write "...on a global scale, the impacts of climate change on viticultural suitability are substantial, leading to possible conservation conflicts in land use and freshwater ecosystems. Area suitable for viticulture decreases 25% to 73% in major wine producing regions by 2050 in the higher RCP [model] 8.5 concentration pathway and 19% to 62% in the lower RCP 4.5. Climate change may cause establishment of vineyards at higher elevations that will increase impacts on upland ecosystems and may lead to conversion of natural vegetation as production shifts to higher latitudes in areas such as western North America." Telling is Figure 1 with the impacts graphically illustrated on maps. Most important has to due with current vs. future land use and ecosystem management. The authors note: "Freshwater habitats may be particularly at risk where climate change undermines growing conditions for already established vineyards." Given the fact that many (if not most) freshwater habitats (springs, stream and rivers, wetlands and lakes) and surrounding supportive watersheds are over-stressed due to changing precipitation patterns and increasing human water diversion, both from surface and groundwater sources, and increasing landscape modification, this may be a increasingly important environmental and political issue that stakeholders and policymakers are probably ill prepared to handle.
• International Variety Catologue (Vitis) is an on-line resource documenting grape genetic resources, facilitating the exchange of material and an information source for breeders, researchers, and wine growers. Want to know the country of origin of a variety pedigree? The ancestral information breeder name and/or location of the breeding institute holding institution? The area planted with the variety in grape growing country? This and more information is included in this site.

Page last edited: July 11, 2024 (EB)

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