Standing in front of a wine tasting class of restaurant managers, wine importers and producers, Cavaliere Subhash Arora declares: "People in India waste too much time in matching wines to food."

The crowd looks up from their booklets filled with notes about each wine and stares at him curiously. Matching wines with food is why many of them are there. But most understand the frustration of trying to match wines with the spices in traditional Indian dishes.

"We had a dinner last night with the Indian Wine Academy and we heard members say it was hard," Michele Shah, an Italy-based wine critic, told the audience about a dinner of 44 enthusiasts at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Delhi. "There aren`t that many wines to match to Indian food spices."

Shah says it is best to find a rounder and fuller wine with pairing Indian dishes. "In particular, wines that are fruit driven and have softer, velvety tannins are a better match," Shah told IANS through email.

Whether or not people have found a way to match up wine and Indian food has not stopped the wine industry from booming. It is just one of the ways that wine is transforming from a trend to a lifestyle product. Industry lobby Assocham says the wine industry is growing at a rate of 35 percent and would reach Rs.2.700 crore (500 million USD) in 2012.

"Drinking wine as a lifestyle choice is catching up very fast," Arora told IANS. "Wine is now always there at places where it hadn`t been even offered before, like parties and weddings."

Arora is president of the Indian Wine Academy and has judged over 24 international wine competitions since 2006. He says that over the last five years, wine as a drink choice has started to become a trend. Indians are known for drinking spirits, especially whisky, and Arora says many of these people are not changing from their signature drink, but adding wine as a selection.

"I think (some people) have figured out the downside to hard liquor like whisky and rum, which was quite the done thing in the evenings for health reasons and wine is a good alternative," said Anasuya Gupta, one of the only purely wine enthusiasts at the tasting.

Gupta could be described as a typical wine drinker as she is a well-accomplished woman who drinks wine with company, as well as uses it in the kitchen. She says her two children, aged 23 and 20, have also started to enjoy the taste.

"There are a lot of young urban people who enjoy drinking wine," Sovna Puri, Head-Tastings & Training at Sula Vineyards, told IANS. "Budget wine is very affordable from the point of view of college students and most youngsters do prefer a wine on the sweeter side."

Gupta gets her wine delivered to her house through a programme designed by the Wine Society of India. She likes to pick smooth wines that she can drink and also uses it in the kitchen when cooking special dishes for her family.

There are over 500 liquor stores selling wine within Delhi: 423 government-run, 90 private and 16 mall-based liquor outlets. Wine is no longer restricted to beer and wine stores and is sold as a lifestyle product in most hypermarkets.

Spar Hypermart opened the liquor store portion of its store in Gurgaon less than a month ago. It says that 25 percent of its business comes from wine. It has signs between the aisles describing different features of wine, information on how to store it and even what type of glasses should be used for each different kind. Sales of imported wine are greater but the Indian selection is growing. Cavaliere Arora says that although local wine is not as popular as its imported counterpart, "it`s a niche market and it`s growing".

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SHANGHAI - Tipsy Chinese investors drunk on the legend of Lafite wine have been rudely shocked by the cold economic fact that what goes up can come down.

Helping to push the prices of branded wine up by an average of 30 percent in each of the past several years, Chinese investors in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Beijing were dismayed to find that their cherished investments lost as much as 40 percent of their value within a few months. Wine merchants in Shanghai and Hong Kong attributed the setback to the global economic slump. Despite the sharp reverse, investors have largely remained sanguine.

"The price of red wine rose over the past decade. I think it is normal to have some fluctuations in the wine market," said Zhou Yang, a wine collector from Yiwu in Zhejiang province. "But I believe the price will not go into a free fall because vintage wine has remained one of the best hedges against inflation."Zhou said he would spend more than 100,000 yuan ($15,857) on red wine every year, some of which he drank.

Wang Jiaqi, business development director of Shanghai International Wine Exchange", said the fall in prices in the Chinese market is in tandem with the international trend. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50, a benchmark index introduced by London-based Liv-ex Fine Wine Exchange to track daily prices of the most heavily traded wine, dropped by some 16.6 percent in 2011.

The prices of some famous branded red wine with high brand awareness among Chinese investors experienced a significant drop in 2011. For instance, a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2008 is now priced at some 9,500 yuan, down from 15,000 yuan in early 2009. A bottle of Carruades de Lafite is traded at 2,600 yuan to 2,800 yuan in the market, down by about 35 percent from its height in May 2011.

"The sovereign debt crisis in Europe did have an impact on wine prices. The fall in the trading price in overseas markets and the fluctuation in foreign exchange markets contributed to the decline," said Wang. "The change in macro policies in the Chinese market also had an impact on the wine trading market."
Wang said some people gambled on certain branded red wine but as investors become more knowledgeable it is reasonable to see prices adjusting to more normal levels, which is another factor contributing to the decline. The wine trading market boomed in past decades in China, helped by the increase in business banquets and people's desire for a more luxurious lifestyle.

Figures from A.T. Kearney (ATK), a consulting company in the United States, suggest that revenue generated from wine sales in China reached about 53 billion yuan in 2009, benefiting from increasing wine awareness and rising health consciousness. ATK pointed out that growth in both volume and value has been 15 percent or better on an annual basis over the past few years.

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Nothing in the forager's calendar is more seasonal than birch sap. Blackberries, wild garlic and most other wild foods are around for months; with birch sap you have two weeks, three at the most. In Dorset, where I live, it is approximately the middle two weeks of March, but it can be slightly earlier or later, depending on the weather. It may seem a little early to talk about it now but you do need to be prepared for birch tapping - mentally, physically and administratively - so I am giving you a head start.

I am going to come clean. I do not see the point of birch sap wine. With most alcoholic drinks the ingredients are there to provide the flavour or the sugar and sometimes both. Birch sap wine contains very little of either so it cannot do these things – it just supplies the water. But I know that a lot of people swear by the stuff and will disagree with my dismissal of what they consider to be a first class wine. If you like birch sap wine let me know and tell me why I am wrong. No, really.

Having said all that, I do love collecting birch sap so, apart from the odd batch of wine to remind myself how right I am, I make birch sap syrup to pour on my pancakes. I boil the fresh sap down until half of the water has gone, then transfer to a bain-marie (to stop it "burning") and continue until only 10% is left. I then strain out all the bits through some muslin and add sugar to form the syrup. You can reduce it all the way to a syrup (less than 2% of what you started with!) without adding the sugar but the flavour is far too strong and bitter for most people.

So how do you go about collecting this arcane ingredient? First, of course, you will need to find some mature silver birch trees with trunks at least 25cm in diameter (downy birch won't work) and obtain permission to drill holes in them from the owner – not always easy. (The ones outside the Tate Modern in London are too small, by the way).

You'll also need some kit. A hand drill and drill bit, a bucket to collect the sap (I sometimes use a four litre milk container with a hole strategically cut in the side near the top), some tapered wooden plugs (candle waxed at the sharper end to seal them), a mallet and something to carry the sap home in.

You will also need some spigots or spiles. These are virtually impossible to obtain in the UK so you will have to find them online from Canada or the US where they are uses for sugar maple tapping. You can rig up something with tubes and pipes but I have never been able to stop it all leaking. Check, using a scrap of wood, that your plugs and spiles tightly match the drill bit you will be taking with you.

Off to the woods. Drill a slightly upward slanting 5cm deep hole into your chosen tree at waist height. If nothing comes out when you are half way in, the tree is dry. Stop drilling, hammer in a plug and try another tree. After three no-shows it will be worth waiting another week. If all is well, hammer in a spile, hook on your bucket through the little hole you will have made in the rim and cover it. Come back the next day to collect your sap – if you are lucky you will get about two to three litres from each tree. Very carefully plug the holes – if you don't the sap will continue to flow and the poor tree may not recover from this added insult.Birch sap tastes almost exactly like water – but the freshest water you have ever tasted, with just a hint of sweetness (0.7% sugar is the highest I have ever found). It does not keep very long – about four days in the fridge – so use it as soon as you can. Here is how you make the wine.

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Don’t dare call the wines of Franciacorta “spumante,” the semi-sweet bubblies from Asti. And don’t confuse them with Champagne, even though Franciacorta sparklers are made with the same methode champenoise. Nor should you try to trace their history back to the Renaissance, the way those Tuscan wine aristocrats flaunt their pedigrees.

On the contrary, the wine makers of Franciacorta, in eastern Lombardy, are proud that they are giovanni-come-latelies to the Italian wine boom. For while wine has been made at local monasteries for centuries, not until the 1960s did it occur to anyone to make sparkling wines in the region.

Led by the experiments of the Guido Berlucchi estate and fueled by explosive investment in the region at that time, sparkling Franciacorta took on a cult interest that soon developed into big business for estates like Ca’ del Bosco, Bellavista, and Cavalleri.

While sparkling-wine technology was expensive, advances were quick, and before long Franciacorta was being referred to as the Silicon Valley of Italian wine. By 1995 the wines had achieved a D.O.C.G. appellation, the highest “guaranteed” grade under Italian wine law. In the past decade the area under cultivation quadrupled, producing 11 million bottles in 2011, with Berlucchi accounting for half the total.

From the beginning Franciacorta adopted the exacting French method of making Champagne, distancing itself from the large bulk processes used to make Italian spumante and prosecco. The same grapes used in making Champagne -- chardonnay and pinot noir (pinot nero in Italian) -- were planted extensively and now cover about 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres).

French Connection
The wineries are so intent on refining their image that instead of using the Italian word “rosato,” they call their pink wines “rose.” They use the same residual sugar levels as the French for Brut, Extra Dry and Demi-Sec. The driest of all receive no sugar water infusion, a style called in French “pas dosage;” in Franciacorta it’s “pas dose.”

Like Champagnes, non-vintage Franciacorta wines spend a minimum of 18 months aging in the bottle, 30 for vintages and 60 for the riservas. Misguided hubris attempted to push up the prices of the best Franciacortas in the 1990s, though none approach those of most vintage or cuvee prestige Champagnes, which can sell for up to $2,500 a bottle. Excellent quality Franciacortas can be found easily in the U.S. and Europe for under $25.

Osso Buco
Foodwise, they go extremely well with the butter-rich dishes of Lombardy, like saffron-scented risotto alla milanese and well-fatted osso buco. As an accompaniment to the region’s air-cured beef called bresaola and a morsel of Grana Padano or robiola cheese, there is nothing better. So how do Franciacorta sparklers compare to Champagnes? That isn’t easy to answer, because individual taste in sparkling wines is a huge factor. I, for one, think that the pas dosage method in even the most expensive Champagnes and Franciacortas robs the wines of their fruit, leaving a bone dry taste that the producers would have you believe is “elegance.”

Some, especially the Brits, enjoy decades-old vintage Champagne that begins to show oxidation, which I consider a flaw. Others, including myself, like a little yeastiness in the nose and on the palate, a quality not easily detected in Franciacortas. But overall, the Franciacortas I recently sampled certainly bested most other Italian sparklers and compared more than favorably with a wide range of Champagnes.

Brothers and Sisters
Fratelli Berlucchi is owned by five siblings, whose Selected Estates Brut Rose 2007 is lush with raspberry-like fruit and just enough dryness to give it ideal balance. The fruit struggles to stay on the palate yet does carry to the finish.

Barone Pizzini Brut non-vintage ($24) was highly effervescent, with great vitality, though not much fruit or any yeastiness. It’s refreshing but little more. Monte Rossa Prima Cuvee non-vintage ($24) was bone dry with tiny bubbles. I found this the most lackluster of the sampling, despite it being among the priciest.

Montenisa Brut Rose non-vintage had plenty of bubbles and a fine tangy flavor, a little like prosecco but drier and more refined, its rose color and depth coming from pinot nero grapes. The label notes that the wine is “bottled by” Tuscan wine aristocrat Marchese Antinori. Its U.S. price ranges from $32 to $45, making it the most expensive of those I sampled.

Golden Age
Quite golden in color, the 100 percent chardonnay Fratelli Muratori Crespia Novalia Brut ($22) was deliciously dry, very refreshing, with a slight hint of age on the back of the palate, having been kept on the lees for 24 months. It compares very favorably with a fine non-vintage Champagne.

I was most impressed by Contadi Castaldi Rose non-vintage ($22), whose minimalist label covers an impressive sparkler that upon opening foams in the glass, retaining an effervescent head of bubbles long after. There’s a light cherry flavor and bouquet here that makes it very good with food and, with all those bubbles, is sure to make you happy.

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ROBERT M. PARKER JR., the powerful wine critic, called it “one of the major scams being foisted on wine consumers.” Other wine writers have joined in, though perhaps with less vitriol. Mike Steinberger, in Slate.com, referred to wine’s “radical chic side,” and bemoaned the sloganeering. Tom Wark, a wine marketer and blogger, assailed it for denigrating competitors in order to define itself. People I know in the wine business, including a few good friends, find the whole thing obnoxious.

Their target? Natural wines and their partisans, sometimes referred to grandiosely as the “natural wine movement,” implying leaders, orthodoxy and an agenda — set forth, no doubt, in triplicate.

What is this movement? No more than a tiny collection of winemakers who, along with a motley crew of restaurants, wine bars, consumers and writers, prefer wines that are made with an absolute minimum of manipulation: grapes grown organically or in rough approximation, then simply set forth along an unforced path of fermentation into wine, with nothing added and nothing taken away.

Nothing ought to be wrong with that. Yet the notion of such advocacy lights a short fuse that explodes into hissy fits. In fact, as is so often the case with annoyances, the reaction brings the irritant far more attention than it might have earned otherwise.

Almost two years ago, I likened the natural-wine discussion to a hornet’s nest, which had set off disagreements all over the world of wine. If anything, the fracas has worsened, except that now the loudest voices are those of condemnation. The criticism raises the question of what, exactly, people find so threatening about natural wines and the people who enjoy them.

Clearly, critics perceive the natural-wine partisans as self-righteous, scolding and sanctimonious fundamentalists, even if the evidence is supplied only by implication. That is, if you call your wine natural, what does that make mine? Unnatural? Manipulated?

As many critics have pointed out, the word natural is nebulous and ill defined. Nobody knows exactly what it means, least of all its partisans, who seem to have little interest in specifics and codification.

For some on the extreme end, it may mean using no sulfur dioxide whatsoever, a risky maneuver as this chemical has been used since antiquity as a wine stabilizer. Without it, wine must be made with painstaking hygiene, and shipped and handled carefully, or it may spoil.

Others will accept the use of sulfur, but insist on fermenting the wine only with ambient yeasts, rather than trying to guide fermentation by selecting particular strains of yeast and adding them to the juice.

This lack of definition, repeated in many other ways, seems to profoundly disturb the critics, yet perhaps it is one of the greatest strengths of the natural partisans. In the same way that the Occupy Wall Street insurgency resists enumerating goals or anointing official representatives, natural-wine partisans refuse to be pinned down in a manner that subjects them to lawyerly argument. That frustrates those who fear they will become targets if they do not subscribe to what they see as natural-wine dogma; hence the shrillness of their criticism.

To me, this fear seems terribly misplaced. Unlike the 99 percent in the Occupy analogy, the natural-wine partisans represent far less than 1 percent in terms of wine sales.

And as far as dogma goes, the only thing many natural-wine partisans agree on is that they abhor industrial practices in agriculture and the technological and chemical manipulations of wine. Guess what? So do many critics of natural wines.

That leaves us with the wines themselves, which come in all shades and styles, offering a diverse spectrum from beauty to, yes, hideousness. The best include wines that I love, whether the lively, provocative sparkling wines of Andrea Calek, made in the Ardèche; the gorgeous multifaceted wines of Arianna Occhipinti, from Sicily; the many complex cuvées of Jean-François Ganevat in the Jura; or the brilliant, amphora-fermented wines of Josko Gravner in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

Bad ones? Naturally. Any genre of wine, regardless of how it is defined, will include those that are poorly made. I’ve had so-called natural wines that tasted like microbiological swamps. I’ve also had some that simply didn’t appeal to my taste.

Frankly, I don’t know, and don’t much care, whether many of the wines that I love to drink qualify as “natural” or not. I do know that the vast majority of them are made as carefully as possible by farmers who practice classic forms of viticulture and winemakers who may try to guide the path of production but don’t seek to control it.

The fact that we are so much more conscious now about viticultural and cellar practices is because of an older generation of producers, writers, importers and others in the trade who inspired the genre of natural wines, like the French scientist Jules Chauvet, who conducted early experiments with sulfur dioxide; the Beaujolais producer Marcel Lapierre; his American importer Kermit Lynch; and even Mr. Parker himself, who has spent years criticizing many of the worst practices of mass-produced wine.

Those practices, of course, still go on. The commodity wines that make up the bulk of production are results of industrial farming and winemaking. In truth, so are many of the wines considered to be fine, though not all by a long shot.

Natural wines offer an ideal — many ideals — that have influenced the world of wine, no matter how much they irritate. Far better to absorb and consider rather than stamp a foot in annoyance.

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A SHIFT in the tastes of Australian drinkers has wine producers turning red with anger and white with fear. The strong Australian dollar, coupled with the aggressive tactics of supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths, has caused a plunge in the price of European wine. Prices of some European brands have dropped by 30 per cent, with a bottle of French Moet & Chandon now sometimes cheaper than the local version, Domaine Chandon.

Coupled with a cultural cringe that assumes foreign wine must be better, the low prices for obscure European drops have caused a flow of wine into the country - and money out - that the local industry is desperate to stem.

''It's absolutely fantastic,'' said Melbourne-based wine critic Jeremy Oliver. ''If you have $100 in your pocket, that will get you a top bottle of Australian cabernet or shiraz. Today it also buys you a pretty serious Bordeaux, a very good Italian from any region or a sensational Spanish red.'' The Australian industry's response to the deluge of cheap wine is a new marketing campaign asking consumers to consider patriotism as well as palate. Wine Australia wants Australians to stick to Australian wine on Australia Day and, if they catch someone drinking an offshore drop, to ''pull down their strides''.

The organisation's regional director, Aaron Brasher, said that in addition to the high Australian dollar, which yesterday was trading about 81 euro cents, European producers also benefited from government subsidies, economies of scale and lower labour costs.

''If you look at Spain or Italy, their cost of inputs would be lower, '' he said. Wine had also been caught up in the price wars between Coles and Woolworths, he said. ''People like Coles and Woolworths are actually importing their own wines now and cutting out the middle man,'' he said. ''Therefore their prices are more competitive.''The high dollar has delivered a double hit to local producers, making exporting more difficult at the same time as French and Spanish wines flood bottle shops. At Treasury Estates, which owns Lindemans and Penfolds, sales in the US, its largest market, fell 15 per cent to $803 million in the year to June.

''It's not just the strength of the dollar, it's the economic climate in Europe,'' said John Ellis, who stopped European sales from his Hanging Rock Winery two years ago to focus on the Asian market. ''We've basically abandoned that as a market.''Mr Brasher said the wholesale price demanded by overseas buyers had dropped from about $90 a case five years ago to about $60 a case today. As a result, the industry is concentrating on increasing local consumption, which accounts for about three-quarters of sales.

''It's a lot easier to drive domestic consumption,'' Mr Brasher said. ''You're not at the vagaries of exchange rates here. ''In the past there's been a cultural cringe around Australian wine - there's cooler or more obscure regions, whether it's Austria or Hungary.''The industry wants to increase awareness of Australia's 65 wine regions, he said. ''When you look at Australia, we've got as much diversity as Europe.''

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Australia’s wine lovers are embracing European bottles as never before, exacerbating a decline in the local industry already suffering from plummeting exports.

With the Australian dollar at record levels against the euro, imported wine has rarely been more affordable. Prices for some labels have dropped by 30 percent. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA’s Moet & Chandon Champagne is now sometimes cheaper than the French company’s locally produced Domaine Chandon sparkling wine.

“It’s absolutely fantastic,” said Jeremy Oliver, a Melbourne-based wine critic. “If you have A$100 ($104) in your pocket, that will get you a top bottle of Australian cabernet or shiraz. Today it also buys you a pretty serious Bordeaux, a very good Italian from any region or a sensational Spanish red.”

The shift is harder on local wine producers. Australia, the world’s largest wine exporter by volume outside of Europe, saw the value of exports decline to their lowest level in a decade in 2011, falling 10 percent from a year earlier to A$1.89 billion, according to government export agency Wine Australia.

At Melbourne-based Treasury Wine Estates, the world’s second-biggest publicly traded vintner and owner of the Lindemans and Penfolds brands, sales in the U.S., its largest market, fell 15 percent to A$803 million in the year through June. The effect is more pronounced in Europe, where the euro has fallen 7.8 percent over the past three months to make it the worst-performing major currency against the Australian dollar, compared with a 1.4 percent decline in the greenback.

“It’s not just the strength of the dollar, it’s the economic climate in Europe,” said John Ellis, who stopped European sales from his Hanging Rock Winery two years ago to focus on the Asian market. “We’ve basically abandoned that as a market.”

Exporters Struggle
The wine business is a microcosm of the broad effects of the strong dollar on Australia’s industries. The country’s largest steelmaker, BlueScope Steel Ltd., shut its export operations in August, citing the currency’s strength as a major reason. Retailers led by Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd. Chairman Gerry Harvey last January called on the government to limit competition from overseas rivals by raising the sales tax on some imports.

“These days, if you’re not at the top of your game, then you’re going to struggle in Australia,” said Stephen Walters, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Sydney.

Five years ago, Australia’s wine industry was an international sensation. Driven by signature brands such as Yellow Tail and Jacob’s Creek and support from influential critics such as Robert Parker, exports rose more than fourfold in the decade to 2007, when they peaked at 786 million liters. Australia overtook France as the U.K.’s top supplier of imported wine in 2005 and was briefly in 2008 the frontrunner in the U.S.

Competition, Bushfires
Then things turned. Competition had for years been increasing from other emerging wine areas such as Argentina, Chile and South Africa. A domestic wine glut prompted complaints from Jacob’s Creek producer Pernod-Ricard SA that the image of Australian wine was being damaged by too much low-quality product. In 2009, bushfires swept through the wine country of Victoria state, incinerating vineyards and tainting grapes with smoke. Exports have dropped 11 percent over the past four years, to 703 million liters in 2011.

Alongside the strength of the currency, the high price of labor and land plus the small-scale nature of middle-market wineries in Australia make it hard to compete with imports, said Oliver. “You can get seriously interesting, diverse wines from Europe, South America and South Africa for A$25 a blow retail,” he said. “In Australia today the small guys trying to do the equivalent are finding it very hard to get anything in the bottle for under A$45.”

Importers Gain
Every six weeks, John Baker ships a refrigerated container carrying about 10,800 bottles of French wine to his 270 square meter (2,900 square foot) refrigerated warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon. That represents a doubling of import volumes over five years for his business, Bordeaux Shippers. The Australian dollar is worth 81 euro cents now compared with 54 cents when he started in 2003, transforming the value of imported wines.

“I’ve been selling a 2001 vintage Chateau du Haut Moulin, that’s a 10-year-old wine from Bordeaux, and it’s A$39 retail; that wine really should be A$80,” he said. The price of whites from Chateau Magneau, in France’s Graves region, have fallen 30 percent over the past two years, he said.

China, Hong Kong
Since 2007, import volumes have risen 95 percent, to 73 million liters, or 97 million standard bottles, in the 12 months ended September. French wine imports have risen 58 percent, paralleling a movement of France’s export market to Asia, where increasing wealth is leading more people to drink premium wines.

China overtook Germany last year as the top importer of Bordeaux wines. Hong Kong, which sold $225 million of wine in auctions last year, has displaced New York and London and become the premier center of the global wine trade.

Moet Hennessy is seeing more than 10 percent growth in Australia for all of its premium sparkling wines, from Chandon and Moet & Chandon to expensive Dom Perignon, said Jonathan Coles, marketing director at LVMH’s local unit. Set up by the luxury-goods group in 1986, Domaine Chandon has traditionally offered a more affordable local alternative to imported French Champagne.

Moet & Chandon
Cellarbrations, a wine shop in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown, sells Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial for A$49.99 in six- bottle cases, compared with A$52 for LVMH’s Chandon Green Point Cuvee 1995, a sparkling wine produced in Australia’s Yarra Valley at Wine House, a Melbourne-based online store.

Franck Moreau, who sets the wine lists for Sydney restaurants Est and Uccello as sommelier for Merivale, a closely held restaurant group, said imported wines now make up half of the offerings, up from 30 percent previously. The biggest discounts are on French wines that haven’t yet become highly popular, such as Chablis and Sancerre, while Italians such as Barolo are as much as 20 percent cheaper than a year ago, he said.

“I see more people importing wine now,” he said. “The value with the dollar is so good, and the Champagne is very good at the moment.”

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If you want to put your money where your mouth is in this precarious age, an investment in good wine pays dividends far faster than a musty stock certificate. But if you want to know exactly what’s in the bottle, you have to put blind trust in winemaker David Enns, a former financial consultant, because each year he has carte blanche to change the blend.

The 2009 is a meaty Bordeaux-style (mostly merlot) red that’s affordable and dependable. It has rich colour, flavours of oak and commendable intensity. Enjoy with grilled or smoked meats and earthy wild mushroom dishes, especially ones with fresh herbs such as rosemary. Good aging potential. Available at BC and VQA Liquor Stores; also private wine shops. Kasey Wilson is food editor of Wine Access magazine and editor of Best Places Vancouver.

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A University of Connecticut researcher known for hyping the health benefits of red wine has been accused of at least 145 instances of fabricating and falsifying data with image-editing software, according to a three-year investigation made public by the university Jan. 11.

The researcher, Dr. Dipak K. Das, is director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Connecticut and a professor in the department of surgery.

Some of Das' articles, as many as 26 in 11 journals, have reported positive effects from resveratrol, an ingredient in red wine thought to increase longevity in laboratory animals.

The university said in a press release that it has frozen all externally funded research in the Indian American researcher's lab and will return a total of $890,000 in two new federal grants awarded to Das by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

The university also said it has initiated proceedings to fire Das, who has tenure. A special review board set up by the University of Connecticut allegedly found evidence of fraud in published papers dating from 2002 and in three grant applications. The findings of a 60,000-page report have been sent to 11 journals that originally published the articles for possible retractions.

The probe of Das began in January 2009, two weeks after the university received an anonymous allegation about irregularities in his lab. The U.S. Office of Research Integrity also told the university in 2008 about alleged fraud in a 2007 article in Free Radical Biology and Medicine and co-authored by Das.

The ORI is now conducting its own probe of Das' research, the university said. Other members of the CRC research team are also under investigation by the university.

"We have a responsibility to correct the scientific record and inform peer researchers across the country," Philip Austin, interim vice president of health affairs at the University of Connecticut, said in a statement.

Das had not been reached for comment at his university e-mail by press deadline. Several reports said that he is in India. Das said in a letter to the university after being made aware of the report last May that he believes he is being singled out for blame because he is Indian American.

Das alleged in the letter that the accusations against him are part of an effort to rid the university of the "Indian community," since most of those being investigated are Indian American researchers.

"I became the Devil for the Health Center, and so did all the Indians working for me," he wrote. "The evidence for conspiracy and racial hatred is overwhelming."

Das also indicated serious health problems that he attributed to the investigation.

"If you remember, you handed me a report in an envelope [May 10] at 4:12 p.m. in your office," Das wrote to one university official. "As I was extremely sick and I had to undergo treatments until this week. Only yesterday, I got chance to open it, and found a 60,000 pages of electronic documents that need to be addressed within four days."

"As you can realize it is humanly impossible, and totally impossible for a man in my condition. As you know, because of the development of tremendous amount of stress in my work environment in recent months, I became a victim of stroke for which I am undergoing treatment. My right side is affected that restricts my mobility, I suffered several hemorrhages within my brain, and I have brain ischemia/scar, epilepsy and many other complications that prevent me working continuously."

"I consulted my physicians and lawyers and according to them just to read the document may need more than a year. Analysis of the document from the computer results in tremendous stress and likely to cause hemorrhage. The major problem is I don't even remember what happened approximately 10 years ago and who did what, as most of our original documents since 1970 [last 40 years] were confiscated/destroyed by the vice president of the Health Center..."

NutraIngredients.com reported Jan. 17 that they had reached Das in India, where he said he is hospitalized after suffering another stroke. He reiterated his accusations of racial bias and added that "six more Indians" are on the university's "hit list." The accusations, he added, "are all a bunch of lies and Indians are being framed. I happen to be the chief."

University of Connecticut spokesman Chris De Francisco said the university was aware of the racial accusations, but had no comment while dismissal proceedings against Das are underway. He confirmed that the investigation of other researchers in the lab is ongoing.

The review board in its report cited "a pervasive attitude of disregard within CRC for commonly accepted scientific practices in the publication and reporting of research data...Given the large number of irregularities discovered in this investigation...the (review board) can only conclude that they were the result of intentional acts of data falsification and fabrication, designed to deceive."

The alleged fraud involved images of "blots" obtained through gel electrophoresis featured in article figures, Medscape Medical News said. Most figures showed Western blots, designed to study proteins.

Using Photoshop software as a forensic tool, the review board determined dozens of images showed evidence of inappropriate manipulation by "photo imaging software."

The most egregious examples were pasted-up "artificial blots" that "bear no resemblance to any legitimate experiment" and represent total fabrications, the report said.

The report said there were also background erasures, image duplications and images spliced together. Splicing blot images is allowed, but researchers must detail such manipulations, a practice not followed by Das in his articles, Medscape News said.

The report said that as head of the lab and senior author of all but one of the articles, Das "bears principal responsibility for the fabrication and/or falsification that occurred."

The report quoted Das' response saying that he doesn't know who prepared the figures that appeared in the journal articles. It also said he has provided "no substantive information" that could explain the research irregularities.

Resveratrol Partners, a company marketing a resveratrol-based dietary supplement called Longevinex, said in a press release that Das "is attending a scientific conference in India and has not been able to respond to the allegations," Medscape News reported.

Resveratrol Partners' Web site highlights some of Das's studies on the cardiovascular benefits of resveratrol. The company's managing partner Bill Sardi said Das doesn't have any business dealings with the firm and other researchers have confirmed the value of Longevinex, Medscape News added.

The New York Times said last week that the charges, if verified, are unlikely to affect the field of resveratrol research, because Das' work was peripheral to its central claims, several of which are in contention.

"Today I had to look up who he is," David Sinclair, a leading resveratrol expert at the Harvard Medical School, told the Times. "His papers are mostly in specialty journals."

The development, however, could influence research grants. Das was able to get large awards despite the low visibility and lack of rigorousness of his research.

Renate Myles, a spokeswoman for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, told the Times that scientific misconduct "can go undetected for a length of time even under the most rigorous systems of research oversight and review."

The Times said that Das appears in 588 articles listed in Google Scholar, "though some may be by other researchers with the same name and initials."

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A Kutztown wine maker won Double Gold and Best Vinifera at the Pennsylvania Farm Show recently. Brad Knapp of Pinnacle Ridge Winery entered six wines at the Farm Show and all six won awards. “I love wine so obviously I love making it and it’s satisfying to do that, especially when you come up with something that was Double Gold or was particularly good,” said Knapp.

The 2010 Late Harvest Vidal won Gold, the 2008 Veritas won Silver, the 2010 Chardonnay won Silver, the 2010 Riesling won Bronze and the 2010 Traminette won Bronze. The 2010 Pinot Noir won Double Gold and Best Vinifera. “I picked wines that I thought would do well, and they did,” said Knapp. “It feels good to win.”

Winning medals means that his palette is still in tune, he said. Knapp explained that a good wine has no flaws, that it has good balance between acidity, sweetness and alcohol. A good wine should also have a depth of flavors and length.

“It should last long on the palette and it just has to taste good,” he said. “It should put a smile on your face when you drink it.” He believes it takes some training to understand the varying nuances for different styles and varietals, “that the wine is exuding the personality of the grape the way it should.”

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