It’s Friday, and all of us are dreaming of the weekend, of barbecues, of outdoor picnics with friends and family, and of simply relaxing in a hammock with a glass of bubbly rose in one hand and a great book in the other. So rather than bog you down with heady wine content, we thought we’d give you a handful of links that we thought were either controversial or entertaining:
Hilarious Map of the World: The Onion never fails to amuse me, but rarely have I stopped to actually dig deep into the site to see what other entertaining treasures it holds. If you have an hour to spare, I highly suggest you waste it exploring their “Our Dumb World: An Atlas of Planet Earth“, where you’ll find a few fun and interesting wine “facts”.
Impossible Food Pairings!: This one is inspired by the fun posts over at DrVino. Let’s just say that I wasn’t astounded to read that prison food is bad. Part of me assumes that it would be bad or else what’s the point of being in prison. But what if the food is so disgusting that you can’t even stomach it? Slate Magazine recently published an article on a “food substance” called, Nutraloaf, which is “prescribed for inmates who have misbehaved in various waysâ€â€usually by proving untrustworthy with their utensils. The loaf provides a full day’s nutrients, and it’s finger foodâ€â€no fork necessary.” Evidently, this stuff is so unpalatable that state prisoners are complaining that their due process has been violated, and/or that it violates the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment. No matter how you approach it, we curious if we can’t make this monstrosity more palatable with a little vino. The question being, what do you pair with Nutraloaf?
European Wine Blogger Biographies: One of the great advantages of having a blog for the EWBC is the number of interesting biographies we’ve received on bloggers spattered across Europe. The most recent of them being from: Doug Cook of Able Grape, located in England; Giampiero Nadali of Aristide, located in Italy; and Thomas Lippert from Winzerblog.de, located in Germany. If you have a moment, check out the site and read about their view on why they blog and where they see the influence of wine blogs in the future.
Do Bloggers Think Print is Dead? Steve Heimoff recently posted an article suggesting that wine bloggers believe that print is dead. I would highly argue that we, as a whole, do not argue this, but rather feel as if digital is another form of communication that needs to be taken more seriously. Additionally, I doubt that any of us want to lose the look and feel of a book in our hand. To me, it’s like the feeling I get from popping a cork, which will always have a sense of nostalgia, romance and history attached to it; while a screwcap and a computer screen can’t even compare emotionally. To be honest, I feel like he’s making rather large and sweeping statements about how we, as bloggers, feel about the future of print, and would really like to know your thoughts on his article. While take a peek at his article on the credibility of wine bloggers.