“Not just does the SphK1/S1P pathway signaling play a part in prostate cancer, but it plays a part in other cancers too, like colon cancer, gastric cancers and breast cancer,”

stated Gerald Weismann, MD, chief editor of the FASEB online journal. “Even if research in the future shows that the benefits of green tea and red wine drinking is not as beneficial for humans as we have hoped, knowing which compounds in these beverages that interfere with this pathway is an all important step forward for developing medications that strike the exact same target.”

Researchers undertook in vitro experiments which demonstrated that inhibiting the sphingosine 1-phosphate/sphingosine kinase-1 (S1P/SphK1) pathway is essential for red wine and green tea polyphenol antioxidants to kill cancerous prostate cells. Following that, mice genetically modified to develop human prostate cancer tumors were either not treated or treated with wine and green tea polyphenol antioxidants. The mice treated displayed a reduction in tumor growth as a direct result of the inhibited S1P/SphK1 pathway. To mimic these preventative benefits of polyphenol antioxidants, another experiment was conducted. Three groups of mice were given drinking water containing a specific kind of green tea polpyphenol called EGCG, drinking water containing a different green tea polyphenol called polyphenon E, or just plain drinking water. The mice were implanted with human prostate cancer cells and the results demonstrated a dramatic reduction in tumor size in the mice given the water containing EGCG or polyphenon E.

“The profound effect that these antioxidants in green tea and red wine have within our bodies is a lot more that anybody could have dreamed of just twenty-five years ago.” Weismann added. “So long as they are used moderately, all the signs show that green tea and red wine may be ranked amongst the most powerful ‘health foods’ that we know about.”

Source: http://www.fasebj.org/content/24/10/3882.abstract

During the process of making and enjoying our food and wine, it’s unlikely that we think about the fine motor skills that are required in each of those steps.

I recently read an article from an occupational therapy schools graduate, Estelle, who uses cooking as a therapeutic tool with her occupational therapy patients.  There are so many different skills and types of movement that are involved in cooking: chopping, slicing, opening, removing, stirring.  All of these little details can help train and retrain occupational therapy patients in all sorts of movements.  Consider an automobile accident patient who fractured his arm; cooking can help him use muscles that will help him regain mobility and strength.  Cooking can also be used as a fun and tasty motivator to a child with a learning disability.  There’s nothing better than getting to enjoy the fruits of your labor!

The simple movement of picking up and gripping a wine glass or a salad plate can also help patients relearn movements that they may have lost.  Not only that, but cooking is emotionally therapeutic to many.  If you’re an occupational therapist, consider adding meal preparation to your therapeutic offerings.  It’s an enjoyable task for both therapists and patients alike.

On a typical Wine and Beauty Night, I do the following:

• Select six wines in a wide variety for tasting throughout the night
• Have a selection of cheese, meat, crackers, fruits, vegetables, and occasional small plate meals — a nice variety, but nothing too heavy
• Set up “beauty stations” in both my master bathroom and guest bathroom

We start in the kitchen and living room, tasting wine and food, and chatting about our day.  After about an hour, we head upstairs to wash off our makeup and change into robes before the real fun begins!  The format of the beauty portion changes based on who is in attendance.  Some of the girls are representatives for beauty companies such as Arbonne or Mary Kay, so if they present their products that evening, we typically focus on that brand only.  Other times, each person will bring one or two of their favorite products for everyone to try out.  We try everything from facial masks to nail polish to under-eye concealer.  It’s a fun way to discover new products and to talk about what’s working for us.

I highly recommend having a wine and beauty night in your home.  It’s a fun way to get together with some of your closest friends!

Don’t forgot the most important rule of brewing at home – Sanitation, Sanitation and Sanitation!

For making wine use Sodium metabisulphite, Use 1 tablespoon for each gallon of water used and soak for about 10 minutes. And then drain it. Rinsing isn’t necessary. If some solution remains, do not worry, it’s the same stuff that will be added later.

If you’re using buckets of juice to make wine, this is what I recommend:

Day 1:
Pour your juice into a sanitized, larger, food grade standard container that leaves about 10 to 15% head space and add in one packet of yeast. Don’t fill the fermenter to the very top! The initial ten days of fermentations is going to be foamy and vigorous. Leave lots of room between the airlock and the must. Oxidizing and splashing the juice in the beginning is only good at this point. It helps create a full fermentation and helps reduce the quantity of sulfites within the juice. Numerous batches that I have personally tested actually have much greater levels of sulfite than is recommended (100 ppm), this ensures a stable product for shipping. This could cause problems at a later point by destroying too much yeast or/and preventing malolactic fermentation, something that matures and softens wine

Yeast: Adding cultured yeast into juice or grapes helps produce more consistent wines year to year. On occasion the additional sulphites kill off too much of the yeast and there isn’t enough cells to complete the process to dryness. There’s 100′s of yeast strains on grape skins. Adding a high quality yeast culture will eat the majority of sugars and prevents less wanted yeasts from adding and eating off flavors.

For white wines, peptic enzymes should be added. However, this isn’t always needed, it’ll ensure that your wine comes out clear. It is better to include it and to not have a need for it, than to not use it and create a hazy wine.

1st Racking:
After the first ten days, rack (which means to siphon from one vessel to another) into a demi-jon or glass carboy and leave 1 to 3″ of headspace. You can add oak chips at this point if you like. My preference is after the 2nd racking.

Racking: Whenever racking, ensure that you transfer from the bottom of the 1st container into the bottom of the recipient container to avoid oxidation. Racking early is recommended highly. It will help create full fermentation and to produce a wine with a clear appearance. If you agitate the yeast you will add just a little oxygen into the must and this makes it easier for the yeast to ferment all of the sugar. Should you end up with some sediment (called lees), so not worry, you will some next time.

Timing: The time that you wait for this first racking is not critical. You will want to do it early though, while the yeast is healthy and young. The 1st racking “triggers” the yeast and adds in some oxygen that helps produce a fermentation that is more complete.

2nd Racking:
After 4 to 6 weeks you will need to rack again, but top off headspace using wine this time.

Dead Yeast: This particular step helps to avoid autolysis (decaying yeast). As with all dead things, yeast rots if it is left by itself for an extended period, and dying yeast will create an off-tasting wine.
Add Oak: For those that have not yet added oak, or those who would like more woody tannins, you should add the chips at this point. It will help fill up the fermenter and helps give the wine an oaken-barrel like finish, without going through the hassle of actually using a barrel.

Oak chips come in a variety of flavors to improve the flavor of your wines. {Light, medium or dark toasted American, French or Hungarian wood.|Each has its own distinctive flavor.}

Aging:
After 4 to 6 months do another rack and add in 1/4 of a teaspoon of potassium based meta-bisulphate to every 5 gallons. Perform this step sooner should you see a considerable amount of lees.

Sulphite: It is an important step to add sulphite into your wine to prevent oxidation and browning. It is a good idea to use a sulphite test kit and maintain levels of 80 to 100 ppm to avoid infections and spoilage. In spite of it’s wrongly deserved reputation, sulphites are definitely a good thing to add to wine.
Sulphites don’t cause headaches for 98% of the population. The main cause of wine triggered headaches are a result of an allergic reaction to the tannin antioxidants found in grape skins, or by fast and hot fermentation that creates fusel alcohols. Improper handling and storage of completed wines is another major suspect for causing headaches.

Bulk aging is best for wine rather than bottle aging. Rapid temperature changes and vibrations are damaging to wines. Should the temperature of your wine room change by 10 degrees between morning and night, your bottle will change by 10 degrees too. Greater volumes such as demijons and carboys only change about 2 – 3 degrees. You have to figure if the advantage of bulk aging out ways the need to free the fermenter for your next batch.

Bottling:
Following a year of fermentation, the wine should be ready for bottling. Sanitize your corks and bottles for twenty minutes will be fine. It is not recommended to boil cork bottles and corks. Don’t forget the rule – bottle one, bottle the lot! You cannot leave half your wine, now open to air, for very long. After bottling, allow your bottles to sit up for a couple of days so that any pressure, created while forcing the cork in, is allowed to stabilize by pushing out the air as opposed to pushing a little bit of wine out.

Black cherries are native to the United States and can be found in many locations. They are abundant all over the Eastern half of the country as well as through Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The wine tastes good and I recommend you give it a shot if you haven’t made it before.

The Winemaking Home Page tells us:

More than anything else, it is the conversion of sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol by the action of yeast that makes wine. A critical amount of sugar simply must be present or you are wasting your time and ingredients. When this amount is absent, you must add sugar.

So it’s of vital importance that we use fully ripened fruit in our wine making. The best cherry picking month, for the ripest fruit, is September. Even with the ripest cherries, it’s going to be necessary to add sugar before you transfer to the secondary.

Black Cherry Wine Ingredient List

• 6-8 lbs black cherries
• 2-1/2 lbs granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1/2 tsp citric acid (to balance the malic acid of the cherries)
• 5-1/2 pints water
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• wine yeast and nutrient

Method

1. Start out with ripe, destemmed and washed cherries. Only use “perfect” fruits and throw away those that are blemished in any way. You can either chop the ingredients, in which case you needn’t worry about de-stoning the cherries, or you can run the cherries through a juicer to turn them into a pulp. The best juicer for winemaking isn’t cheap. To be honest, it is quite troublesome to juice/pulp the cherries with a juicer because they must be de-stoned first.
2. Add the cherries to the crock with the water and then stir in a crushed Campden tablet. Leave for 24 hours and the add the pectic enzyme. Then cover and leave for four days.
3. Next, you want to strain this mixture using either a jelly bag or a nylon seive (nut milk bag). Make sure you squeeze out as much juice as possible. Then it’s time to add the sugar, citric acid and nutrient. Make sure that the sugar dissoloves fully.
4. Transfer this liquid into the secodary and add the yeast starter. Then fit the airlock and move to a warm place. The ideal temperature is around 70 °F. After the initial fermentation has subsided which usually takes two to three weeks you can rack it. Just add some more cold water before re-attaching the airlock. Then you can leave it to ferment to dryness. This is ideally at a slightly cooler temperature, around 60 °F.
5. Finally you can bottle your wine. If you would like a sweeter wine you should stabalize and can add some more sugar. Give it at least six months before tasting. It is probably best drunk within eighteen months.

Photo courtesy www.heatheronhertravels.com

The Health Benefits of Wine

I was pleasantly surprised this week when I read an article about how one of my favorite past times, enjoying a nice glass of wine after a long day’s work, is actually making a positive contribution to my all-natural health and beauty routine!  According to Professor Joseph Vercauteren of Montpellier University of Pharmacy in France, the most powerful antioxidants in the world are grape seed polyphenols, which are contained in wine.  Two other elements of wine, the grapevine stalk (also known as resveratrol) and the grapevine sap (also known as viniferine) also have beauty-enhancing effects.  They all help firm the skin, increase the skin’s radiance, and reduce wrinkles.

Enjoy Your Indulgence

So, the next time you crack open a bottle of your favorite wine, remember that you’re doing your skin a favor.  As for whether or not it really works, maybe it’s just the rosy cheeks I get after I drink a glass of wine, but I really do feel like this small indulgence makes my skin glow!

Crushing and Pulping with a Masticating Juicer

There are two different styles of these machines. The newest models are vertical masticating juicers, such as the Omega VRT350HD. The older style machines are horizontal masticating juicers, e.g. the Omega J8006. The good news for wine enthusiasts is that it’s the cheaper horizontal machines which will do a better job for you.

This is because the vertical units work as effective juice extractors. However, this isn’t what we want. Instead, the horizontal machines have a special homogenizing function which doesn’t extract the juice and separate it from the pulp but instead just crushes and grinds the pulp and juice together. As far as wine making goes, this is exactly what we want.

Full Flavored Fruit Wines

So if you’re wanting to make a tasty black raspberry wine. You could definitely just crush the berries in a nylon straining bag. That’s going to be the cheapest option. You may find you get better results if you run the berries through a horizontal masticating juicer using the “blank plate” which ensures no separation of pulp and juice. The fruits and juice is puréed. You can then put this into a nylon bag and you find that you get better results in terms of being able to set the color and extract the maximum amount of flavorful juice.

Instead of using a nylon bag, you could simply put all the pulped and crushed fruit (and juice) into the primary.

Taking the time to extract the full flavor and aroma of your chosen fruits is a worthwhile step if you hope to create the best wine possible, the right kind of juicer can definitely be of use. This is of course only the first step. You may feel that it’s overkill to spend over $200 on a juicer, but maybe not.

After taking over the family business in 1885, Josep’s son, Manuel Raventós became convinced that the family’s sparkling wines had a promising future. After seeking the advice of leading French wine producers he decided that Codorníu should devote itself exclusively to the production of sparkling wine by the traditional method.

The Codorníu winery is located in Penedès, Catalonia.

Codorníu is the oldest and largest cava producer. They have a variety of bottles available, including Codorníu Original, Codorníu Pinot Noir and Selección Raventós

www.codorniu.com

The substance that is given most of the credit is resveratrol, found in high concentrations in the skin and seeds of grapes – particularly those used for red wine.  Studies indicate that resveratrol has anti-fungal, anti-oxidant, anti-coagulant, anti-bacterial. anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer effects. Wow! That’s a lot of health boosting power.

Specific Health Benefits Of Red Wine

• The anticoagulant properties of wine are thought to help reduce the risk of blood clots and plaque formation over the short term that can lead to heart disease.
• Its antibacterial properties may help soothe digestive upsets.
• Wine appears to have positive effects on the metabolism of cholesterol – rasing your good cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol) and controlling your bad cholesterol.
• The antioxidant properties of wine may help in slowing the progression of macular degeneration, protecting our vision as we age.
• The antioxidant effects of wine may also help prevent certain forms of cancer.  Antioxidants are thought to prevent “free radicals” from causing cellular damage.
• Its anti-inflammatory properties could help improve arterial health.
• Revesterol may increase estrogen and help in the maintenance of strong bones as we grow older.
• Wine may even help people at risk of type 2 diabetes by improving the body’s sensitivity to insulin.  (Note however that wine can also elevate triglyceride levels, which can have a negative effect on health problems like diabetes).

But remember these benefits only come to moderate drinkers (typically defined as one glass for women daily and two glasses for men).  Heavy drinking can have a negative impact on our health.  And of course you’ll only get the health benefits if you couple your red wine with a healthy diet and exercise.

Here’s a toast to your good health!

The majority of white wines are created from white grapes. We say most since there’s a handful of exceptions. Wine actually gets its coloring from the skins as they soak in juice.

Given that this is the case, it’s possible to produce white wines from black grapes by careful extraction of the juice and keeping skins separated. The famous example of this is Champagne. It’s made from a grape blend that includes Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir (black grapes).

Apart from color, not letting the stems and skins soak into the juice reduces the amount of tannins in the wine also. There is a mouth drying quality to tannins that cause wines to feel firm with in the mouth Sometimes however, white wines are allowed to ferment (age) in oak-wood barrels. These oak barrels will release some tannin into the wine, but not so much as in the average red wine.

Rosés are White!?

Believe it or otherwise, a blush (another name for Rosé), is deemed as a white wine. They are produced by letting skins to soak for short periods only prior to extraction. A good quality rosé should be refreshing and delicate, but not cloyingly sweet.

Some of the finest rosés are produced from the Granche grape. Rosés have gotten a bad wrap as a result of some of the very cheap and sweet varieties in the marketplace. Do not let this stop you from discovering some which are genuinely delightful and worth savoring.

Prime White Wine Varieties:

Chardonnay – This is the most popular white wine in the world. It’s normally aged in oak and has a butter-like flavor.

Chenin Blanc – A common wine to the French Loire Valley. It’s very acidic and ranges from extremely dry to super sweet.

Gewürztraminer – This is the most aromatic of all white wines. The aromas are spice and floral.

Muscat – This variety of white wine is the only one that smells like grapes. It can have a number of styles and is popular as a sparkling wine.

Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris – Features a wide range of styles from sweet to dry to spicy. Oftentimes they posses a hint of honey.

Reisling – A white wine low in alcohol content yet strikingly acidic. Most are extremely sweet, but some can be dry too. Clare Valley in southern Australia is renowned for its Reisling.

Sauvignon Blanc – Designed to be drunk young, these wines are the most pungent and tangy of the wines.