Time To "Blend In"

Did You Know? - The English word "wine" comes from the Proto-Germanic *winam, an early borrowing from the Latin vinum, "wine" or "(grape) vine", itself derived from the Proto-Indo-European stem *win-o- (cf. Hittite: wiyana; Lycian: oino; Ancient Greek: οἶνος oinos; Aeolic Greek: ϝοῖνος woinos).

Did You Know? - The word cheese comes from Latin caseus, ] from which the modern word casein is closely derived. The earliest source is from the proto-Indo-European root *kwat-, which means "to ferment, become sour".

More recently, cheese comes from chese (in Middle English) and cīese or cēse (in Old English). Similar words are shared by other West Germanic languages — West Frisian tsiis, Dutch kaas, German Käse, Old High German chāsi — all from the reconstructed West-Germanic form *kasjus, which in turn is an early borrowing from Latin.

When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries' supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or "molded cheese" (as in "formed", not "moldy"). It is from this word that the French fromage, Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge, Breton fourmaj, and Provençal furmo are derived. The word Cheese itself is occasionally employed in a sense that means "molded" or "formed".

Did You Know? - Crackers are said to have been invented in 1792 when John Pearson of Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA made a pilot-like bread product from just flour and water that he called Pearson's Pilot Bread.

It was an immediate success with sailors because of its shelf life. This was the first cracker bakery in the United States, and produced crackers for more than a century Crown Pilot Crackers from the same recipe were made and sold in New England up until early 2008, and used in traditional clam chowder recipes.

But the real revolutionary moment in the life of the cracker came in 1801 when another Massachusetts baker, Josiah Bent, burned a batch of biscuits in his brick oven. The crackling noise that emanated from the singed biscuits inspired the name - crackers - and a bit of ingenuity, as Bent set out to convince the world of the product's snack food potential.

By 1810, his Boston-area business was booming, and, in later years, Bent sold his enterprise to the National Biscuit Company, which now does business under the Nabisco name.

Did You Know? - Wine blending is the art of mixing two or more varietals together to produce a consistent, high-quality finished wine.  There are many reasons for blending:  to enhance the aroma, improve the color, add or minimize flavors or tastes.  This was our chance to be winemakers for the day and createour own unique blends. 

Did You Know? - Tasting wine from a barrel is the same as tasting wine from a bottle. The difference is the need for a siphon to draw the wine out and pour it into a glass. However, wine in a barrel can hold different stages of maturity. Some wines will be mature and ready for release, while young wines will taste raw and astringent from the unripened tannins. Generally, most barrel tastings are done when wine is near or at maturity and all flavor components have come together.

Did You Know? - Orzo (Italian for "barley", from Latin hordeum), also risoni (It.: "big rice") is a form of short-cut macaroni, shaped like a large grain of rice. Orzo can be served alone, as a soup accompaniment, as part of a salad, or baked in a casserole.

Did You Know? - As late as the mid-17th century, French vintners did not use cork stoppers, using oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles instead.

Wine corks can be made of either a single piece of cork, or composed of particles, as in champagne corks; corks made of granular particles are called "technical corks".

Did You Know? - A floor corker is used to place a cork in a bottle. You put the cork in a small opening and the bottle under it and pull down on a lever which squeezes the cork to a diameter just a bit smaller then the bottle opening and a plunger pushes the cork into the bottle opening and when you pull the lever back to the up position it releases the cork which at the same time seals the bottle

Did You Know? - Most wine bottles are sealed with a cork, although screwcaps are increasingly found. Commercial corked wine bottles typically have a protective sleeve called a capsule (commonly referred to as a "foil") covering the top of the bottle. The purpose of which is to protect the cork from being gnawed away by rodents or infested with the cork weevil., and to serve as collar to catch small drips when pouring.

The capsule also serves as a decorative element of the bottle's label. Capsules were historically made of lead; However, because of research showing that trace amounts of toxic lead could remain on the lip of the bottle and mix with the poured wine, lead capsules (lead foil bottleneck wrappings) were slowly phased out, and by the 1990s, most capsules were made of tin, heat-shrink plastic (polyethylene or PVC), or aluminium or polylaminate aluminium.