Dear Friend,
Life has been very busy at Angas Plains Wines, which is good news because it means we have plenty to tell you about...
Last Thursday night we attended the Annual Winestate Award dinner held at the Hilton in Adelaide and received tremendous recognition of our PJ's Cabernet Sauvignon 2006. We were very excited to be presented with the Winestate Trophy for Cabernet Sauvignon wine of the year runner up. This was awarded after a final judging of all Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia and New Zealand wineries that had scored 4 1/2 & 5 stars during 2008. As this is a new limited release wine, we are making it available to our PJ's News friends first, so keep an eye on your inbox over the next few weeks for news on how you can get your bottle
Winestate Hamburg Sud Trophy Cabernet Sauvignon Wine of the Year
Runner up 2008 Angas Plains Estate PJ's Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
As I'm sure you are probably aware water has become a big issue this year. Previously we pumped our drip irrigation water from Lake Alexandrina at Angas Plains Estate. However, the lack of water from the Murray flowing into the Lake means that the salt level in the water has continued to rise to levels that are unsuitable for vineyard use. In response, we came up with a contingency plan and built a large holding tank, also called a turkey nest dam and this is working very well. This combined with our smaller dam has given us the ability to store on-farm water for the 2009 growing season.
Milang Jetty- Lake Alexandrina with very little water Phil filling our new dam
Well, that's all about us for now, but make sure you scroll down this page to read this week's tip and special update!
Cheers
Phil and Judy Cross
Phil and Judy Cross
Angas Plains Tip
Wine Glasses - What is a standard drink!
Does anyone know why so many wine glasses are now the size of small buckets? Well it's great to swirl the wine around in the glass and smell the bouquet of the wine. However, do you know how much wine poured in the glass makes a standard drink if you need to count your drinks this festive season? If you want to know the actual facts, we have included some to help you.
Many glasses on the market today hold 250mls of wine when filled three quarters full - and that's the equivalent of two and half standard drinks. Curious, I found two older wine glasses and lined them up on the kitchen bench. A glass bought a couple of years ago held a more modest 150mls when filled three quarters full - while a much older, ten-year-old glass held exactly 100 mls, the size of a standard drink of wine.
What this boils down to is that jumbo sized glasses make it hard to pour standard drinks. Pour 100mls of wine into an outsize glass and you've got a stingy looking drink that barely fills a quarter of the glass and which you'd cringe at offering to a friend. Does this matter? Well, yes. If we're not mindful of what standard drinks are, or we're not pouring them, then the guidelines that tell us how many drinks we can safely have are meaningless.
A standard drink, in case you're not sure, is 10g of alcohol. So for wine, this is approximately 100mls of wine, see below for how to calculate the actual volume. For other alcoholic drinks this translates into 30mls of spirits (a nip or a shot), or 285mls of full strength beer.
As for drinking at a low risk level, for men the advice is:
- no more than 2 standard drinks in the first hour and 1 per hour after that
- no more than 4 standard drinks a day on average
- no more than 6 standard drinks on any one occasional day
- one or two alcohol-free days a week
For women:
- no more than 1 standard drink per hour
- no more than 2 standard drinks a day on average
- no more than 4 standard drinks on any one occasional day
- one or two alcohol-free days a week
But in practice it's not always easy to stick to these guidelines - and not only because of oversized wine glasses at home and in restaurants. For one thing, different kinds of drinks contain different amounts of alcohol, and while bottles, cans and casks must say how many standard drinks they contain, the print is often barely legible. There's also a lot of ignorance about what a standard drink is.
All Australian wineries are required to calculate their standard drinks and include on a wine's label an indication of how many standard drinks it contains.
In case you're a fan of maths, the formula for the calculation is: container volume (litres) x %alcohol/vol (mL/100mL) x 0.789 (specific gravity of ethanol) = the number of standard drinks, to be shown to one decimal point. For example, a 750mL bottle which is 12.5% alc/vol would be calculated 0.75 x 12.5 x 0.789 = 7.39, to be rounded to one decimal place = 7.4 standard drinks.
The wording for the label (for the above example) is prescribed as follows: “Contains approximately 7.4 standard drinks” or “Approx 7.4 standard drinks”. For containers holding more than 10 standard drinks, the nearest whole number may be used
Angas Plains Wines has Luigi Boriolo wine glasses that have a line incorporated into the logo to give you the ability to know where the fill line is. A lot of fine dining outlets also have their glasses marked to show the level for serving 100mls, so next time you're out and think you're being under-served check the glass to see if it has a mark on the glass.
Special Update
Recently, we rebuilt our website to give you quick and easy access to our boutique wines, which are not widely available through every day bottle shops or other websites. We are continually adding information to our site and we welcome your comments.
To celebrate our new website we have decided to give you an early Christmas gift. You see, we know what the festive season can be like with unexpected guests, last minute gifts and all the unnecessary pressure that can come with not having a handy back up plan...
...So to help you take the stress out of the holiday season, we're offering you the chance to purchase our delicious Angas Plains Sparkling Chardonnay for a massive discount.
To get the full details about this exclusive offer now, simply click on the button below:
Secure Yours at This Special Price Now
Our new website has been built to ensure you can order your wines easily and securely and have us deliver them direct to your door with the assistance of Australia Post.
To find out more about our special Christmas offer, make sure you click below now