• Texas award winners: Two big prizes for Texas wines -- a double gold for Brennan Vineyard's 2006 cabernet sauvignon reserve at the prestigious Indy International Wine Competition and a bronze for Sunset Winery's 2004 Texas High Plains Newsom Vineyard “Moon Glow” Merlot at the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition this spring. Both showings are impressive. Brennan's cabernet joined a Clos du Bois from Alexander Valley, a Clos Du Val from Stags Leap District and a V. Sattui from Napa in the double gold category. Sunset's bronze may be even bigger, given that it is essentially a two-person operation in a converted house in suburban Fort Worth.
• A wine-powered car: Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, runs his Aston Martin, on bio-fuel made from English wine. (No jokes, please, about English wine.) The wine used in the petrol is surplus English wine that European rules don't allow to be made into wine. The Daily Telegraph reports the wine is apparently not left over from royal house parties at Clarence House or Highgrove, two of the prince's homes. The prince's Jaguars, Audi and Range Rovers have all been converted to run on 100 per cent biodiesel made from used cooking oil.
• Bordeaux wine ratings: Turns out an academic study has found that the 1855 Bordeaux classification system, which has changed just one since then, is outdated. Wrote the authors: "Based on the wine scores that we analyzed, however, some chateaux have moved up in rank, while others have faded. While we doubt that the 1855 classification will be revised, market prices for these producers reflect the new standings." Though this isn't surprising, what is (to me anyway) is that they the researchers used scores from the Robert Parker, the Wine Spectator, and Steven Tanzer's International Wine Cellar to measure quality. That's treading dangerous ground, isn't it?
