Low alcohol Lambrusco for travelling

I looked up the region of Reggio Emilia in Italy and found an interesting website about pairing wines, dating back to Roman times.

http://bolognauncovered.com/2012/08/23/the-wines-of-emilia-romagna/

For reviews of the fort and wine tasting at Enoteco see TripAdvisor:

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1081288-d2213868-Reviews-Enoteca_Regionale_Emilia_Romagna-Dozza_Province_of_Bologna_Emilia_Romagna.html

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speaker, author.

"Who took a cork out of my lunch?" Champagne. In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it

WINE QUOTATIONS
"Who took the cork out of my lunch?" That is my near miss quote of W C Fields. However, he probably made the same joke every time he started his act and got quoted or misquoted many times. You see lots of versions of his quotation. So mine is as good as the next. Very apt for the World Travel market where I tried many wines. In this post I shall tell you some chatty stuff about World Travel Market but also where to try wines on tours around the world.

Like so many exhibitions, at WTM you are offered wines and spirits, totally unsuitable for visitors who have to walk around stand all day, walk home up and down stairs not he London underground or tube, and keep their wits about them for negotiating. I would like to suggest to organisers a rule that before 6 pm your stand can serve only wines up to 4 per cent alcohol, which would mean beer and the wine I have recently discovered, Lambrusco, 4 per cent.

My other favourite quotation is about Champagne. 'In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it.' Napoleon. I tried a lot of wines at World Travel Market in Excel in London. I didn't like any of them. (Which is funny because last year and the year before I had some delicious wines from central Europe, the new tourist countries, like Croatia and Serbia.)

COFFEE
My fondest memory is of being able to revive my energy with the Greek coffee on the Greek stand. (Of course a similar coffee was on the nearby Turkish stand called Turkish coffee.)

WINE EXPERT VIEW ON cool northern and southern regions
I wanted to try new wines at the World Travel Market. From which countries and regions? Back home and on the phone I keep consulting my family wine expert (who achieved level 3 of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust exams - from Jan 1st the letters will change from AIWS associate of the institute of wine and spirits - it will be changed) to something people at first will not know and recognise. My home expert is now doing exams in level 4 - two exams were yesterday in the middle of the World Travel Market. )

 I have only done level one which was 20 hours of studying from the manual and a six hour day of demos, slides and tastings). I was thrilled to bits (excuse the cliche it's too early in the morning to invent new metaphors) to find my exam was an NVQ.  About half the people on my course were in the wine trade already, either as sommeliers or trainees in restaurants or hoping to go into the business or working in wine shops, retail wholesale or marketing.

At home my tame wine expert says you are more likely to find the best wines at a wine fair for experts. However, for relative novices like me World Travel Market is a good introduction to new wines and products from around the world. Especially as I want to see what is offered to the tourist in terms of winery tours.

What did I leave until last ? Places I already know and have visited: Champagne in France (I wrote an article for Take Break magazine, a lovely double page spread. Their house style was to start with a quotation and end with three tips. That's a great style for any travel article.)

In north the west London a recently opened restaurant and bar is called Pizza and Prosecco.

PROSECCO
I went to the Italian stand and had a long chat with a lady from the Prosecco region. I asked which wineries offered tastings. She looked puzzled and told me they all do. She found me a route from Heathrow to Italy on a budget airline (every stand I visited to my amazement it was the same story. The first place mentioned was not the capital city and the national airline but the regional airport and one of the budget airlines - even when the destination was a five star hotel.) So good news for travellers. Spend less on the airfare and more to spare for the hotel, restaurant and tours.

What did I miss?
 I wanted to see Lambrusco. It comes from the north  of Italy where whether is cooler, just as Champagne is from the north of France. Tasmania off Australia is also a slightly cooler region which has a wine industry. Rich tropical wines don't make good sparklers. You need crisp acidic white wine.

Americans have devised a formula for the number of days of sun you need. The EU also has six or seven zones based on another formula, and rules on how much sugar you add in the north or in the south the acid . I know it sounds like something you can't drink. But it is tartaric acid equivalent, the domestic version is cream of tartar, the second most common acidic M a l i c which you find in apples. (The one in lemons is c i t r i c  a c i d.)

Wine tours and shops
I have already done extensive tours including wineries of the USA and Canada, France and Europe, Cyprus, South Africa and New Zealand. If you want supermarket size shops selling everything thing for those who drink wine or don't, the place is California north of San Francisco where one year my family drove for a day or two visiting winery after winery. In Europe for Champagne the big tours of the cellars are in Rheims and so popular you often need to book tours.

In South Africa and Australia wineries are all countryside and more natural and family run and tours  and tastings and souvenirs are hit and miss. Restaurants at vineyards where you might see a souvenir or buy a bottle. Not the huge tourist attractions with crowded supermarkets.

Spain - Rioja, has a wine museum out of the main town of Haro but on the wine trail, and it has an excellent restaurant, a big tour, a huge supermarket with everything from books and cards and tee towels and aprons and ear rings and table mats and coasters and so on, decorated with bunches of grapes, and bottle openers and more. Everything you need for yourself as a souvenir or an amusing yet useful gift for the people next door who while you are travelling will water your plants and reliably feed your cat, drag out the dustbins and answer the post and or the house sitters who say boo to burglars.

Another great place for wine tours is Malta.

Plus of course England where the big place with the supermarket and restaurant and outdoor tour (in season) and indoor tour is Denbies. (I have several previous posts on wine tours.)

In London the food and drink business is really humming. You can enjoy wine tastings at many restaurants in central London and around the country.Wine shops have Enoteca machines offering small tastings for £1 or more or free with a card you stick in a slot in a machine displaying half a dozen wines.Why don't the wine regions have Enoteca machines at the World Travel Market!

Next year World Travel Market will be at Excel November Monday 7th to Wednesday 9th 2016 at ExCel in East London on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway). Please follow my posts and like my pages and follow me on Facebook or link to me on LinkedIn.

Angela Lansbury, freelance travel writer and photographer.

Travel, allergies, asthma and health, conference centre design and Excel, World Travel Market

A selection of articles in today's online newspapers make me wonder about the effects of travel and conferences, diet and outdoor activities on health.
I should be looking at transport to England and the World Travel Market.

The event is changing from four days to three. One of the reasons given is that the sales people conducting selling and buying at the show would prefer a three day event to four. Three longer days. That cuts down costs of travel to and from the show daily, the overnight hotel accommodation for foreign visitors and the hours away from the home office desk.

What about the effects on health of the building? Other articles have looked at the effects of sunlight and vitamin D on asthma. We have all known for years that too little sunlight causes health problems, although so does too much. (Too little sunlight ... I'll research this later and come back; too much sunlight skin cancer and possibly an effect on the eyes.)

Quite apart from any difficulty getting out in the case of a fire, it's good to focus the eyes on the distance and to breathe fresh air. Some of the conference areas and bars at ExCel look out over the water. Smokers are ironically the people who go looking for the outdoors. It's a very long walk to either end of the building. So sign of exits along the middle. How do you get out in a fire, or other emergency?

Then there are the simple logistics. Dragging a suitcase on wheels to collect brochures and free samples (exhibition visitors) or set up (stand organisers) - yet you are faced with staircases.

And toilets. Why not have toilets on every floor. Architects should consider this. You have the plumbing in place, the staircases, the water pipes, the sewage pipes. So much wasted time going up and down stairs. You can't take a toilet break.

You lose you friends and family. You break off a meeting. Your contact thinks you have abandoned them and goes away. You leave your heavy bag with a stranger because you can't carry it up and down the stairs to the toilets.You leave your stand unmanned during your food and toilet breaks. In offices you have food trolleys bringing water and coffee. surely these could visit stands.

A conference centre caters to hundreds of people. Some will be in wheelchairs or walking with sticks, have twisted ankles from ski accidents and sports even if young. As for the Over 50 show - do you really expect several thousand over 50 visitors and those at shows for pensioners (retirees) to not need more ground level toilets. (Plus older people need toilets more often. So do younger women, pregnant women and nursing mothers needing to feed children and people with toddlers and those needing to change babies.)

One article I looked at was on the benefits and dangers of cats and dogs and animals and farms in immune systems. Another was on cats and lions can turn on you any time. Another was on vitamin D saving you from allergies. Another thought was that hairless dogs may help those who already have allergies but like dust mites, it's what comes out of, or off, the creature which causes problems. Dogs and other animals lick to clean themselves and the skin dropping is coated with bacteria.On the subject of bacteria, it's the good bacteria in fruit fibres which causes the protective effect.

So what Do I need in a conference building, disco, evening meeting? A chance to walk, eat fruit, drink water rather than alcohol.

My other discovery on the thealh front is that sweet wines have lower alcohol content. I was looking at a bottle of low alcohol lambrusco. A pink drink with only 4% alcohol. Like been's lower level of alcohol. Workers tend to drink beer in the daytime.

Traditionally wine would be drunk in the evening. After six. (When ladies wore diamonds - not during working hours.)You don't want to get drunk while operating machinery, or even walking about.

As for conference centres. No I don't want to drink acohol during my working day and walk up and down flights of stairs, and have long walks to the loo on a diet of coffee and alcohol.

More and more stands are offering free water. The dehydration effect of conference centres makes you tired. One for the road is a glass of water.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22570859
asthma.org.uk
https://www.nhs.uk/symptom-checker

Lambrusco wine: what is it and where d'you get it?

Lambrusco is both a grape and a wine, made mainly from that grape. Lambrusco wine from Italy is found at Italian restaurants in the UK and many Uk supermarkets as well as in Italy and Italian restaurants worldwide.

Lambrusco was originally a dry red wine from the region of Italy where you get a lot of preserved pork meat, Parma ham from the city of Parma (I once went on a travel press trip sponsored by the factory and was taken on a tour). The Parmesan cheese is also from this region. Also salami. These strong meats and dark coloured meats go well with dark red wine which is slightly acidic which cuts through the fat of the meat in your mouth.

Lambrusco was exported to England as in addition a pink or rose colour wine, often sweetened with sparkle added. The Brits are famous for their sweet tooth. In the Sixties and Seventies sweetened Mateus Rose from Portugal was also sent to Britain and was very popular.

Now you can still get red, white or rose coloured and still or slightly sparkling Lambrusco wine in supermarkets and on many menus. Because the wine was produced in large quantity, sweeter and sparkling for the mass market, those wanting dry dark red, expensive wines tend to reject it and instead go for something recherché.

Not me. Sorry, I am with the majority, especially of women wine drinkers, and still young at heart and watching my wine budget. I am very glad if that makes Lambrusco more available as sweet, pink, sparkling wine at a good price, as well as Lambrusco red and Lambrusco white.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambrusco

Angela Lansbury