Wine around the world

>>Go here for inexpesive Cephalexin medication. Lower price than your local pharmacy!<<

Cephalexin and Alcohol
Alcohol doesn’t lessen the value of most antibiotic treatments. Nevertheless, antibiotics such as cephalexin and alcohol can cause comparable negative responses, such as stomachaches, giddiness and sleepiness.

On the contrary, in the case of some antibiotics, alcohol can reduce their efficiency. And in more severe cases, it can cause side effects and result in death.

Antibiotics and alcohol are split in our body by the same enzymes. Thus, the medication, which is not metabolized in time, causes adverse reactions in the body. Moreover, unceasing alcohol consumption destroys certain enzymes, which renders complicated drug absorption in general.

Alcohol lessens the effect of antibiotics and may cause the proliferation of more resistant germs and amplify the infection over time.

Drinking alcoholic beverages or taking other preparations that contain alcohol (for example, elixirs, cough syrups, tonic drinks, or alcohol-containing injections) while taking cephalexin or other cephalosporin may cause a variety of problems. These negative reactions may occur if you consume alcohol even some days after you stop taking cephalosporin. Consuming alcoholic drinks may produce increased side effects such as abdominal pain or stomachaches, nausea, vomiting, headache, fainting, heartbeat irregularities, vertigo or light-headedness, breathing difficulties, sweating, or redness of the face or skin. These effects usually start within 15 to 30 minutes after alcohol consumption and may not disappear for up to several hours. Thus, you should not consume alcoholic drinks or take other alcohol-containing mixtures while you are receiving cephalosporins, including cephalexin and for several days after finishing them .

Bear in mind that alcohol can diminish your energy and hinder your recovery from illness. So, it may be best to steer clear of alcohol until you have finished your medications and are feeling better.

You might need your other half to help you drink win out of this.  Regardless, this glass is a complicated matter; we’re not sure if it is evil or nice.

Wine Bottles Art.

This year’s Wellington Harvest festival (21-23 March) promises to be an exciting event as the people and wineries from this breathtaking region prepares to welcomes guests.

Douglas Green will also sponsor and present a few thrilling events.

On Saturday 20 March:

The Douglas Green Ladies’ Day with Honey Jewellery and food demos at the VIP Lounge DGB. From 10:00.

Join us for some Wine & Jewellery

Douglas Green is also a co-sponsor of  “Valiant Swart’s acoustic sounds under the stars”. This performance will be at the Breytenbach Sentrum from 18:00.

For more info about the festival: www.harvestfestival.co.za

Matching Food with Wine.

The fact is, most wines are produced as an accompaniment to food, and there are several established guidelines for matching wine with the food the correct way in order to ensure some success.  Originally, different wine styles evolved to compliment the cuisine of a region, so this can be a helpful starting point for finding the right wine and food combination.  Just keep in mind that there is no single wine that must be consumed with a particular dish, but some are clearly better than others.

Basic Considerations

If you want to get a good balance, it is necessary to analyze the basic parts of the wine and the food.  The idea is to try to balance these two things.  You don’t want the food or the wine to overpower the other.  The main elements to consider are:

• Match the weight/richness of the food and the body of the wine.
• Match the flavour intensity of the food and that of the wine.
• Match acidic foods with high-acid wines
• Match sweet foods with sweet wines.
• Avoid combining oily or very salty foods with high tannin red wines.

The following guidelines can help avoid food and wine clashes:

• Pair chewy type meat with tannic wines.
• Pair Salty foods with sweet or high acid wines.
• Pair fatty and oily food with high acid wines.
• Match or contrast flavour characteristics of the food and the wine.

Weight/Richness of the Food and Wine

The first thing to do and the most important, is to match the weight of the food and the wine.  Rich and heavyweight foods need a full-bodied wine. So you would want to have meats like game, roast meats and red meat casseroles with powerful red wines, although, it is the body of the wine that matters, not the color or flavour so much here.  Lighter food like white meat or fish are complimented more by delicate wines.  Oh, and don’t forgot the sauce!  A rich and creamy sauce will need a wine of sufficient body to match the food and flavours that will complement the smooth creamy, buttery taste.

Flavour intensity

After weight, flavour is the next most important component on the list.  Weight and flavour are not the same. Like, a plate of boiled rice is heavy but it has a light taste.  Wine works the same way. Foods that have been steamed gently require a lighter flavoured wine than those that have been roasted as roasting adds additional flavor to the dish.

Something stewed or cooked slowly, like this Ragu sauce and Papperdelle I love to cook in cold weather, has tons of flavour in every bite and its necessary to match this with a very complex and flavourful wine.

Next we move on to….

Acidity in the Food and Wine.

First off, acidity is not necessarily a bad thing. As we discussed in Wine 101: Tasting and Evaluating the acidity in wine is what makes it refreshing and crisp.  Sour flavours in food can make wine taste less acidic and hence, less refreshing and vibrant.  So, acidic foods need to be matched with accompanying wines.  Tomatoes, lemons, pineapples, apples and vinegar are all high in acidity.  One of the big points in Italian cuisine, and Italian red wine is the acidity.  It is quite high. Italian dishes, many of them, are dominated by tomatoes and olive oil and other acidic ingredients like vinegar and lemons. Hence, wines that go well with Italian, are usually quite acidic.

Sweetness in the Food and Wine.

Dry wines can seem tart sand over-acidic when consumed with any food with a degree of sweetness.  Sweet food is bext with wine which has a similiar or greater degree of sweetness.  The sweeter the food, the sweeter the wine should be.

Oil, Salt and Tannins

Tannin in combination with really oily fish can produce a very unpleasant metallic taste, so the general rule is to avoid red wines with fish.  However, low tannin reds are OK with meaty fish.

Chewy Meat and Tannins

Tannin in Red wines reacts with the protein.  Foods with a high protein content, particularly rare red meat, will soften the effects of the tannin on the palate.  This is the reason that high tannin grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah or Shiraz, go well with roast meats, stews and steaks.

I suppose these guidelines should help you avoid truly disastrous combinations , but individual taste is the final consideration.  experimentation is key!

If you feel like you need more information or just have “caught the wine bug” like me, the following is a very decent book exploring the connections and relationships between food and wine all over the world.

“Wine with Food” Great read!

I’d like to pretend like I got a job and I’ve been busy and running around like a chicken with my head cut off and THAT’S why I’ve left behind the blog I once diligently attended to.

That’s not it at all.

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