Drinking not smoking..

News reaches us from Canada's Niagara that old kilns once used for drying tobacco leaves are to be used by a winery to dry grapes so they can make their own version of Amarone - but not by drying the grapes over a couple of months or longer but just a fortnight! More intriguingly they are going to use another old kiln to blast the harvested grapes with humidity and botrytis cinerea, which is the mould responsible for the sweet concentration of Sauternes for example. But in European vineyards the mould attacks the grapes on the vine and they are late picked so the juice is highly concentrated. Although it will be an intriguing trial, factory kiln production is unlikely to be any great threat to Château Yqem just yet...