Thursday 21 January 2010

Make Mine A Swimming Pool - continued

Making derogatory remarks about lager has - of course - prompted a 'friend' to point out that you can bathe in red wine too. At Kanagawa in Japan there is a health resort where bathing in red wine is said to be a rejuvenation treatment for the body. Well perhaps, but the last time this writer so much as trod grapes for half an hour it took two months for the legs to tone down from bright pink to pallid white. If it had been total immersion there would need to be a racial type created. Closer inspection of the spa does reveal - doubtless to the relief of passport authorities everywhere - that there is quite a lot of water with it - so it is more of a dark rosé colour. Just enough probably to put you in the pink..

The Tractor Factor in New Zealand

Grove Mill, the world's first Carbon Zero winery, has modified a tractor to run on vine prunings, which as a tractor is often going six hours a day they consider well worth the cost. Although we had visions of this new tractor looking rather like Stephenson's rocket it turns out that the vine prunings undergo gasification first and the result can then be used as fuel. But the real pity is that those steaks grilled over the vine cuttings will loose that unique tangy flavour that is so delicious... Still, perhaps that's progress, perhaps not.