This snazzy little calculator helps ensure you won’t run out on your special day. Your friends and relatives will thank you later. Your bank manager might not. <link>

For the first time a Martinborough pinot noir has taken out the top title at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards . It’s the Julicher Pinot Noir 2008, produced by Julicher Estate. The wine was named the champion wine.

Get the full list of awards here.

Lots of wine writers are preparing our palates for Thanksgiving. Here’s a collection.

Pinot for Thanksgiving <here>

Wine Spectator’s 12 whites for Thanksgiving <here> and reds <here>

Thanksgiving sparkling wines <here>

Top 10 Thanksgiving bottles <here>

Don’t pick a turkey <here>

Wines to complement a feast <here>

What to drink from Slate <here>

Suggestions from the NYT <here>

If you’re like me you can never remember the Bordeaux growth classifications. Now I don’t have to, I’m going to get the 1855 French Wine Classification iPhone app. It’s a quick reference guide to the system.

Perfect. I’ll never get my wines mixed up again. Buy them here <link>

Japanese scientists have solved the mystery of why red wines don’t go with fish. Iron.

Japanese scientists asked study subjects to try 38 red wines and 26 whites while eating scallops. Some of the wines contained small amounts of iron, which varied by country of origin, variety and vintage. The tasters noted which wines really didn’t work with scallops. And the researchers found that those wines all had high levels of iron. So they doctored the wine with a substance that binds iron, keeping it away from the tasters’ tongues. And voila, the bad taste became a bad memory.

link to Scientific American

link to the full academic paper

I’m told that the tradition of winners spraying champagne started in this 1967 Le Mans. (It didn’t start a tradition of Ford winning).

I also read that when the Yankees won the AL East the “emptied 300 bottles in about 20 minutes”. Apparently it wasn’t the good stuff. They’re saving that for later.

The Chronicle has done its annual review of Oregon Pinots. I normally like to write my own precis of the articles I link to but the Chronicle’s own is so good I’ve just included it.

A coda: After the trials of 2007, Oregon received a Pinot bounty last year. The initial 2008s we encountered were brimming with pretty fruit. If the ’07s are an uneven lot, a new crop of excellent Pinots should soon be winding their way down Interstate 5.

However to get their recommendations you have to read more: <link>

If you want to follow the progess of the 2009 vintage, Jancis has a collection of online reports and information here <link>

All you need to know in seven minutes.