• California Wine Club
http://www.cawineclub.com
• Announcement: A summer break in the daily pace
• Purple teeth: Readers talk back
• Follow-up: Hugh Johnson's Story of Wine
• Administrivia
As many of you know, I'm heading for France early next month to lead a wine tour of the Rhone and Provence. Because of these travel plans, and other unrelated business after my return, I've decided to take a summer break from daily publication during June and perhaps into July.
The daily edition will continue through this week, but beginning this coming Monday, June 3, we'll temporarily go back to publishing only once weekly, usually on Monday.
For those of you who enjoy getting the Wine Advisor every weekday (and that includes more than 80 percent of you!), don't worry ... we will resume the daily publication later in the summer, most likely during July.
Purple teeth: Readers talk backAfter I wrote about "purple tooth syndrome" earlier this month - the unsightly tooth-staining that occurs in some people after tasting red wine - a number of you responded with comments and suggestions. Since there seemed to be a lot of interest in this topic, I'll summarize your responses today.
A wine-loving New Jersey dentist, Dr. Gordon Stenz, sent a long and thoughtful comment. "The temporary purple tooth syndrome is plaque that is staining during the wine tasting," he said. "Plaque is a soft film which will floss and brush off your teeth. Plaque covers all teeth surfaces 24 hours after a thorough brushing. So, just brush your teeth before you do your wine tasting. This will eliminate almost all of this problem."
Good advice! From a wine-tasting standpoint, I would just add that thorough rinsing is important, as you don't want the flavor of toothpaste to interfere with your perceptions of Chardonnay or Shiraz.
Dr. Stenz added, "If you want to brush your teeth after the wine tasting, do it. There is no harm done to enamel. Just use a soft brush like you should be doing anyway."
In another approach to alleviating purple teeth after a tasting, Michael Amigoni suggested a simple solution: "Just like white wine is used to get the stains out of a spill on a rug, my experience is to swirl some white wine in your mouth and it cleans it all up!"
Quite a number of readers mentioned commercial tooth-whitening solutions including commercial products by Crest and Brite Smile.
"I really enjoy my red wine and had discovered exactly what you mentioned," Marshall Williams wrote. "Over the years my teeth had gathered stains from not only wine but several other food and drink items. My teeth had simply gotten darker and more discolored from years of enjoying wine and coffee and the occasional cigar. In a little over one hour all those stains were gone. The Brite Smile process completely removed the discoloration that those items had caused."
Said Dr. Stenz: "Long term staining has been a major problem until recently. Now it's hardly even an inconvenience. There are two basic ways to whiten your teeth professionally: laser whitening and home whitening. I recommend the home whitening method for its superior results, long-term whitening potential and its cheaper cost. All that is needed is to have your dentist take impressions of your teeth and to fabricate a set of trays that are used to hold the whitening material. It takes about two weeks for the teeth to whiten when you first do it, and then, only one day to re-whitening them after they darken. All things white will fade with time, even white teeth, especially if one drinks a lot of wine."
Finally, here's good advice from South Africa, where Web Editor Christian Eedes of the first-rate http://www.winetoday.co.za site, points out an excellent, detailed article about wine and dental concerns by Professor Sudeshne Naidoo-Bresselschmidt from the department of community dentistry at the University of Stellenbosch, "Don't Taste Away Your Teeth."
You'll find this article at
http://www.winetoday.co.za/pages/appreciate/health/teeth2.asp.
Thanks to you all for your comments. Keep smiling!
Follow-up: Hugh Johnson's Story of WineSpeaking of reader input, thanks to several of you for pointing out that, although Hugh Johnson's "Vintage: The Story of Wine" is out of print in its original edition, as I reported yesterday, it has been republished and is currently available as "Hugh Johnson's Story of Wine."
Amazon.com offers it in hardcover for $28, which is 30 percent off the $40 list price. If you wish to order it online, the following link will return a small commission to WineLoversPage.com and help us pay the rent:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1840001208/robingarrswineloA/.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from The 30 Second Wine Advisor, change your E-mail address, switch from weekly to daily distribution, or for any other administrative matters, click to http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvisor/admin.phtml. In all administrative communications, please be sure to include the exact E-mail address that you used when you subscribed, so we can find your record. If you must unsubscribe, please take a moment to tell us why you're leaving, and to offer any comments or suggestions you may have.
We welcome feedback, suggestions, and ideas for future columns. To contact me, please click to http://wineloverspage.com/ask_a_question.phtml. You may also send E-mail to wine@wineloverspage.com, but the link above is the simplest way to reach me directly.
We do not use this E-mail list for any other purpose and will never give or sell your name or E-mail address to anyone.
All the wine-tasting reports posted here are consumer-oriented. In order to maintain objectivity and avoid conflicts of interest, I purchase all the wines I rate at my own expense in retail stores and accept no samples, gifts or other gratuities from the wine industry.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Robin Garr. All rights reserved.
