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FASHION PHOTOS: Siriano marks 15 years in business with Sia singing and a sparkling ballet fantasy
FASHION PHOTOS: Siriano marks 15 years in business with Sia singing and a sparkling ballet fantasy
NEW YORK (AP) — Christian Siriano marked 15 years in business Friday with Sia performing on his runway and a nostalgic, ballet-inspired fantasy on his models during New York Fashion Week.
2023-09-09 09:18
'The Afterparty' Season 2 review: Genre-bending murder mystery is still a total delight
'The Afterparty' Season 2 review: Genre-bending murder mystery is still a total delight
If The Afterparty Season 1 taught us anything, it's that "we all get one shot
2023-07-12 19:53
iOS 17 Adds Journal App, StandBy Smart Display Mode, Better Autocorrect
iOS 17 Adds Journal App, StandBy Smart Display Mode, Better Autocorrect
Apple offered a sneak peek at its next-gen operating systems today, with updates to core
2023-06-06 03:51
Is The Cheesecake Factory a bad place to take a first date? The internet is divided.
Is The Cheesecake Factory a bad place to take a first date? The internet is divided.
Lots of folks have experienced a bad date. But it's not every day someone exposes
2023-11-01 03:49
Tilray to Buy Eight Beverage Brands for $85 Million From AB InBev
Tilray to Buy Eight Beverage Brands for $85 Million From AB InBev
Tilray Brands Inc. shares jumped the most since February 2021 after the cannabis and consumer packaged goods company
2023-08-09 02:28
Lufthansa Urges Europe to Ease Rules on Consolidation
Lufthansa Urges Europe to Ease Rules on Consolidation
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is hoping the European Commission will water down its stance on competition as the German
2023-06-05 03:50
Nazi Barbs in Bavaria Revive Germany’s Struggles With Its Past
Nazi Barbs in Bavaria Revive Germany’s Struggles With Its Past
In downtown Munich, police cars blocked roads to a modern office building where security guards patrolled the halls
2023-09-30 16:27
This MS alternative is as low as $45 for life
This MS alternative is as low as $45 for life
TL;DR: As of September 6, get this OfficeSuite Lifetime License family plan for only $64.99,
2023-09-06 17:49
Is bottomless prosecco going to be killed off by climate change?
Is bottomless prosecco going to be killed off by climate change?
Picture this. The group chat has finally settled on a date and we are going out. Out out. Women of most ages know how serious this is. There was probably a spreadsheet involved. Boyfriends and husbands have been dispatched to the pub. Children and dogs have been dropped off at the sitter. Dignity has been left at the door. One of us is waiting for it to be cancelled so we can stay at home with our loungewear and girl dinners (it’s probably me). There’s only one thing for it. Bottomless brunch. Many Asos orders and outfit changes later, we arrive, take our seats and start the binge drinking timer. There’s only one problem. No prosecco. Freshly manicured fists pound the table. The elected Karen of the group starts to verbally pulverise the staff. Eggs Benedicts are thrown against the walls. The Prosecco Huns exclaim in unison: “But what are we going to drink now?!” The waiter bashfully suggests: “Spumante?” Give over. According to a new study, this could be a reality in the near future thanks to climate change threatening vineyards across Europe, in particular those dedicated to glera (the beloved prosecco grape) in Northern Italy. In a detailed report in iScience last month, researchers warned that unpredictable weather, soil degradation and drought could lead to the loss of a millennia-old winemaking tradition, and the livelihoods attached to it. RIP the Prosecco Hun. The Italian sparkling wine has long been the fizz of choice in the UK (we were only dethroned as the world’s biggest prosecco guzzlers last year by the US). In the early 2010s, more than a third of all the prosecco shipped out of Italy worldwide ended up in Britain – approximately 131 million bottles a year. That’s nearly two bottles per Brit. You get the idea. The origin of our obsession with prosecco dates back to just after the 2008 crash, when consumers were looking for an alternative to expensive champagne. The softer tasting, far more affordable (thanks to its cheaper and speedier production time) and incredibly quaffable prosecco was the obvious choice. Bottomless brunch was born. “My heart goes out to the huns whose weekends simply aren’t complete without a bottle of prosecco,” Hannah Crosbie, founder of Dalston Wine Club, laments at the news that just 15 years after it stormed onto supermarket shelves, prosecco might be quietly forced to say arrivederci. “In all seriousness though, climate change is seriously threatening every aspect of winemaking, and growing conditions are only getting more challenging.” Prosecco is certainly not the only vino at risk, but it faces a unique issue. Where other wine growing regions affected by climate change such as Champagne and Burgundy can simply put out a limited run with an inflated price tag and keep the snobby oenophiles coming, prosecco’s USP is its ability to produce in bulk and at a fraction of the cost. English sparkling is a big winner with the climate going the way it is. Prosecco, by all accounts, seems like it’s a bit of a loser in that regard Will Amherst, head wine buyer at Trullo Ali Finch, group sommelier at Angela Hartnett’s Michelin-starred Italian restaurant Murano in Mayfair, doesn’t believe there’s an appetite for a higher quality, more expensive prosecco. “With the impact of the climate as well as the cost of producing wine increasing, the challenge for prosecco is going to be how to balance the expectation of its price point with the need to make slightly smaller quantities,” she tells me. “Regions like Chablis, for instance, have had multiple horrible vintages back to back and people just accept the fact they have to pay more for it if they want to drink that wine.” For the uninitiated, the word “vintage” on a wine label simply means the year the grapes were harvested – compared to regular wines that may include grapes harvested in multiple years – and each vintage can taste vastly different based on the conditions affecting the grapes in that year. Chablis, produced from chardonnay grapes in the northernmost district of Burgundy, has always been particularly affected by the climate due to its geography, but in recent years has seen frost in 2016, 2017 and 2021, and drought and higher temperatures in 2019 and 2020. This has dramatically affected those vintages, and driven up the price of bottles from “good” years. But with prosecco, “people potentially wouldn’t be interested in” paying a higher price, Finch says. This is partly because its brand has become more associated with cheap fizz than fine wine in Britain. Part of the problem also lies in the simplicity of its production. Prosecco is a wine that reflects the aromatics of the grape at the point of harvest, whereas with other sparkling wines like champagne, as well as other types of wine in general, such as chablis, it’s about the ageing process. Rising temperatures mean grapes are ripening more quickly, which can result in a different flavour of wine or too much alcohol, so one option is to harvest the grapes earlier. You can get away with a slightly under-ripe fruit in aged wines as so much of the flavour is added during their long fermentations. In prosecco, a bottle of which is ready in just 30 days, an under-ripe grape could result in something that “tastes a lot like battery acid”, according to Finch. The Prosecco Huns don’t want to chug something flavourless and eye-wateringly alcoholic with their eggs Benedict. “If you pick too early, you’ve got no flavour,” Finch explains. “So they don’t really have the option to just keep making it in the same volume. With other wines, you can do more work in the winery to make the wine feel more balanced and more approachable and more complex. They don’t have that luxury in prosecco.” Under Italy’s DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) laws, prosecco is only prosecco when it comes from just two regions of the country, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and adheres to strict growing and production rules. The same goes for champagne: only wine produced from eight permitted varieties of grape grown exclusively in the Champagne region of France may be called champagne. It’s these “heroic viticulture” sites that the report says are most at risk. Naming rights have been a point of contention across the whole wine industry for some time, with Australian producers of glera recently putting in a request to the EU to be allowed to call their wine prosecco on the grounds that it’s part of their migrant and cultural identity. Ironically, the glera grape is actually believed to be Slovenian in origin, and was first cultivated in the vineyards of Prosecco, a small village in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region near the border with Slovenia. The name is even thought to derive from the Slovenian words preseka or poseka, or the Serbian/Croatian prosek, meaning “path cut through the woods”. While DOC laws might prevent anyone calling a sparkling wine made from glera grapes outside of the designated regions a prosecco, it hasn’t stopped winemakers around the world from essentially producing the same wine using the same techniques. As climate change has made it increasingly difficult to cultivate the grapes in their historical home, it’s also made conditions in more northern regions like the UK more favourable for the growing of certain grapes, including white varieties such as glera, opening the door to a whole new generation of winemakers. “This is not me saying this is the death of prosecco,” Finch adds quickly, but she stresses that the wine industry is naturally very dynamic. “There are loads of alternatives to prosecco, both within Europe in terms of pet nats and cremants and things like that, and with the New World as well.” Pet nats – sparkling wines made using the “traditional method” of fermenting in individual bottles – have become very trendy among the younger Gen Z crowd, she says, as it still offers something bright, fruity and super fizzy, but without the faff, or price tag, that comes with champagne. People are also drinking less but are happy to spend a little more and not drink as much. At Murano, Finch says diners are asking about English sparkling wines more than ever before. “The correlation, obviously, with post-Brexit is there. There’s a desire to try and drink more local wines, potentially from a sustainability point of view, potentially from a cost-to-quality point of view because of duty increasing. It’s also partly because during Covid people did a lot of staycations and UK wine tourism did very well during that time. And it sort of stuck.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Will Amherst, head wine buyer at Italian trattoria Trullo in Islington, north London. “I don’t want to bash prosecco too much, but if I was going out and I wanted sparkling wine, I would still look at champagne,” he says, much to the chagrin of the Prosecco Huns. “And if I’m going to look somewhere other than that, I would get a bottle of English sparkling. Because English sparkling is a big winner with the climate going the way it is. Prosecco, by all accounts, seems like it’s a bit of a loser in that regard.” Prosecco and the people that produce it are certainly not the only losers but its high-altitude, cooler temperature geography, which previously protected it from climate change, is now adversely affected by extreme weather. Sudden, intense rainfall damages the soil and creates “slope failures”, while conversely droughts make irrigation extremely difficult. While he’s yet to see a knock-on effect on prosecco supplies at Trullo, Amherst’s “immediate thoughts were, really sadly: is prosecco going to be able to pull itself out of that hole? I don’t know how you reconcile the spiralling production costs and the brand identity, which is synonymous with cheap wine in this country,” he says. Although it’s not recommended to keep prosecco longer than two to three years before it goes flat – compared to up to 10 years for vintage champagnes – he doesn’t anticipate stocks to run down soon. At any rate, his biggest use for prosecco at Trullo is in an Aperol Spritz, where it makes up half the drink. He actually sees it as an exciting opportunity for new wines to emerge. So does Will Hill, a wine buyer at online merchant Honest Grapes, who tells me: “Once again, cava is showing that there is great value to be found in traditional method sparkling wines and more and more we are seeing ‘prosecco-esque’ wines for lower prices. If the consumer isn’t tied to the name ‘prosecco’, there are plenty of good, affordable, entry-level options available.” It’s clear that wines of all colours are facing an uphill battle (quite literally in prosecco’s case), not just to survive but to protect their identity, which for prosecco is arguably more important. That could spell the end of the Prosecco Hun, but with English sparkling and other European varieties on the rise, perhaps it just means a rebranding is in order. Cremant Crew? Pet Nat Posse? They don’t have quite the same ring, but it won’t stop us booking bottomless brunch anytime soon. Read More I feel it in my fingers: Why more of us should start eating with our hands Pizza, cake and meringue martinis: When did cinema food get so silly? Michelin-starred chef Simon Rogan on 20 years of L’Enclume: ‘It all started with a radish’
2023-09-06 15:29
Walmart Rolls Out Seven Flavors of ‘Stranger Things’–Themed Ice Cream
Walmart Rolls Out Seven Flavors of ‘Stranger Things’–Themed Ice Cream
Scoops Ahoy ice cream no longer just exists on TV.
2023-09-15 04:54
F1 descends into farce again after Austria results shake-up – the FIA has to be better
F1 descends into farce again after Austria results shake-up – the FIA has to be better
It was long after the chequered flag was waved at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday when Lando Norris, buoyed by a positive weekend in his upgraded McLaren, posted a selfie of his bare hand. A high-five for P5. Little did he know that, in the end, a finger needed to be withdrawn. Another Instagram picture comically corrected the initial post. Because Norris had actually recorded his best result of the season in claiming fourth, after a shaking-up of the final classification of Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix due to a raft of time penalties. Twelve drivers – including Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz – were punished retrospectively, after 83 lap times in Sunday’s race were deleted due to the exceeding of track limits. The scenario, which only concluded five hours after the race finished, has once again placed the spotlight on the FIA, the governing body of Formula 1. An appeal from Aston Martin triggered the farcical scenes to sign off a weekend in Spielberg typified by the absurdity of the track-limits issue at the final two corners of the track. The only salvation was that the podium and Max Verstappen’s win remained unchanged. Qualifying on Friday was dominated by cars continuously extending the limits of the car beyond the white line. Sergio Perez, incredulously, fell foul three times in Q2, even after a host of warnings from his engineer and subsequently missed out on the top-10 shootout. Sprint day on Saturday seemed less impacted by the issue, but only because of the wet conditions resulting in the drivers being more conservative in their driving style on the approach to turns 9 and 10. Come the grand prix a day later, the number of warnings, black-and-white flags and then time penalties rather overshadowed what was actually an enthralling 71-lap race. Hamilton, exuding disbelief at the situation over team radio, was aghast at the notion that only he was being punished. Ultimately with the late result change, nobody escaped. Esteban Ocon, for instance, had an astonishing 30 seconds added to his final time, seemingly driving a completely different configuration altogether. There are a few problems at play here. Firstly, the issue of cars consistently crossing the white line at the end of the lap. The Red Bull Ring, which has been a fixture on the F1 schedule since 2014 and on Sunday extended its contract until 2030, is the shortest track on the calendar. A fact which should encourage captivating battles, both on track and on the timesheets. Instead, it is the circuit most prone to ignominy with the deletion of lap times. Practically, it can be avoided too. Last year, a gravel trap on the outside of the final turn – as opposed to sections of run-off area – was recommended by the race director. Such an addition would encourage drivers to be more cautious on the approach and thus more likely to stay within the white lines. Such an improvement must be made next year. Yet more so than the track-limits discussion itself, what is particularly concerning for the sport in the long-term is the changing of the result hours after the race has ended. We have been here before, too. In March, the second race of the season in Saudi Arabia saw Fernando Alonso’s third place reinstated past midnight local time, rendering George Russell’s experience on the podium redundant. A fortnight later in Australia, a chaotic race saw post-race appeals drag the race result into uncertainty for a matter of weeks, with Ferrari appealing a late penalty for Sainz. The FIA and F1, two distinctly different enterprises but reliant in many ways on one another, are not the best of friends at the moment. Ideally, they would work perfectly in harmony but on the contrary, the divide is stark, as illustrated by Formula 1 calling out FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem in the off-season for opining on F1’s market value in the wake of takeover rumours from Saudi Arabia. All of it points towards a situation where the whole operation and system of work must improve. There is an argument that it could be completely scratched and revamped – and perhaps both parties could work towards this after the 2023 season. But something has to change. The net result of more ridiculous scenes such as Sunday night’s result change will be spectators turning away from the sport. The influx of fans in the past few years, due to Netflix, the 2021 season and more races than ever before, will be completely undone if those watching cannot fully trust the finality of the chequered flag. The sport’s marketeers have done so well to be ahead of the curve as it enjoys a period of unprecedented popularity. Now the executives themselves must improve their processes in correlation. Read More Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz demoted after Austrian Grand Prix penalty chaos Max Verstappen refuses to ponder title hat-trick despite another emphatic win San Luis Obispo: Why you should visit California’s last sleepy stretch of coast, hidden in plain sight Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz demoted after Austrian Grand Prix penalty chaos F1 Austrian Grand Prix LIVE: Race latest updates and results from Red Bull Ring Lewis Hamilton: 18 months, 13 podiums and an elusive race victory
2023-07-03 20:45
Here's Why You Shouldn't Be Too Worried About Smartphone Radiation
Here's Why You Shouldn't Be Too Worried About Smartphone Radiation
You probably saw the headlines last week about how France, fearing the amount of "radiation"
2023-09-21 07:29