Linkin’ logs 11-10-12

Spanning the InterTubes, from the potentially sublime to the semi-ridiculous:

• For years I’ve been working hard, and sometimes even successfully, at not overhyping stuff I love or consider very promising, like this bar or this grape. I’d much rather do a soft-sell to get people there, and hope that they end up sharing my ardor. But I’m very pleased to see the afore-linked grape, the University of Minnesota-developed Marquette, garner some attention, especially in the nation’s wine epicenter.

• The headline seems to go the well-duh route: “Women smell better.” But like many a great hed (that’s how journalists spell it in-house), this one has a double meaning: There’s further evidence that the ladies have better-attuned olfactory skills than us larger lugs.

• One of the wondrous things about wine is that learning more about it is generally great good fun. This Food & Wine tip sheet on recognizing wine’s truly important components is not quite the same as just gathering with friends to quaff away, but the exercises are definitely on my to-do list.

• Snake wine and other reptilian-influenced non-delights comprise part of this list of unusual imbibing material.

• My way better half and her best friend recently spent several days making cool stuff out of the gazillion corks in the cellar. Tempted though I was, in the end I didn’t have the heart to suggest this project: