News

• Argentina, a rising star in the global wine community, is still defining itself -- large commercial producers, or small, artisanal vintners?
• When takeout involves shipping in dry ice, you expect something fabulous. The "Cranky Consumer" compares the mail-order options.
• One entrepreneur is trying to make vodka the new Texas tea.
• Last year people planted recession gardens -- and made some rookie mistakes. This year will be totally different.
• Speaking of the recession, there's a trend toward ditching bottled water for tap. But it still needs to taste good.

Who doesn't love a nice, dry Cabernet? As if to a flame, moths have been flocking in great number to the grape vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, and Salano and feasting on the young spring crops -- causing the wine industry a major headache. The California Department of Agriculture has quarantined 162 square miles in an effort to isolate the moth larvae.

It's not just any moth, either: This is EGVM, or Lobesia botrana, which up until now has been found in Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America, but never in North America. The pest was first spotted in Oakville, Calif., last September, and since then two pockets of infestation have been identified -- both in the heart of wine country.

• Even garlic is going green -- and adding nice mellow flavor as it does.
• "Zinfandel's like Beyonce"... and these wines are Zin's sexy backup singers.
• For the Vegas-bound, here are tons of great new restaurants.
• If you're thinking more about China than Vegas, try out Yu Garden -- a taste of Shanghai without the 12-hour plane trip.
• What is this, chopped liver? Why, yes, it is actually.

What's worse than having to endure a long, hard winter? Enduring a long, hard winter as a crawfish.

Crawfish hate the cold. When the temperature dips, they respond in kind, burrowing into the mud and refusing to eat. That means the few critters that have wriggled into farmers' traps this season are too puny to impress the many Louisianans who traditionally feast on crawfish during Lent.

"Mother Nature's throwing us a curve ball, and the trouble is she keeps throwing them," says Stephen Minville, director of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association.

Minville's 2010 harvest stands at about 30 percent of his typical year-to-date haul, with the most successful farmers topping out at 40 percent. "Optimism is running out," Minville says.

While it might be OK to eat horse in Europe or Japan, slaughtering horses for human consumption is a no-no in the United States.

But if one Missouri lawmaker has his way, horse-slaughter facilities could re-open in the U.S., a move that has both its supporters and its vocal critics, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and USA Today reported.

Missouri state Rep. Jim Viebrock, R-Republic, introduced the bill earlier this year to allow horse processing plants to open in the Show-Me-State, the papers reported. Pro-slaughter advocates say the move will help the equine industry, hurt by the closure of the country's three horse slaughterhouses. But anti-slaughter groups say it's the recession, not the absence of slaughterhouses, that is hurting horses.

But even if the ban were lifted, would Americans dig in?