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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had a busy month, signing 38 bills into law in March. Ranging from giant wine bottles to homeless encampment bans to ending squatting in Florida, all the signed laws represent a multitude of issues residents have been bringing to light.

Using reconnaissance and infiltration methods worthy of blockbuster heists or painstaking counterfeit operations, a growing number of criminals are making off with liquid gold by draining wineries of their finest vintages with elaborate schemes. Last summer, thieves in Paris pulled off a caper worthy of a big-budget Hollywood film. Bandits drilled through the basement walls of a city wine collector's private cellar to make off with 300 bottles of rare wine, aged for decades and valued at $300,000. The criminals used the sprawling Paris catacomb system to get close to the subterranean collection. Authorities believe they had specialized knowledge of...

Stilton is among the world’s best-known cheeses. An after-dinner stalwart, Stilton pairs brilliantly with a wide assortment of fortified and dry wines. Little wonder that it is nicknamed the “King of Cheeses.” Here’s a quick primer on the history and diversity of England’s Stilton cheeses and the wines and spirits to pair with them. Stilton has two forms. Inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti, a blue variety exhibits the characteristic blue veining and Stilton's traditional smell and taste. There is also an uninoculated white form. The cheese takes its name from the village of Stilton in Cambridgeshire. Ironically, the town is outside...

And they aren't even done exploring the massive space.The tomb of Queen Meret-Neith, an Egyptian royal who was most likely the most powerful woman of her era — if not the first female pharaoh — was discovered by archaeologists well over a century ago, but there are still mysteries surrounding both her and her burial site. A team of German and Austrian archaeologists organized by the University of Vienna are currently excavating her sprawling, complicated tomb, and they’ve already made some surprising discoveries. Including lots and lots of wine. Earlier this month, the team revealed that they had unearthed...

Could muscadine wine help perk up sagging skin? According to a new study, women who drank two glasses of dealcoholized muscadine wine daily showed significant improvements in the elasticity and water retention of their skin compared with those who consumed a placebo. The study is the first time scientists have studied the impacts of nonalcoholic wine consumption on skin health in a randomized clinical trial. Researchers attribute the beneficial effects to chemical compounds called polyphenols that naturally occur in many plants. Muscadine grapes are native to the Southeastern United States and are commonly used to make wine. Previous clinical trials...

A woman who went viral for claiming she found a bag with a bloody 'fetus' in her hotel room last month has had her account discredited. Ásh Whïté posted a video last week complaining about her stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in Tallahassee, while demanding a refund. The Florida mom described how she booked the room while in town for a family reunion, and upon entering, found it uncleaned from a previous guest's stay. In the clip, Whïté narrates footage of her discovering what appears to be a plastic bag filled with human blood from the room's closet and...

They made a grape escape. Brazen thieves broke into a Los Angeles liquor store and stole roughly $700,000 worth of rare wines, according to the store owner. The heist happened around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning, Nazmul Haque Helal, the owner of Lincoln Fine Wines, told KTLA.

Here's what it tastes like.We’ve all heard the expression “aging like a fine wine,” which implies that, like the best bottles, certain things get better with time. But what would happen if, say, that aging took place at the bottom of the ocean in a remote location just shy of the Arctic Circle? That’s the question that Norwegian boating company Hurtigruten wanted to test when it partnered with British Rathfinny Wine Estate to lower bottles of its 2018 Classic Cuveé to the ocean floor in hopes of bringing back a higher-quality, more mature product and, if not, to at least...

Self-proclaimed scavengers Lasse Melgaard and Elliot Martens went from raiding bins as students to opening a winery.Self-proclaimed scavengers Lasse Melgaard and Elliot Martens went from raiding bins as students to opening a winery. Two Raccoons: ‘Dumpster-diving’ friends make waste-cutting wine using surplus fruitMatthieu Gill Two Raccoons: Lasse Melgaard and Elliott Martens. Christina O'Neill Christina O'Neill 3 days ago Share via Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Copy link Page URL https://news.stv.tv/west-central/two-raccoons-dumpster-diving-friends-make-waste-cutting-wine-using-surplus-fruit Two “dumpster-diving” friends who began making wine using surplus fruit in their own flat during lockdown have received an innovation award. Lasse Melgaard, 26, and Elliott Martens, 28, “ate...

A woman has been found after she went missing for five days in the Victorian, Australia bushland with nothing but “a couple of snacks” and her “common sense”. Lillian, 48, set off on what was meant to be a short day trip on Sunday, traveling through the dense bushland at Bright in Victoria’s High Country. Incredible footage has revealed the moment she was found by emergency services on Friday during a search of the hilly terrain, after her car was spotted at the end of a dirt road in the Mitta Mitta bushland. Lillian had been driving towards Dartmouth Dam...

California's wine industry is on the brink of a financial crisis following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The bank had been the main financial institution for bank for wineries in the Golden State for almost three decades. The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the bank on Friday following a run by venture capital customers. On Friday night, thousands of wineries found that they were completely locked out of their accounts with no clear timeline as to when they might be able to access their funds. Kendra Kawala, co-founder of Maker, a canned wine company located in...

Publix customers can now enjoy a pint of beer or a glass of wine while grocery shopping at select stores in Florida. Customers can order freshly brewed coffee, a glass of wine, or beer and sip while they shop. According to Publix’s website, customers “can enjoy a glass at our bar or take it with you while you shop. And whether it’s happy hour, Sunday fun day, or anytime, you can enjoy a drink at Pours.” Pours debuted at the Publix GreenWise Market in Tallahassee in 2018. Since then, the supermarket chain has expanded Publix Pours to select Publix GreenWise...

Locally sourced grapes and imported tar pitches may have been the norms for winemakers along the coast of Italy during the Roman period, according to jars recovered from the ocean near the harbor of San Felice Circeo. Three different wine jars, or amphorae, were recovered and analyzed, giving researchers a useful insight into the practices for producing wine in this particular region in 1–2 century BCE, part of the late Greco-Italic period. What makes the research particularly notable is that it combines some of the latest chemical analysis techniques with other approaches used in archaeobotany to discover more about these...

VIDEOAnd in case you're wondering, actor James Mason was involved in a costly divorce from his wife and was absolutely desperate for cash. Yes, he must have been DESPERATE to cut that commercial.

Wine enriched with vanilla may have been popular among royals and high society in Jerusalem more than 2,500 years ago, suggest researchers in a new study.Researchers examining remnants of jars dating back to the kingdom of Judah found evidence that royal elites in Jerusalem may have been drinking wine ‘flavoured with vanilla’.It’s already known that wine has a long history in the region, and some studies suggest wines contained added spices or herbs.Yet researchers said they were surprised to find traces of vanillin in some of the ancient storage jars, which were excavated from debris caused by the Babylonian destruction...

Euphoria! CoreLogic’s Home Price Insights revealed that home prices rose 20% YoY in February despite REAL average hourly earnings declining -2.678% YoY. THAT is euphoria! Or Stimulypto, as I like to call it. No, The Federal Reserve still hasn’t removed its staggering monetary stimulus. Notice that M2 Money Stock is still growing at a torrid 11% pace. 20% YoY home price growth in February? CoreLogic has increased their forecast of home price growth to 5%, likely because The Federal Reserve is imitating a sloth in removing its monetary Stimulypto. Of course, there are other assets growing at lightning speeds. US...

Drinking just a glass of wine or pint of beer each night in middle-age may age your brain by two years, a study claims. Researchers analysed MRI scans of 36,000 adults to calculate their brain size, and then compared the alcohol intake of the volunteers. Their results suggested a 50-year-old who drank one unit a day — the equivalent of half a lower-strength lager beer — would have a brain six months older than if they kept off the booze. University of Pennsylvania researchers found the link grew even stronger the more people drank. Middle-aged adults who consumed two units...

This week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) trumpeted the supposed benefits of its new anti-alcohol initiative. In a press release on the 23rd February, the taxpayer-funded so-called public health organization announced that “if countries of the WHO European Region were to introduce a minimum level of 15% tax on the retail price per unit of alcohol, regardless of the type of alcoholic beverage, it would save 133,000 lives each year.” The reduction in deaths from increased taxation comes courtesy of modelling from the WHO’s Non-Communicable Diseases Advisory Council working group. Needless to say, the conclusions are debatable. It is common...

We all know that drinking too much is bad for us. But what about just a few glasses a week? Red wine has antioxidants, we've been told, so a few glasses are apparently 'good for you'. Other studies have suggested that low-to-moderate drinkers are less likely to have a heart attack than those who avoid drinking altogether. Wine is even included (in moderation) in the Mediterranean diet, one of the healthiest food plans on the planet! But a new study based on a huge data set from the United Kingdom now suggests that the J- or U- shaped curve of...