This summer the first Britishgrown edamame crop arrives in supermarkets.

Maintaining blood sugar levels, even in the absence of disease, may be an important strategy for preserving cognitive health, suggests a new study. The findings suggest that exercising to improve blood sugar levels could be a way for some people to stave off the normal cognitive decline that comes with age.

Aging yeast cells accumulate damage over time, but they do so by following a pattern laid down earlier in their life by diet as well as the genes that control metabolism and the dynamics of cell structures such as mitochondria, the power plants of cells.

File this under global warming: 1, the well-known estate in Germany's Rheingau region, recently planted a vineyard at 55 degrees latitude on the island of Sylt, in the North Sea. Just to get our bearings, this is as far north in Germany as one can go, almost at the border of Denmark.

It's hard to believe there was once a time that San Francisco had no major public wine tasting focused on Pinot Noir. I've only been blogging about wine for the last five and a half years, but when I started, no such festival existed. We had a Zinfandel Festival, a tasting for small family winemakers, a tasting for Rhone varietals, a Cabernet tasting, and more, but not until 2005 did San Francisco get a festival dedicated to what has been called the "heartbreak grape."

Now in it's fifth year, Pinot Days has firmly established itself as one of the largest and most exciting Pinot Noir events in America. If you enjoy Pinot Noir or are still trying to figure that out, this is an event that should not be missed.

Like many such events, Pinot Days occurs over the course of a long weekend, beginning Wednesday, June 24th with a small dinner with winemaker Ed Kurtzman and his wines as well as an event highlighting some of the newer producers of Pinot Noir in California. The festival kicks off for real on the 25th with a multi-winemaker dinner at Pres a Vi restaurant in San Francisco. The festivities continue on Friday and Saturday with educational seminars and a bus tour of the Russian River Valley, and the weekend finishes up with the main event: the grand tasting of 200 different producers from around the globe pouring more than 300 different wines. The tasting, as in past years, is heavily focused on California producers, but increasingly draws in participants from Oregon, Washington, New Zealand, and Burgundy.

For details on the various activities as well as a list of the producers who will be pouring their wines for the grand tasting, check out the event web site.

Pinot Days Grand Tasting
Sunday June 28th
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Festival Pavilion - Fort Mason Center
Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94123 (map)

Tickets for the grand tasting are $50 and should be purchased in advance online, especially if you don't want to stand in a long line at the event. Tickets for winemaker dinners and other activities range from $80 to $150. Details are available on the event web site.

Parking at Fort Mason is easier now that it is a paid lot, but for large events like this, you'd be better off parking several blocks away and walking. Or better yet, taking public transport.

Like all such large public tastings, you will enjoy yourself more and learn a lot more by following my simple guidelines: get a good night's sleep, wear dark clothes, come with a full stomach, drink lots of water, snack a little, and SPIT YOUR WINE!

I have been tasting through more than 200 Australian red wines in the past few weeks, catching up on everything I can squeeze in before the deadline for this year's tasting report. Mostly, I find the results encouraging. Specific reviews will be coming up over the next few weeks in 1 and the 1, but for now, one observation: The category that surprised me most pleasantly, believe it or not, was Cabernet Sauvignon.

Came down to Naples for a couple of days to catch up with my old friend actor Matt Dillon who was at the Napoli Film Festival to give a presentation on his life's work. We decided to try to find the best pie in the legendary pizza capital. We had some locals helping us out with our mission.

There are people who start wineries and work for a long time to get to the point that their names become synonymous with good wine, regardless of whether their names are on the bottle or not. And then there are those who you wonder at how they managed to avoid having their name on a wine bottle for as long as they did.

Robert Lieff has a long history with wine, and with Napa Valley in particular. How he has managed to only just now end up with his name on a bottle, is in part a testament to his success in his chosen career, but also to the persuasive powers of his wife Gretchen, who finally convinced him a couple of years ago to consummate a lifelong flirtation, and have a wine made in his name.

Even though Lieff Wines is a new project for Robert, it is far from the first vineyard or winery that he has owned.

As a bright-eyed young lawyer in 1966, Lieff managed to get himself a job working for Melvin Belli, who, at the time, was one of the most prominent lawyers in Northern California. Together, they began work on a legal case that in its resolution, would literally define some of the most famous vineyards in America.

The project was litigation of a trust, where the main asset was 4000 acres in the heart of Napa Valley held by the Stelling family. As the case wound down, chunks of this land were spun out and sold off to become what are now household names in Napa, at least to anyone who knows wine. To Kalon, Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, Bond, and even the iconic Robert Mondavi Winery, all were purchased out of this chunk of land that Lieff and Belli spent almost a decade wrangling about in court.

In the process of all this litigation, Lieff became friends with Doug Stelling, and when Doug ended up getting 12 acres alongside Highway 29 in Napa, Lieff became his partner and together they founded a winery that would be called Far Niente. This particular plot of land wasn't anything special at the time, and included an old farm house that couldn't even charitably be called decrepit. It was completely overgrown with ivy, and had been for so long, that when Lieff and Stelling dragged the ivy off by tying it to their pickup trucks, the local planning and zoning commission sent them a letter telling them they were going to be fined for putting up a building without a permit.

That old farmhouse is now one of the most picturesque of Napa's historic landmarks and Far Niente and its sister winery, Nickel & Nickel, are some of the valley's most recognized brands.

Lieff sold his interest in Far Niente to his partners in 1984, but by that time, he had been bitten by the vineyard bug. From the early 1970's onward, Robert Lieff lived a strange double life. During the week he was building one of the country's most successful plaintiff law firms, and on the weekends he was planting vines and coaxing a 1940's tractor through his vineyards.

Lieff is now well known for his part in building the firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, but his closet affection for wandering around in vineyards led to him partially owning several more wineries over the years, and perhaps more importantly, owning and personally farming a small vineyard in Kenwood. He took viticulture classes at U.C. Davis Extension, and tried to learn as much as he could about how to run a vineyard. In the process, Lieff got to know a lot of people in the wine business, including, most notably, the legendary Andre Tchelistcheff, with whom he traveled through Bordeaux, and alongside whom he was inducted into a fraternal order known as the Commandres de Beautemps Medoc et Graves.

Lieff lived in Napa on and off starting in about 1980, and in 1997 he purchased a 22 acre property on the eastern hills of Napa's Rutherford appellation where he had architect Scott Johnson build him an award winning house. This property was the first arable land Lieff had owned in Napa in some time, but he wasted no time getting vines in the ground. Not with any intention of making wine, mind you, simply with the idea that it would be nice to have some vines around to hang out with and to be able to selling some grapes to neighbors and friends.

And that is exactly what he did with his little three acre vineyard, until his wife planted the seed that grew into Lieff Wines.

Now, with the help of his wife Gretchen, who does all the sales, marketing, and general management, and the help of vineyard manager Jim Barbour and winemaker Cary Gott, Lieff produces around 300 cases of Cabernet from his little hillside vineyard.

With such a small vineyard and production, the crop can be precision tuned by Barbour, and Gott can baby the wine from vine to bottle, which is exactly what happens.

The vineyard is still maturing, and the Lieff's are still settling into their roles as winery owners, but this wine represents the early beginnings of what will undoubtedly become a sought-after label in Napa.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cherry cola and cassis. In the mouth it is juicy and lively, with great acidity that gives it an overall impression of enthusiasm. Medium bodied with smooth cherry fruit and hints of tobacco and leather, the wine has soft, suede-like tannins emerge in the finish, though the memory preserved is one of fruit more than anything else.

Food Pairing:
Given the opportunity, I would love to drink this wine with a chipotle rubbed flat iron steak.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $50

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet

Long-term memory formation in honeybees is instigated by a calcium ion cascade. Researchers have shown that calcium acts as a switch between short- and long-term storage of learned information.

Researchers have completed the genome sequence of Azotobacter vinelandii, uncovering important genetic information that will contribute to a more complete understanding of the biology of this versatile, soil-living bacterium and pave the way for new applications, including the possible use of A. vinelandii for the production of other proteins.

Changes in ocean chemistry -- a consequence of increased carbon dioxide emissions from human industrial activity -- could cause US shellfish revenues to drop significantly in the next 50 years, according to a new study.

Emergency plans to counteract global warming by artificially shading the Earth from incoming sunlight might lower the planet's temperature a few degrees, but such "geoengineering" solutions would do little to stop the acidification of the world oceans that threatens coral reefs and other marine life, report the authors of a new study. The culprit is atmospheric carbon dioxide, which even in a cooler globe will continue to be absorbed by seawater, creating acidic conditions.

In revisiting a chemical reaction that's been in the literature for several decades and adding a new wrinkle of their own, researchers have discovered a mild and relatively inexpensive procedure for removing oxygen from biomass. This procedure, if it can be effectively industrialized, could allow many of today's petrochemical products, including plastics, to instead be made from biomass.

Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in processed foods contain trans fatty acids that interfere with the regulation of blood flow. A new report reveals a new way in which these "trans fats" gum up the cellular machinery that keeps blood moving through arteries and veins.

Because peak bone mass is not achieved until the third decade of life, it is particularly important for young adults to consume adequate amounts of calcium, protein and vitamin D found in dairy products to support health and prevent osteoporosis later in life. Researchers now report that young people actually reduce their intake of calcium and dairy products as they enter their twenties.

By using a super-computer to virtually squeeze and heat iron-bearing minerals under conditions that would have existed when the Earth crystallized from an ocean of magma to its solid form 4.5 billion years ago, geochemists have produced the first picture of how certain forms of iron were initially distributed in the solid Earth.