Wines with attitude
are worth the effort Many years ago, I thought it might be fun to put together a mixed case of wine for our mail-order customers, featuring 12 different grape varieties from a single region of Italy. The region I chose was Piemonte. I knew that there were masses of different grapes in this north-west corner of Italy, but I thought I might struggle to make up my quota of a dozen. In fact, I managed to find 23 different grapes indigenous to Piemonte and still in commercial cultivation and rumour had it that there had once been many more. Italy is a treasure trove in this respect, because it still has a rich diversity of local traditions, dependent on local grapes. The usual international suspects (Chardonnay, Cabernet and the rest) have been planted in plenty of locations, but the bedrock of Italian winemaking remains true to its tradition. And these are grapes with attitude; they taste very different. MA|24/10/02 |12 |On-the-spot fines are just the ticket |Police say a pilot scheme in which on-the-spot penalty notices are issued for minor offences of disorder and antisocial behaviour is proving a great success. West Midlands Police one of four forces around the countrytrialling the scheme say 340 tickets for either £40 or £80 have been issued since the scheme was launched nine weeks ago, with 200 in the last month alone. Most of the tickets 183 were issued to offenders for using threatening and abusive behaviour, 103 for being drunk and disorderly, 35 for wasting police time and 15 for being drunk in the highway. Chief Inspector James Andronov said officers found the new powers highly useful. "The feedback is that people are increasingly aware of the tickets and often stop offending when threatened with a penalty notice. "The word is obviously getting about with the public, as the mention of the issue of such tickets tends to prevent further problems. "We are confident this will provide an effective way of dealing with the type of behaviour that blights the lives of communities throughout the West Midlands, providing a potent deterrent to would-be offenders.
