Getting in the Blue Nun habit
QUESTION When was Blue Nun wine first produced? Has it always been made using the same grapes?
Blue Nun was the first truly global mass-market wine brand. Its roots go back to 1856 when Hermann Sichel, then aged 65, set up a wine merchant business in Mainz, Germany. But the story of Blue Nun begins with the 1921 vintage, said to be one of the best.
The Sichel family decided to export these good wines, especially to Britain, and the Blue Nun label was invented to facilitate sales.
legend has it that the nun on the label was originally clad in brown robes, but a printer’s error turned them blue and thus a brand was born.
The wine found a market in the uK, selling more than 1,000 cases a year in the Thirties. The volumes increased after World War II, rising to 3.5 million bottles a year after a huge marketing campaign.
Blue Nun was billed as a wine that could be drunk throughout a meal. It was a sweet, rather insipid German class of wine called Liebfraumilch, which means, in a bizarre example of German wine parlance, ‘milk of the beloved lady’.
This low-alcohol white blend consisted mostly of a grape called Muller-Thurgau, which was a Riesling crossbreed developed in 1882 by Professor Hermann Muller, of Thurgau, Switzerland.
The fruity, uncomplicated flavours of Blue Nun and imitators such as Black Tower lost favour when tastes became more sophisticated. Sales of Blue Nun declined to around 500,000 bottles a year by the end of the eighties.
In 2006, it was re-branded and reformulated. Previously a Liebfraumilch, it is now a Qualitatswein — the MullerThurgau grape was dropped from the blend, leaving only the aromatic Silvaner and acidic Riesling. It is also lower in sugar and drier.
The brand has expanded its range with more than 25 varieties sold worldwide, ten of them Britain: a medium-sweet red, white and rose from Spain; a sparkling wine; a medium- sweet Riesling; a lowalcohol range of two whites and two roses; plus Blue Nun Original.
Stuart Cowley, Ipswich.
QUESTION Why can’t trees repair themselves if initials are carved into their bark?
THey can, but it can take a long time. Trees grow at the tips of their branches and roots instead of the base of the trunk. This is called primary growth. The small piece of cell dividing tissue is called the ‘apical meristem’.
This is found at the apices, or tips, of the shoot and root, and is a region of actively dividing cells.
Radial or secondary growth is provided by the cambium, a thin cylinder of dividing cells extending from the top to the bottom of the tree. New conductive cells are formed on the inside and outside of the cambium layer, increasing the diameter of the stem. Another layer of cambium, the cork cambium, forms the bark that p protects the tree.
The function of the apical m meristem can be likened to builders st standing near the top of a chimney who constantly produce and lay bricks (cells) that always rise with th the height of the structure.
Other builders (the cambium) co continuously reinforce the chimney by building horizontally.
T Therefore, the brick or cell laid fiv five feet above the ground remains at that height, so if you carve your name in a tree, it will stay at the same height.
However, the rapid production of cells beneath the bark causes it to rupture and repair itself ( and the carving wounds). The new cells formed will fill and widen the carving and they will widen and distort until they eventually disappear — a process that can take many years.
Remember, the bark is much like your skin: it protects the tree from the environment and external pathogens, so carving your name in a tree is never a good idea. James Smithson, Chepstow, Monmouthshire.
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