Blowin' in the Wind
I opened my bread bin this morning to discover a mouldy interior. I half expected 'Fungus the Bogeyman' to crawl out. My neglected homemade loaf had attracted fungal friends, and was languishing in a newly acquired fur coat.
I walked the baby Husky to the bread board. In my poorly stocked house a decision had to be made whether to operate and remove the fur with my inadequate knife collection, or just starve. The latter prevailed.
Fungus in certain forms can be dangerous as demonstrated by Bob Dylan who famously caught histoplasmosis from fungal spores 'Blowin' in the Wind', derived from bat guano. Domestic outbreaks are generally non-toxic, and in fact there are old remedies in Serbia and Greece where mouldy bread was used to treat wounds thanks to the fungal production of penicillin. I can assure you that I was not about to rub that Husky into a recent paper cut.
Fungus loves damp dark places, a wine cellar being the perfect breeding ground. It does not require light and derives all it nutrients from the host, much like the bat whose bowel movements almost dispatched Dylan.
Fungus can be very damaging to wine when it infects a cork. Cork engineering is a challenge, if too moist it attracts mould growth which in turn can aid the production of a nasty chemical called TCA, tainting the wine if allowed to progress all the way through the cork.
I have come across many mouldy corks, but thankfully in most cases the rot had not prevailed, leaving the wine untouched. A TCA induced 'corked' wine can either be flat tasting if mildly effected, or can smell in worse cases like a wet Labrador (keeping to the dog theme).
Most of South East England is suffering from the 'Euro-Whiff' at the moment, a rotten smell arriving on unusual easterly winds from continental Europe. Agriculture in the form of flatulent cows is being blamed. I can see plenty of wine connoisseurs obliviously drinking corked wine, their senses already overloaded.
I walked the baby Husky to the bread board. In my poorly stocked house a decision had to be made whether to operate and remove the fur with my inadequate knife collection, or just starve. The latter prevailed.
Fungus in certain forms can be dangerous as demonstrated by Bob Dylan who famously caught histoplasmosis from fungal spores 'Blowin' in the Wind', derived from bat guano. Domestic outbreaks are generally non-toxic, and in fact there are old remedies in Serbia and Greece where mouldy bread was used to treat wounds thanks to the fungal production of penicillin. I can assure you that I was not about to rub that Husky into a recent paper cut.
Fungus loves damp dark places, a wine cellar being the perfect breeding ground. It does not require light and derives all it nutrients from the host, much like the bat whose bowel movements almost dispatched Dylan.
Fungus can be very damaging to wine when it infects a cork. Cork engineering is a challenge, if too moist it attracts mould growth which in turn can aid the production of a nasty chemical called TCA, tainting the wine if allowed to progress all the way through the cork.
I have come across many mouldy corks, but thankfully in most cases the rot had not prevailed, leaving the wine untouched. A TCA induced 'corked' wine can either be flat tasting if mildly effected, or can smell in worse cases like a wet Labrador (keeping to the dog theme).
Most of South East England is suffering from the 'Euro-Whiff' at the moment, a rotten smell arriving on unusual easterly winds from continental Europe. Agriculture in the form of flatulent cows is being blamed. I can see plenty of wine connoisseurs obliviously drinking corked wine, their senses already overloaded.
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