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Here's Obama and Biden responding to a dumb-ass statement by Steve Kroft: ""But you tried really hard to reach these people,'' Kroft pressed.

Lying somewhere between a missing spy masters lap-top and a cd full of a high street bank's customer details is my wine tasting notebook. It has been missing for a few weeks now; I've not seen a mention on the Mail's front page as being discovered on the 8:15 from Waterloo though. In addition to a great many tasting notes, many destined to be written up on Spittoon, there were two full articles planned for the Guardian, the notes and thoughts on the Montes Alpha range (the 'gimmick' being to serve the wines with specific music) and several very interesting wine and food matching experiments. Greatly saddened it has vanished. My memory recall is not great; wracking my brains for a descriptive of a wine tasted last week is bad enough, let alone something slurped back in May! But my pictures folder has many shots destined to accompany those notes; one being the Montes Alpha Syrah used here. This amply flavoured, high alcohol (14.5%) wine was an absolute joy with a little Grana Pada

The New York Times has an audio slide show on one of the best-known French wines: Cotes du Rhone.