Like a Cherry Merlot ice cream? Then how about a chocolate lover’s dream - a bowl of Chocolate Cabernet?

• Wine ice cream could be the best thing ever invented - "Mercer’s Dairy, a dairy farm in Boonville, New York which dates back to the 1930s, offers eight flavours of the adult-only treat, including riesling, cherry merlot, peach white zinfandel and sparkling strawberry. ... Owner Roxaina Hurlburt first had the idea for the sweet treat when guests at a food event in Washington in 2005 started dolloping Mercer's ice cream in their glasses of wine (the dairy's stall happened to be next to a wine one).She and her niece Ruth Mignerey spent years developing the recipe, as they tried to work out how to get the ice cream to freeze."
• From the Mercer's Dairy product sheet:

• Craft Brewers Are Running Out Of Names, And Into Legal Spats - With so many craft breweries now in operation, just about every beer name you can imagine is taken. That's making it harder for newcomers to name that brew without risking a legal fight. - Leif Parsons for NPR

• Sausage row reveals German disquiet over trade talks - "A small grilled sausage from Bavaria has become the unlikely symbol of German resistance to the transatlantic trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the US, after the country’s agriculture minister warned that “not every sausage can be protected” in the trade talks. Christian Schmidt, Germany’s agriculture minister, said in an interview with Der Spiegel: “If we want to seize the opportunities of free trade with the enormous American market then we can’t carry on protecting every sausage and cheese speciality.”
• Going Dry: The Benefits Of A Month Without Booze - "... could such a short-term breakup with alcohol really impart any measurable health benefits? The staff at the magazine New Scientist decided to find out, using themselves as guinea pigs. The findings of their small but intriguing experiment suggest the answer is a resounding yes.
• So much for New Year’s resolutions: People eat even more after the holidays - "Every year after the holidays, people inevitably swear they'll make amends for the extra calories they consumed in December by eating less when the new year comes. They'll buy more broccoli, and fewer chips; serve themselves more salad, and skip more desserts. Talk of New Year's weight resolutions begins well before the ball drops. And that talk is cheap. It turns out that people actually eat the most right around the time they say they're going to eat the least—and by a big margin. Americans buy roughly twice as many calories per serving in food in the first three months of the new year than during the holidays, according to a new study."