Beer and Wine - what you don't know

If you're not reading Lipsticking, Marketing Online to Women, you wouldn't know these important facts about wine and beer.

1. Women buy 77% of the wine sold in this country, much to the surprise of wine producers.
2. Women are better than men at holding their liquor, much to the surprise of everyone.

From realbeer, a study at the University of Kentucky found that men's loss of inhibition was three times greater than women's with the same blood alcohol levels.

And in a related story, the best beer is the world is brewed by Trappist monks in Flanders, at the abbay of Saint Sixtus of Westvleten.

You would think with the #1rating by ratebeer.com,  the brewery would be cashing in, but that's only if you know nothing about the monastic life or about the silent order of trappist monks who aren't talking.

Mark Bode, who co-ordinates the claustrum, a nearby exhibition on the monastic life, said, "We make the beer to live but we do not live for beer."

Outsiders don't understand," he says. "They say, 'You are successful, make more beer; you will make more money'. But the monks believe the most important thing is monastic life, not the brewery."

The #1 rated beer, Westvleteren Abt 12,  has not been distributed commercially since 1941.  You have to go to the Saint Sixtus monastery to buy your cases of the heavenly beer.