Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
Queen Elizabeth should abdicate the throne. Prince Charles should refuse the crown. William should be coronated as the King of England. This is the solution to the problems the English royal family is currently facing, a problem symbolized by Harry and Megan’s recent announcement they wanted to pull away from being active members of the royal family and strike out on their own. The problem isn’t a rebellious Duke and Dutchess of Sussex. The problem is poor succession planning. It…
I don’t like anonymous comments on this blog. I like anonymous emails even less. It strikes me as cowardly and suggests the person commenting/emailing doesn’t possess the courage of their convictions. It’s also a huge factor that leads to the divisiveness that plagues conversations on the Internet. That said, I’m compelled to (once again) published another anonymous G’email that would have carried (a tiny bit) more weight had it been placed in the comment section of this blog with a…
The reason the “Wine Cave” attack by Elizabeth Warren on Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the last Democratic debate was so effective was that wine is still viewed by most as a symbol of elitism, snobbishness and privilege in the United States. Moreover, this is one of those cases where the symbolism reflects reality. The attack was also made more memorable by the use of the term “wine cave”. It has a strange and memorable ring to it. But to make…
It’s not always easy to make predictions, but it is fun. The best way I know to do this is to look at obvious and not-so-obvious trends and try to discern where they are leading. Where is wine heading in 2020? The Economy Will Create Value in Wine I’ve been saying for some time now that I don’t like the path the economy is taking for any number of reasons. Real Estate trends, manufacturing slowdowns, rising debt and trade wars…
The wine industry in America is a trailing indicator of the culture and economy. It always has been. The top stories in wine in 2019 reflect this truism. Politics, powerful social movements, the economy, evolving modes of consumerism and natural disasters all came together to give us the industry’s biggest stories in 2019. These are those stories. Supreme Court Pushes Back on Protectionism Fourteen years ago the U.S. Supreme Court rendered an opinion in Granholm v Heald that created the…
