Oct 30, 2006
I love seeing this sort of thing. It’s just that you don’t see that much of it. I’m talking about blogs that combine wine with another topic. Off the top of my head I can think of a few, but the Wine Hiker Witiculture Blog is really a great one. The blog itself supports a very interesting and unique service: California Wine Hikes, a company that provides guided hiking tours through the wilderness and parks surrounding California wine country. Yes,…
Oct 30, 2006
Talk about getting this boy excited. I wake up yesterday, tromp out to the lawn to pick up the Sunday papers, sit with coffee by my side and open the my favorite Sunday reading material. And what do I see? An article that brings together two of my favorite things in life: Baseball and wine. There in my Sunday paper is an article about Tom "Terrific" Seaver, one of the best pitcher to ever throw a baseball and, apparently a…
Oct 26, 2006
It appears the French will keep at it until they get the results they want. For 30 years a certain humiliation infested the French wine industry as a result of the "Paris Tasting of 1976" in which California wines bested the French in a taste off. With great hope for vindication, the French watched the recreation of that tasting just this year. Yet again, California wines bested the French. Not content to be good PR practitioners and let this issue…
Oct 26, 2006
In the world of trends you’ve got "leading indicators" and "trailing indicators". The former tells where the trend is headed while the latter suggests where the trend has headed. Higher education is a trailing indicator. A demonstration of this can be found in the news report that Appalachian State University in North Carolina has created a "Wine Studies" department. Most states in the U.S. are "third tier" wine producers. That is, they are not understood to be sources of fine…
Oct 17, 2006
"Everywhere you look in Napa County, you see what was once a farming and working-class socio-economic environment transformed into an upper-class enclave and tourist attractions, with baronial wine estates, hillside celebrity mansions, upscale shops and restaurants, luxurious inns, B&Bs, and hotels and extravagant cultural centers — all designed for the benefit of the “haves.” But beneath the genteel glitter, there exist harsh realities for those on the lower end of the economic ladder. While the local Hispanic population provides most…