Jul 18, 2006
The Europe we all know and love from history, the one in which factions, tribes and families fight among one another for power, influence and self interest is emerging in the debate about what to do to do with a lake of European wine no one wants. The past few months has been a busy one for European wine policy. The EU released a proposal that would result in the ripping out of 400,000 hectare of vineyards and reduce the…
Jul 17, 2006
The Feds used to be very very strict about what you could put on a wine label. No naked people, no health claims and not dirty words. It all seemed fairly reasonable to me as long as the good people who approved labels didn’t go overboard in their capacity as regulators. It seems either there just aren’t enough people at the TTB to do their job or the rules have been relaxed in a serious way. I concluded this upon…
Jul 14, 2006
Thanks to Decanter Magazine it recently came to my attention that the World Wildlife Fund has begun a campaign to preserve the use of natural cork in the use of wine. It seems a counter-intuitive call for an environmental organization because in essence the use of cork involves the exploitation of the environment. What WWF is saying, however, in their recently released report "CORK SCREWED" (PDF), is that if the global wine industry continues to migrate over to alternatives to…
Jul 13, 2006
I’m not real sure what to make of Sondra Barret’s "microscopic portraits" of wine beyond the fact that she is completely sincere when she wonders if these art pieces truly are "expressions of style, personality, and perhaps the ‘soul’ of the wine." A former medical researcher, Barret’s technique for exposing the "soul of wine" seems pretty straightforward. Apparently she uses a microscope to photograph wine on a molecular level, revealing what are some pretty nice looking images. However, I’m not…
Jul 12, 2006
There was a time in my life when I was flat broke. I was studying History (“what are you going to do with that degree, young man?”) at University and everything I had went into books, supplies, rent and, usually, Cup O’Noodle Soup. Yet I still had back then an interest in wine that would lead me on occasion, when there was something leftover, to buy a bottle. And you drank it…no matter what. In fact, when you are as…