Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
The results of Napa Valley’s recent electoral battle to determine the future of farming here are officially in: Measure C failed and reason prevailed. But not by much. It’s absolutely clear, based on the Measure C campaign and the results, that a good percentage of Napa County residents believe that the wine industry here needs, in some way, to be reined in. The proponents of the failed measure, and surely a number of those who voted for the Measure C,…
The fact that one has a vested interested in an issue in no way diminishes the power of their argument concerning that issue. I wanted to get that fact out of the way as I address one of the most interesting articles of 2018: Lisa Perrotti-Brown’s “The Big Parkerization Lie”. Ms. Perrotti-Brown is a longtime associate of Robert Parker, editor-in-chief of The Wine Advocate and a part owner of this publication at which she has penned a stout pushback against…
When I got a Bachelor’s degree in History at Humboldt State University in the late 1980s it was fun work. But at the undergraduate level, you just don’t do much real history. You learn about history and in some cases take a shot at doing history. The Master’s Degree at San Francisco State University was different. This is when you start examining and using primary source documents: diaries, photos, government documents, memoirs, etc. One doesn’t DO history with anything but…
There are three common and inaccurate accusations that are too regularly hurled at wine lovers and the wine industry: Wine Snobs Abound Wine is Overpriced Inexpensive Wine Is As Good as Expensive Wine Whenever you hear or see these accusations flung, you can be nearly positive that the person flinging them feels inadequate over their lack of a wine education. They shouldn’t feel inadequate about that lack of wine knowledge any more than they ought to feel inadequate over a…
The modern American alcohol regulatory system was dreamed up and implemented in the early 1930s by a group of men whose most recent experience with alcohol was thirteen years of national Prohibition, violent bootleggers and the pre-Prohibition moral squalor of the “Tavern”. Eighty-five years later the system that was created when school segregation was the law of the land, when child labor was largely unregulated and when there was no constitutional right to a minimum wage. remains mainly unchanged. The…
