Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
Almost a week ago I published a post here entitled, “Is the Wine Industry Racists?” It received a good deal of interest, a number of thoughtful comments, and a number of shares, links, etc. Not surprising. There were a number of folks that liked my perspective (“racism” may in fact not be the reason African-Americans are underrepresented in the industry and among the applicant pool for wine industry jobs) and a number who thought I was off-base. As it should…
Is the wine industry in America racist? It’s a pertinent and timely question given not only the current movement for social justice and racial equality but also considering the various articles that have been published over the past few weeks highlighting the experiences of African Americans working in the wine industry here in the United States. INDUSTRY STRUCTURE To begin with, what should be uncontroversial is that the structure of the wine industry is not racist. That is to say,…
Masked and hands sterilized to the hilt, my boy Henry and I took a trip to the bookstore yesterday. For him, we were in search of some new adventures from “Henry and Mudge” and a new tale of the “Magic Treehouse”. The boy is learning to read and these two classics keep his interest and motivate him. I was seeking something new to read on Thomas Jefferson, motivated as I was by a recent incident here in Portland that had…
Attempting to gauge the political leanings of the “wine industry”, as some have recently attempted and about which others have speculated, is a fool’s errand. You can’t do so by tallying up political campaign contributions. You can’t do it by analyzing social media postings. The only way to determine if this thing called “the wine industry” leans left or right or otherwise is to look at voting data for those that work in the wine industry. That requires first identifying…
The problem with trying to predict the impact of the CoronaVirus on the Alcohol Universe is the same problem of predicting its impact on any industry: We don’t yet know the severity of the impact the Virus will have people and society and we don’t yet know the effective lifespan of the virus going unchecked by medical intervention such as a vaccine or effective treatment. But of course, predictions can be based on assumptions. Let’s assume, for the sake of…
