Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
I along with many upon many thousands of readers were looking forward to yesterday when Deborah Harkness, Wine Blog Awards double winner for Good Wines Under $20, saw the release of her second in the All Souls Trilogy, "Shadow of the Night"—the follow up to the wildly popular "Discovery of Witches". I've downloaded it and as soon as I finish "The Long Earth", I'm on to Deborah's latest. But it was the release of her second book of fiction that…
While it seems to me a bit over the top that Italian officials would raid a famed Roman wine store for promoting "Natural" wines in violation of Italian consumer fraud laws, the episode reported by Jeramy Parzan at his respected Do Bianchi blog does speak to the nebulous intellectual and commercial space the "natural" wine movement has carved out for itself not just in Italy, but across the globe. According to Parzan, famed Enoteca Bulzoni was raided by Italian officials…
It's certainly clear to me and it ought to be clear to anyone else considering the issue that human beings are positively inclined to share the details of their lives as broadly and widely as possible. Interestingly, we didn't know this until very recently. Or, at least we didn't have solid evidence it was true. The ease with which social media tools, mobile broadcast platforms and simple publishing platforms allow us all, individually, to broadcast what we think, what we…
Reading this story of Jim McCormick's private museum of wine antiques and ephemera in Petaluma, California, I am reminded of the dismay I hold for the fact that California has never made an effort to memorialize and celebrate its second most important industry (after moviemaking): WINE. There is no California Wine Museum. And there should be. The history of winemaking in California touches on so many overarching themes that define California from immigration, agriculture and technology to tourism, innovation and…
I suspect that to many readers of this blog, the now instituted California ban on Foie Gras seems pretty stupid; perhaps even unintelligible. But there's a nice, easy way to understand how California could pass this kind of law: No one eats and no one makes Foie Gras, making the economic impact of banning the delicacy non-existent, which in turn makes the political fall out of supporting such a ban non-existent. There is another way of putting this: with no…
