Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Who in the wine communications industry deserves our respect and our amplification and how do we choose which voices to lift up. I was motivated to consider this question after writing the other day about the coming Wine Media Conference. Most of the communicators at this coming conference are not part of the “Wine First String” that gets most of the attention. But if the history of wine blogging tells us anything, it is that inside the contingent of writers,…
While I’m sure it exists somewhere, I can’t think of a more intrusive regulatory bureaucracy than the one that governs alcohol in the United States. Since its inception in the 1930’s following Repeal, it has only grown and grown. I think what has grown with it is the tolerance for intrusion by the regulated. Part of the problem with the outsized alcohol regulatory structure is that with the states being given the burden of regulating alcohol inside their borders with…
It was difficult to find any non-mocking coverage of the claim made last week by University of Connecticut professor Mathilde Cohen that “French eating habits reinforced the ‘dominance’ of white people over ethnic minorities.” These mocking reactions came in response to a talk she gave in France on the subject that, in turn, was based on a paper she wrote on the subject. Her paper, entitled “The Whiteness of French Food,” purports to “identify a form of French food Whiteness…
In a recent post here at Fermentation, I attempted to warn the Oregon wine industry that Portland’s tarnished reputation due to regular violent protests for the past year and a highly visible homelessness problem could impact visitation to the state’s wine country. It was pointed out (see comments on the post) that in writing this warning to the industry, I may have inadvertently added to the problem of the state’s wine industry being impacted by these circumstances. It was suggested…
Edward Slingerland, writing in the Wall Street Journal and exploring the question of why human beings have developed a taste for alcohol, composed one of my favorite sentences of the year so far: “Evolution isn’t stupid”. Besides being an obvious title for a Ricky Gervais comedy, the phrase is an apt description of Slingerland’s conclusions to the question of why humans drink alcohol, despite it being a dangerous neurotoxin. This question is addressed in his recent Wall Street Journal essay…
