In today’s New York Times Sunday Review section writer Bianca Bosker pens a very coherent defense of processed wine. In doing so, however, she notes the thing that has always confused me about Natural Wine champions. Bosker observes that adherents of the “Natural Wine” movement make a point of insisting that the wines they produce are nothing like and are an alternative to the “industrialized, big brand, manufactured, nothing-but-alcoholic-grape-juice wines”—as the Naturalistas have deemed big brand wine. It has always been a bashfest of…

Clarke’s Third Law States: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I take a certain comfort in the fact that Arthur C’s adage is entirely unlikely to apply to wine. And that’s a good thing because I think it applies to nearly everything else from entertainment to baby making. Sitting on the couch yesterday I looked up at my 4k Ultra, 60 inch TV screen and was entirely struck by how completely different its image is from the screen…

When people who don’t live in such places where archaic laws are still enforced and discover that, for example, Sunday sales of alcohol are illegal, they tend to be stopped in their tracks. They only logical response is, “Well, that’s stupid.” Hopefully, that response will come slightly less often with regard to Minnesota. Minnesota could take the first step toward erasing the state’s ban on Sunday liquor sales. The House was expected to vote Monday on a bill that would…