Ban Rolls On


Oh, those poor alligators! Have you no shame? Have you no mercy?

The US Department of the Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) are planning to ban Italian imports of Brunello wine, due to adulteration concerns. They're not banning it because there are non-wine products in it, or because it's re-labelled swill, they're banning it because Italian producers are blending small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot into a wine that's legally required to be made from 100% Sangiovese grapes.

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Hitchens: Mitts Off My Wine!

Put down that Chablis or I'll fill you full of vitriol. And bullets. Lots of bullets.

Christopher Hitchens (portrayed with eerie accuracy above by excellent actor Ray Winstone) has some interesting things to say in Slate Magazine this week. He avers to a restaurant meal he was hosting where a waiter interrupted a conversation to re-fill wine glasses for the guests. His complaint:

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Rough Cuts

Bring me a longer lens, and a shaggier toupee . . .

Just got back from Maverick Studios and a viewing of the first cut of our new home winemaking video, and I'm powerfully impressed. It's one thing to be simply pleased because I didn't drastically embarrass myself in front of the camera, but it's entirely another to see this for the first time and realise that it's not just going to be okay, it's going to be great!

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Don't Try This At Home

Bathtubs? We don't need no stinking bathtubs!

My own personal philosophy is simple: never tease the Feds. Stirring up the revenoors is just bad business and never seems to work out well in the end. Too bad this citizen of Tennessee didn't keep that in mind. According to the Nashville Five-Oh:

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Reason #6,542,351 Why You Should Make Your Own Wine

Very low mileage, only drank by a little old lady on her way to church . . .

I had a joker in a discussion forum tell me the other day, 'I won't touch homemade wine. I only drink real wine.'

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Winning Isn't Everything

'You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing.
But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself
and not his victorious opponents or on his team-mates.'

–Richard Milhouse Nixon

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Judge Not ?

Justice stands tall. And shapely

I was at the Winemaker Magazine conference last week, when they announced the winners for the 2008 competition. 4321 entries! Wow! In doing the math Winexpert kit makers brought in a huge 271 medals. Happy indeed, and congratulations to all of those who entered. Putting your wine out for formal judging in a contest of your peers is a pretty bold statement of how you feel about it. According to Winemaker's site:

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What's That Sound?

No, wait, that's lemmings!

My buddy Ace has a great child-rearing philosophy, handed down from generations of hard-hearted parents. Whenever a young'un has the temerity to whine about a just and fair punishment, he asks if they recognise that sound. What sound? is the reply. "That's chickens, coming home to roost." And my sweet and gentle mentor, Robert Parker, must have a head full of clucks right now.

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Stuck In Sonoma Again

He went thataway!

The man from the magazine said I was on my way.
Somewhere I lost connections, ran out of songs to play.
I came into town, a one night stand,
Looks like my plans fell through
Oh ! Lord, Stuck in Lodi again.
Mmmm...

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Winemaker Magazine Conference

Hmm, I wonder what that's all about?

Off to Sonoma, and the first annual Winemaker Magazine Conference, at the fabulous Doubletree Inn in Rohnert Park! I'll be conducting a couple of seminars over two days and sitting in on a roundtable on new stuff in wine kits, and hanging out with my peeps.

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With a Name Like That . . .

The family resemblance is uncanny . . .

As I've said before, I read a lot of wine sites and blogs, alas, I read mostly widely and not too well. A lot of commercial blogs are wretched bores, too specialised for my taste. The intricacies of tiered distribution and shipping laws in the USA might be of burning concern to people in the commercial industry (come to think of it, they should be of burning concern to me, but I think there's a no-burning bylaw in effect right now) and reviews of insanely overpriced, poorly-made fauxwine have their devotees, I suppose, but I like a blog that talks more about how wine <I>tastes</i>, especially how it tastes over time, with food, and against other wines.

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Video Killed the Radio Star

Is that a klieg light in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?

Back to the grind today, after an eventful and fun-filled three days of learning Lean Management and Value-Stream Mapping principles. As funny as it may sound, I really enjoyed the whole process of learning how everything flows inside our company, how to look at it correctly, and how to figure out ways to improve it. Plus, working with folks I usually only see in a pair of coveralls and a hairnet in the cellar, at company functions or just over email was great. Good job everyone. Kaizen, ahoy!

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Much Depends Upon Dinner

Mmm, tree-ripened good and evil!

All human history attests

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Utopian Behaviour and Thirst

Half-empty, half-full or connected by hoses?

You ever wake up in the morning and say to yourself, 'What I need is a way of ensuring that nobody can share wine without complete conscious cooperation" ? Yeah, me either. However, apparently there is someone who did wake up on that side of the cellar. The glasses pictured above aren't sealed at the bottom, but instead are connected by PVC tubing. Although they'll stand upright, when you fill one, the wine will flow to the lowest point until it reaches equilibrium in each glass.

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Van-groover

Systems are go! Five, four, three, two . . .

I love Washington state. Every year I spend a week of my vacation on the other side of the Cascade range, touring wine country in the Tri-Cities, Yakima, Columbia Valley, and every other wine region--they pop up like mushrooms after a rain these days.

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