That Old Bag

Grab life by the neck, I always say

A quick technical note for folks making our Selection and World Vineyards wine kits. Some of the upcoming products have a slightly different-looking bag and the spouts are blue instead of the regular attractive yellow colour. There's no change to the wine, or the use of the bag (grab the spout with your might kung-fu grip and pop it off, or use one of our handy bag de-cappers), but after ten million or so kits with the same colour cap, we don't want any confusion.

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Sol Invictus

I have an Unce Saul. Probably no relation.

Winter solstice passed at 9:47 am December 21st (Pacific Time). Solstices happen when the earth's axis reaches its maximum or minimum distance from the sun. Like a spinning top that's starting to run down, the earth's axis isn't parallel to it's orbit: it wobbles back and forth, giving us our seasons (at least above and below the equator!)

Many cultures and traditions have revered the sun, or at least acknowledged it as a primary force in the universe. Early herding cultures equated the day/night cycle with the sun being shepherded across the sky, Ra, the Egyptian god tooled around in his 'solar barge' (sounds like a new product from Toyota), the Nipponese have their sun goddess Amaterasu hiding in a cave from her irksome brother, the Aztecs and Mayans had fabulously complex mythologies surrounding it, backed up by keen astronomical observations, the Norse had the sun in a chariot, pulled 'round the sky by some sort of fireproof horse, and of course, the Druids (maybe . . .) built henges such as Stonehenge as astronomical computers to tell them about important events like equinoxes, Solstices and suchlike portents of their year.

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Time's Up!

Will I turn into a pumpkin now?

Limited Edition pre-order season is officially closed! Everyone had their orders in by December 12th, and we've counted 'em up. The good news: we're going to be able to make enough kits for every order!

Mr. Sadball says, 'I forgot to order my Limited Edition kits!' Better luck next year.

The bad news: if you didn't order before, you're going to have to scramble! Some of our retail partners bring in a few extra kits--it seems they understand human nature and the urge to procrastination--and they might have one if you hurry, hurry, hurry!

Thanks to everyone who made the 20th anniversary Limited Edition a lot of fun: the team here at Winexpert, our retailers who got excited about the great wines we were able to get, the folks who came out to our tasting events, and everyone who's ever had the thrill of making an unusual or rare wine just to see what would happen.

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Mulled Crime

Look upon the face of evil:

mark anderson, arsonist, thief, wine killer
Mark Anderson, thief, arsonist, vinicide, wiener

Back in 2005 there was a terrible fire in a 240,000 square foot California wine warehouse. Located in Vallejo, it was a re-purposed WWII bomb/torpedo bunker. Wine warehousing may sound funny, but when you're a small, specialty property you want to use all your available land for vines, not waste it on a big warehouse to age and store your wine, so there are a number of specialty houses that will take on the task in their guaranteed temperture and humidity controlled facilities, freeing up the winemakers to grow grapes and make wine.

The blaze took eighty firefighters a full day to contain. Ironically, the big selling point of the warehouse, three-foot thick concrete walls and impregnable construction, prevented effective firefighting, and temperatures inside became very intense. The good news is, only two people, both firefighters, suffered minor injuries--small mercies.

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Winesense LE 2009

Andy, the hardest working man in the room

Whew, it's great to be back in blog business! I've got new editing software, a new interface and the ability to change font sizes without spraining a back muscle! It's all good, more on that later, but now I'm waaaay behind on the Limited Edition Chronicles.

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The Magical Disappearing Blog

Hey, I'm back--sort of. If you've been wondering where the blog is, it's still here, but we've been working on some changes and a side effect of our good intentions was to temporarily kill it dead.

Fear not! I'm back, bay-bee, and as soon as I can figure out how to post pictures and format things a little better (what do all these little buttons do?) I'll be posting a backlog of stuff from my Limited Edition sessions and new and cool things that are going on, all the time.

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