It's starting a bit early this year: I'm on the road, again. This week I'm running around Pennsylvania, up to King of Prussia for the Wineries Unlimited Trade Show (funny enough I ran into an old friend, Dominic Rivard in Pearson airport, heading for the same thing, only from Nova Scotia. Small world!) and a lecture for my pal Jason at Keystone Homebrew, for a very cool event, Meet the Source Night. According to the press release,

Now is your chance to learn more about winemaking ingredients, directly from the source(s)! (That's right, we're introducing you to our connection!) For the first time ever, we have organized an evening of fun, informative presentations and winemaking discussions with a star-studded cast of Keystone Homebrew suppliers. Learn more about the wide variety of fresh and frozen grapes, juices, wine kits, and other winemaking supplies

Sounds like fun--wait, I'm speaking! Sounds like more fun.

Oh my, look at the time. I've got to get going or my ride is going to be banging on the door to my fabulous soundproof suite at the Hilton, and he can't stop here: this is bat country.

Ahh, road trips are the best!

I can't claim to be an internet guru-type guy. I can do a little html, and fiddle with the tools provided by webslingers, but for most of the time I think back fondly to the days of the command line. I'm probably one of the last people whose first programming exposure was on punch-cards and got so excited when DOS came out I squealed like a little girl.

But we've all passed a lot of water since then. I've been working on a little tidying-up of my blog page, getting the schmutz out of my links down the left side of the page here ('Buy My Magazine' no longer sends you to Publisher's Clearinghouse) and I've added a few things.

One of them is a link to my video on how to taste wine. It's been available on YouTube for a while, but the quality is pretty low. Plus it made me look fat. I am fat, but it's not like I'm not in denial about it. Now it's in beautiful hi-definition, courtesy of my production house, Maverick Video. They're graciously allowing me to embed Vimeo copies here, so I'd like everyone to abuse this courtesy by watching it over and over again, burning bandwidth like Autumn leaves!

Just kidding, Jeff: we'll be good. 

Of course, with high-def comes the bad part: high-definition of my untidy, hirsute, spotty visage. It's a good thing I'm so loveable because sheesh, what a mug to wake up to every day. My poor wife.

While I'm off getting a consult on some plastic surgery and skin treatments, enjoy this and other videos at Maverick's Vimeo site. Not only is this video from there, but also all of the I Made This series is up, in Panavision! Watch them all! Collect the set!

Who doesn't love a pickle? They're sour and crunchy and salty, go great in sandwiches and at picnics and they're a great way to preserve food without refrigeration. According to The Internets:

Pickling, also known as brining or corning, is the process of preserving food by anaerobic fermentation in brine (a solution of salt in water) to produce lactic acid, or marinating and storing it in an acid solution, usually vinegar (acetic acid). The resulting food is called a pickle. This procedure gives the food a salty or sour taste.

Simple enough, and that explains why a slab of cow soaked in salted brine is called 'corned beef'. Pickling is the one of the most ancient way human beings have used to preserve food (first was drying, like beef jerky, next was probably smoking). Every culture has their pickles: South Asians make wonderful oil-based spicy pickles, Scandahoovians pickle herring, the Japanese make tsukemono (the plums are to die for with tempura and beer), Germans have their sauerkraut and Koreans make kimchi (the very word makes me drool, heavenly spicy cabbage goodness!)

Most folks these days buy their pickles and enjoy them without much more thought than dill or bread and butter, and making their own pickles is something mom used to do back in the day. But pickles fascinate me, because of that line 'produce lactic acid'. Lactic acid is produced because bacteria ferment organic matter in solution, driving the pH of the brine down, preventing the growth of spoilage organisms and making the pickles deliciously tart and tangy.

Ferment, you say? My ears tingle at the word. My life is wine, which is all about the fermenting. I've made side trips into beer, bread making, sauerkraut (part of my heritage), and mead making (before I realised I hate everything about mead). It's a natural progression to make my own pickles, and I had another motivation. Good quality pickles are desperately hard to find around here. Oh sure, mass-market pickles are everywhere, but they're made with industrial acetic acid and are all pasteurised, which I believe spoils their texture. Deli pickles can be good, but they're a buck each. It was time, I decided, to make my own.

Step one was to choose an item to pickle. As I mentioned above, other cultures pickle other things, from mushrooms to walnuts and eggs. I settled on cucumbers as they're local, and easy to handle. Plus, that's what I wanted.

According to the wisdom of Grandmothers, the secret key to good pickles is freshness: out of the field and into the pickle barrel for best results. It being February at the time, wee little pickling cukes were in short supply. But lo! My greengrocer had a supply of Japanese cucumbers. Usually destined for maki rolls, these cukes are firm, small-but-not-teensy and in decent supply. I snatched up a few packages.

The next step was to choose a recipe. Rather than do the canning-type pickling which involves boiling vinegar and sousing the innocent items with it before entombing them in a jar I was going to go straight for the briny goodness with a traditional Polish style, soaking them in a high-salt brine. Because I planned to include garlic, the pickles are technically considered Kosher dills, which, contrary to their name are not necessarily produced under Rabbinical supervision (sorry Rabbi Teitlbaum, I'm working without a net here!) but rather are full-sour dills that include lots of garlic. Brined pickles don't last as long as vinegared pickles, but that's just not an issue in my house--I'm going for a useful foodstuff, not a hedge against famine. I chose a very straightforward recipe based on one from Alton Brown. The really important thing about brine is to get the right amount of salt in the brine (too little and the pickles will just rot, too much and they'll be too salty--or may not ferment at all).

Next step, assemble my equipment and spices.

Once assembled I sanitised my equipment using some Aseptox (Americans know it as 'One-Step') which does a fine job at keeping things clean. Sterilisation isn't necessary in this case as we're using the brine environment to suppress other spoilage organisms while encouraging the growth of the lactobacillus--besides, who wants to autoclave a pickle crock?

Next step, wash the pickles and stuff the crock with goodies:

An empty crock is nobodys playground. I cast about the pantry and refrigerator for some substitute players to fill my crock, and I was in luck, with carrots, asparagus and some pepper slices.

The main ingredient of the pickle is salt, and it has to be between 20 and forty grams per litre (3/4 to 1-1/2 oz per quart) to be effective. Instead of Kosher or pickling salt (which are not the same things, a discussion for another day) I chose a Guérande sea salt from France, which immediately lead to a problem: it's wet. Look at the picture below.

The stuff comes in a heavy, slightly tacky mass of coarse grains. Despite a concerted search for the precise water percentage, all I could find was advertising bumf. I decided to guess that it was 5% water, and to hedge my bets I opted for 30 grams per litre, or just over two ounces in the half-gallon of brine I was going to make. After that it was easy: add all the spices to the salt,

Give it a good stir and pour it over the vegetables in the jar.

But wait, you say! Wasn't I making Kosher dills, and if so, where's the garlic? Ha ha ha, it's not like I ever forget garlic! I can repel vampires from miles away, especially those nancy-boy sparkly ones, with the amount of garlic I consume. In it goes!

In the picture on the right you can see all the vegetables making nice and floating about. Because they have a tendency to float up in the brine they need to be weighted to stay under the surface of the liquid. But because the lactic fermentation creates bubbles of carbon dioxide it isn't safe to seal the container. To keep the veg down while allowing the escape of CO2 I use a simple 14-oz 'pint' glass which fits quite neatly into the neck of my crock and is easy to keep clean and sanitary.

And that's it! In a few days the pickles go cloudy with the presence of the lactic bacteria, and for several weeks they tiny little bubbles rise up in the jar. I taste the brining liquid after a week to check progress, and then every couple of days after that. Once I'm satisfied that it's nice and sour, with a fully-developed flavour I usually change the pickles over to a more refrigerator-friendly jar (my crock is really tall) and get to eating 'em.

And how do they taste? Exactly the way I want them to: sour, with a wee bit of sneaky heat layered between the menthol-y notes of peppercorns and the more straightforward warmth of chilies, tangy-sour dill, plenty of mellowed garlic and above all, darn good crunchy-sour picklygoodnesses.

The best thing about making pickles is how stupidly easy it is. Photographing the process took five times longer than making the pickles from beginning to end (which is usually only five minutes, including the time it takes to find my scale and my measuring cup) and writing about it for this blog entry was ten times harder. If you've ever considered making your own pickles, now is the time to throw off the yoke of corporate pickle domination! You have nothing to lose but your dills!

Ahem. That was the pickles talking. Next up, I'm going to make salami. Stay tuned.

Joanne Harris has been an integral part of our team for five years now, helping Linda out in our retail store and manning the customer service lines and email answering. In addition she's a great utility team-member, filling in for labwork, helping with admin work in the front office and generally being one of those people whose unobtrusive competence, thoughtfulness and good cheer helps make a busy, active workplace successful.

Nominally I'm Joanne's supervisor. Really, I just coach the customer service department a little and they return the favour by providing the absolute best customer service experience in our industry. The funny thing is, I sort-of used to work for Joanne. It was a while ago, when I was a paperboy for the long-since defunct Maple Ridge Gazette. Joanne worked in the front office where I used to turn in my grubby collection of nickels and IOU's for my route. Funny, I seem to remember having to crane my neck to look way up to talk to her behind the Gazette's front counter . . . maybe there's something wrong with my memory.

Of course, everyone gathered around to congratulate Joanne, and nothing says a happy day like cake.

Thanks Joanne: I'm glad we still get to work together. Here's to the next five years.

But the article conceals a interesting facts, and glosses over a really Big Point: there's yet another imbalance in supply of grapes. Grape prices have fluctuated as an agricultural commodity in California ever since prohibition was repealed. It got so bad that in the past the largest purchaser of California grapes (Gallo) tried to use its purchasing power to stabilise pricing, by declaring what it would pay per tonne for various varietals, prior to harvest. Not to say they're entirely benign (sometimes the price was only just what was necessary to cover the cost of getting the grapes out of the field and setting up for next year) but Gallo knew full well that if the price was too low some high-volume/low margin growers would either rip up the grapes and plant almonds, or they'd simply abandon their land and walk away, and there would be no grapes for next year. On the flip side, in lean years, there were some shady deals, where contracts went unfulfilled when another player bid higher per tonne or the spot market in grapes got hotter than a smoky bearing.

But this year?

California is swimming in wine, although not as literally as the picture above would indicate (silly Nipponese, wine is not for bathing!) According to last Thursday's San Luis Obispo Tribune,

Mother Nature brought a bountiful harvest to California grape growers in 2009, making last year only the second time in the past decade that the state’s crush has exceeded 4 million tons.

A total of 4,089,160 tons were crushed last year, up 11 percent from the previous year, according to the preliminary 2009 Grape Crush Report released Wednesday by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Cross-reference that to the Times article:

Not so long ago, it seemed a given that Napa wines would forever be immune from oversupply.

But in 2009, sales of wines priced at $25 and above dropped 30 percent nationwide, according to Nielsen. While global wine sales increased, California wine shipments fell for the first time in 16 years.

They quote Ivo Jeramaz, a vice president at Grgich Hills winery:

“When I talk to my local colleagues, they try to deny what’s happening at first,” Mr. Jeramaz said. “Then it comes out that their sales are down 30, 40, maybe even 50 percent.” At Grgich, sales are off about a third. “In 2009, 20,000 cases went unsold,” he said. With sales in free-fall, the wholesalers who distribute wines to restaurants and retail stores have demanded — and received — price cuts.

It's long been my contention that prices for the top end of Napa wines have been more influenced by Veblen economics than by the good tenets of capitalism, where goods are sold in an open market based on value and demand, and prices are kept in check by competition. Even at the most costly, the most hand-labour intensive, attention-to-fiddly-detail winery, the cost-per-bottle of actual wine, free of hype, artificial scarcity and hot air doesn't rise high enough to push a reasonable mark-up to push the suggested retail above forty bucks. Yes, given distributor levels, local extortion, er, taxes and suchlike your mileage may vary, but most wines should come in somewhere south of that. So how do wineries like Screaming Eagle or Harlan Estate get $450 or $500 a bottle at release, and how do retailers manage to get a thousand bucks for the same bottle a year later? It's all Thorstein Veblen's fault.

But now the shoe is on the other hoof: with 2009's wine unsold, and 2010 coming along soon, Napa prices are falling like a stone. It's unlikely we'll see a reduction in local pricing in my home province of British Columbia, with it's jolly 'tax till you bleed' attitude about beverage alcohol (note that I'm not complaining: it's certainly a help when consumers realize that making your own wine is without tax . . .) but maybe there'll be a little more movement in other areas

In some cases it will mean better wine at the same price: wineries that buy grapes (lots of them) will move up the purchase ladder and buy from more prestigious AVA's. Discount wineries that produce mass volumes of sub-$10 bottles of wine will likely get a bit better as well. It's only really at the very top end, where there's nothing but a conspicuous consumption ethic to drive pricing that the downward pressure will give a bit of price relief. Nice, if you're looking for a few special bottles to try.

What does this mean for wine kit pricing? Not a lot: you'd think that lower per-tonne prices would affect the cost of kits, but we only buy a portion of our grape material from California--a much larger percentage comes from Argentina, Chile, Australia, South Africa, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, New Zealand, etc. Add to this the horrible situation with the Canadian dollar and we're in a spot.

Horrible, I said. For a small-economy, export dependent country like Canada, the value of our dollar against that of our largest trading partner (the USA, at over one billion dollars per day) is crucial: we sell our kits to the US in US dollars, which are now worth almost 35% less than they were a few years ago. Ouch.

On the bright side, it may open up new opportunities to purchase fine grapes from awesome AVA's. We already have Stag's Leap Merlot, Sonoma Dry Creek Valley Chardonnay, Sonoma Valley Cabernet and Pinot Noir. Who knows what might show up in future?

Left to right, Brad, Walter, Bert and Val

If you're not Canadian, and don't know who Walter Gretzky is, you're forgiven, but anyone who's ever been exposed to hockey will recognise that last name. Walter was in town to run with the torch for the Olympics. It turns out he has family in the area and dropped by to help bottle a batch of wine at Coastal. According to an email I got from Bert,

A true gentleman, he talked with our customers, posed for pictures with our staff and customers. What a highlight for us at Coastal Winemakers! Brought a little of the Olympic spirit to our staff and customers.

Bert notes that the local press showed up and was in time to get shots of Walter and the gang for the Friday edition.

Walter Gretzky's personal story is very interesting, and filled with challenges that might be boggling to some, but through it he seems to be down to earth. One of the stories surrounding the family is of the famous hockey rink he built in his back yard every winter, so that his future-famous son could practice, giving Wayne a leg up to becoming the best player in the history of the game. Walter says,

"It was for self-preservation. I got sick of taking him to the park and sitting there for hours freezing to death."

In a time when celebrities and sports figures are often seen as arrogant or self-involved it gives back a little faith in all of humankind when you meet someone who is genuine and humble. Nicely done Mr. Gretzky.

Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3

I always considered Orsino a self-indulgent dullard. Well, to be fair, that was the role Shakespeare cast for him. But honestly, the food of love is most often food. It's beyond a cliche as a signifier in our world, from 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach' (it's actually through the diaphragm and up), to the classic Mama urging her children to take seconds and thirds to avoid breaking her heart, to the idea of the romantic dinner. 

My wife and I almost always celebrate special days together with a meal, and this Valentine's day was no exception. As is my custom I made her eggs Benediction. It's like normal eggs Benedict but I use cheese sauce instead of Hollandaise (can't abide by the stuff) and serve it with a side of steamed broccoli. It's pretty tasty.

But this year the Missus told me to leave room for second breakfast. Always obliging I withdrew with great anticipation to see what she had in mind. She's a Red Seal Chef and a Pastry Chef, in addition to being the light of my life and the making of me. She doesn't cook for me that often, but that's okay: she doesn't ask me to make wine when I come home, so it evens up. Plus, she used to be my boss way back in prehistory when I cooked for a living, and she's a great teacher.

When the table was set, I was immensely glad I'd saved room, because it was stuffed French toast.

I said she doesn't cook often, but when she does . . .

She cut open fresh sliced French bread and stuffed it, dipped it into some kind of heavenly, light batter, deep fried them, napped a plate with Gran Marnier and Maple Syrup, topped them with home-made lemon curd and zest of lemon and orange then dusted the whole thing with powdered sugar. The smell alone made me want to ask her to marry me all over again.

And what was it stuffed with, you ask?

Chocolate.

If your heart didn't just go into tachycardia, contact your doctor

It was perhaps one of the most delicious things I've eaten in the last year. I can hardly wait for Valentine's day next year!

If you've read my previous blogs you'll know I enjoy the occasional beer, and that Central City Brewing is my favorite brewery/pub/watering hole in the whole world. Not only were they voted best local brewpub by CAMRA BC, but also their IPA was voted best beer in BC! I've been friends with their brewer, Gary Lohin, for years, following him from brewery to brewery, usually demanding he make me more beer.

With all this in mind, you can imagine how bummed out I was to find out that California's Bear Republic brewery is suing Central City over trademark infringement. If you're not familiar with Bear Republic, they're in wine country in California, and they make a wide variety of award-winning beers that are very tasty and innovative. I've enjoyed a lot of those beers in the past . . .

Their suit (download a pdf of it here) contends that Central City Red Racer IPA infringes upon their beers Red Rocket and Racer 5. Let's take a look, shall we?

Mmmkay. I'm not an intellectual property lawyer. I can't negotiate the US court system. The only reason I even have an attorney is to defend myself from lawyers. But I know manure when I smell it. 

• Brown bottles, green can. No possibility of mistake there.
• The word 'red' is a colour, and cannot be copyrighted
• Vavoom girl on bike vs. sketchy rocket vs. numeral 5. What?
• The fonts look similar between Racer 5 and Red Racer, but action fonts often do look similar. According to a friend who designs typefaces (yep, they pay people for that) the two fonts aren't alike in any meaningful way.

Bear's reasoning is specious and their suit is worthless. They should be ashamed of themselves, attacking another craft brewer when they should be uniting to attack the big evil brewers of the world. According to an inside source, when Central City called to try to work out the suit amicably the Norgrove's blew them off with the declaration, 'We're Americans. We litigate first."

Where I come from that's prima facie evidence of a strategic lawsuit. They know their case has no merit, but they're going to sue because it's expensive and difficult to defend against a legal broadside. More than that, however, it's a jerk move on multiple levels. Americans are no more or less litigious than any other society today--certainly the ancient Greeks were vastly more litigious in their time (boring archaeological fact: most ancient Greek documents are lawsuits, depositions or summons) and to use the presumed culture of litigiousness as a shield for bad behavior . . . well, that's just naughty.

But wait! There's more. According to District of Massachusetts IP Blog

Although there may be some similarities between the marks as used, there are differences as well, including distinct differences in the overall label / can designs. Another issue the plaintiff may have is that its federal registrations are not to RACER and RED ROCKET but rather to RACER 5 INDIA PALE ALE and BEAR REPUBLIC RICARDO’S RED ROCKET ALE.

So they don't even have Racer or Red Rocket registered! There's nothing there for them to claim damages against. 

And late in the day Gary released a statement over at the Beer Advocate (link, but you have to be a member to view Gary's reply)

“Hi everyone, I’d like to clear up a couple of things from the Central City point of view. My name is Gary Lohin, and I am the Brewmaster at Central City Brewing Co, which is in a community just outside Vancouver, British Columbia. First of all, our logo is not a mish-mash of Racer 5 and Red Rocket. The logo was used with permission from a local elderly painter, who painted this oil painting in the 50’s. That’s why the girl kind of looks like a Vargas/pin-up girl. I don’t believe the painting had a name, but we dubbed it Red Racer after the bike. As for the font, we had it professionally designed by a local graphics artist. Any suggested similarities in the font and colours are purely coincidental. As well as a brewer for 20 years now, I am a huge mountain bike enthusiast. Putting a bike on the label was kind of my homage to the local mountain biking community.

I must say I am disappointed in the actions taken by Bear Republic because I really like to think that all us craft brewers, and the people who drink our beers, are one like- minded people. We all love good beer!. I myself enjoy Bear Republic’s beers, and the most ironic thing is that we were selling their beers in our brewpub store! We never had a problem confusing their label with ours.

I know everything I have said probably means nothing in a court-of- law, but we never even knew who Bear Republic were when we designed our label way back when. We here at CCBC are totally committed to making excellent, distinctive beers, and wanted to send some to the United States. We think our IPA stands up to any IPA brewed anywhere. We wanted you guys down south of the 49th parallel to try some. That still will happen, but possibly under a different name, not logo. We want to spend our money on new tanks, and kegs, and our employees, not give it to lawyers.

I see this as a lose – lose lawsuit , and I certainly wouldn’t like to see a boycott against Bear Republic. It would have been nice to get a phone call though.

Gary Lohin

Brewmaster

Central City Brewing”

Man, I feel sorry for Gary. Make good beer, put in your dues growing the industry and educating the public about it, and then some goofball thinks he can sue you, probably mainly because he's an insecure bed-wetter (purely speculation on my part, but it fits the profile). The sentiment of the beer cognoscenti seems to parallel my own: commentary is running better than 90% in favour of Central City in the forums, and more importantly, nearly 100% against Bear Republic. Don't know if that's going to influence them or not, but beer geeks are a prickly bunch, mightily attached to the concept of beer integrity.

Of course, there's always the chance that karma might come back to haunt a certain brewing company. Notice anything here?

For those who weren't raised on cheap, jerky Japanimation, that's the Mach 5, driven by one 'Speed Racer', recently made into an expensive, jerky movie. Holy pot-kettle colour discussion Batman, seems like they've got some 'splainin' to do. Me, I'm going to Central City to pick up a flat of IPA. I may not be able to help them out in the suit, but my liver is not going down without a fight.

There's a face that could use a wee dram

In addition to my day job in the wine industry I have many other interests, including beer, whisky, tequila. brandy, rum, gin, champagne and virtually all other fermented beverages. It's not so much that I'm a lush (I do have aspirations that way, but I'm modest about my talents). It's more that the history of civilisation is the history of alcohol. After all, neolithic hunter-gatherers didn't settle down to farm because they were hungry for a steaming bowl of grit-laden, mouldy gruel: they planted grain to make beer! Similarly, the Romans didn't conquer territory because they had better soldiers, boots, roads or organisation: they conquered territory with an agricultural system hinged on the production of high volumes of wine.

So what with my day job, my avocations and my keen interest in history (just finished Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately--not a bad read, although his preoccupation with the minutiae of politics left me cold) I'm always on the watch for interesting booze news. Today, BBC news announced Shackleton's Whisky Recovered.

For those who don't know who Shackleton was, I feel despair for our educational system. He's up there with Amundsen, Scott, Mallory and other great explorers who dared to boldly go where no man had gone before. His biography and deeds are too long to list (and he was a very complex man with a lot of irons in the fire--he's even the subject of a style of corporate leadership today!) but he was part of the great heroic age of Antarctic exploration, the first man to see many of the sights of the southern polar cap.

Just park 'er right there

He's perhaps best remembered for a disaster, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Trapped in the Antarctic ice he managed to get all his men to safety, despite terrible hardships and with incredible feats of heroic endurance. But in more pleasant times he headed another expedition to Antarctica, where despite his failure to reach the south pole, he did some jolly good exploring. However, he left behind more than foot prints and barely twist wrappers. According to the BBC story five crates of whisky were found under his expedition shed:

They were buried beneath Shackleton's Antarctic hut, built in 1908 for a failed expedition to the South Pole.

Some of the crates have cracked and ice has formed inside, which means experts will face a delicate task in trying to extract the contents.

The ice-bound crates were first discovered three years ago.

The master blender at whisky company Whyte and Mackay said the find was a "gift from the heavens" for whisky lovers.

Richard Paterson, whose firm supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, said: "If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analysed, the original blend may be able to be replicated.

"Given the original recipe no longer exists this may open a door into history."

Now that, if you'll forgive the pun, is pretty cool. Not only is there a historic record of what Scottish Whisky tasted like from 100 years ago, it's a piece of living history from one of the last great ages of exploration. Unless Neil Armstrong left a six-pack in the Sea of Serenity, this is probable the best-preserved example of vintage booze we'll ever see.

And I'll drink to that. 

Tim, you ignorant Sauvignon . . .

Since I've been away from computers and my traditional sources of news for a couple of weeks, a few interesting tidbits have piled up, and i thought I'd share. First, from the Fraud Files, French Wineries, Co-operatives, Negociants and Conglomerates Charged in Pinot Noir Fraud.

According to Decanter, the accused are all involved in the Languedoc wine trade. The Languedoc is the south of France, a vast and fertile growing region that is the analogue to California's Central Valley--they produce most of the 'lake' of surplus wine that France and the EU swims in, along with many value-priced grapes and wine. Apparently E&J Gallo has been importing 'Pinot Noir' from the accused for their popular Red Bicyclette label.

Between 2006 and 2008, Sieur d'Arques allegedly sold 135,000 hectolitres of vin de Pays d'Oc labelled Pinot Noir to E&J Gallo for €4m (£350m).

 However the total production from those supplying the French distributors amounted to 15,000 hectolitres a year.

 Battut said the case proves the defendants were knowingly involved in cutting the Pinot Noir with much less costly Merlot and Syrah, delivering the equivalent of 16m bottles, or 460 oil tankers – and making a profit.

 According to French newspaper La Dépêche, one of the accused said that had the suppliers 'been asked to put Yoplait on the label, they would have' in order to satisfy customer demand.

I am shocked, shocked I tell you! Imagine, somebody selling 460 oil tankers full of fake wine, motivated only by greed!

A spokesperson for Gallo would only say they were awaiting the judge's ruling, while nobody from Sieur d'Arques was available to comment.

I wouldn't comment either, if my pants were burning brighter than a thousand suns and my pockets were full of ill-gotten lucre. Sometimes I wonder if we've come anywhere at all from the days when New Jersey 'champagne' was made out of turnip juice, apples and sugar, and when the English 'concocted  Port' from elderberries, molasses and beet-juice. At least when Hardy Rodenstock faked bottles of wine he had the good grace to do it with only the best, not with a broad-based value category. Lest you think this is isolated to mainstream companies, keep in mind that some estimates have the total amount of desirable vintages like the 1961 Lafite sold to consumers to be more than ten times the volume actually produced--i.e., it's 90% fake. My hippie pal was right: the pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the only thing the liquor store takes.

From the Good News in Wine Science files, A Possible Cure for Alcohol Intolerance. I feel very privileged to be descended from Northern European stock (lest you think I'm being prideful, my people have been hicks and rednecks for hundreds of generations. As my pal Ace puts it, when the Romans came by we already had a chariot up on blocks in the front yard and were fixin' to fishin' down in Gaul with Cletus) because I'm blessed with the ability to consume alcohol with relatively low consequences (other than becoming stupider, I mean).

Folks of East Asian heritage can have trouble metabolising alcohol due to low levels of activity from an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Very quickly, when you drink your stomach and your liver attack alcohol to break it down in a two-stage process. First, it's converted by alcohol dehydrogenase into acetaldehyde. Because acetaldehyde is even worse than alcohol (it's like a cross between nail-polish remover and vinegar in your bloodstream) you start to suffer from flushing, headaches, blurry vision and nausea. That's when acetaldehyde dehydrogenase kicks in, cleaning up your blood and leaving you sober and hung over. Without acetaldehyde dehydrogenase a few drinks can lay East Asians flat, and accounts for my ability to leave my Tokyo college chums in the dust on beer night (it still doesn't explain karaoke. Nothing does.)

According to the Wine Spectator article:

Knowing that moderate drinking of red wine may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, the researchers sought to find just what in alcohol protects cellular tissue from damage during a heart attack. Experimenting on mice, they discovered that alcohol triggers production of the ALDH2 enzyme, and during heart attacks, the enzyme can neutralize toxins and lessen possible damage to heart tissue. They also isolated a compound, Alda-1, which when injected into cells, enhanced ALDH2 activity. It also reactivated the defective enzyme in people with alcohol intolerance.

 "We started with the idea of activating the enzyme to protect heart tissue," Dr. Hurley said. "It turns out that it does this, but also we noticed it reactivates the enzyme."

 Alda-1 binds to the structure of the inactive ALDH2 enzyme and allows the enzyme to metabolize alcohol as it would in someone who does not have the mutation. If this is developed into a treatment, the person could drink without alcohol intolerance side effects. Alda-1 could also have another use: fighting hangovers, the researchers say. Many hangover symptoms are due to aldehyde build-up, which ALDH2 can reduce.

I think hangovers are a necessary part of the experience, kind of like curb feelers on a car, providing feedback for your consumption habits, but if this research helps protect heart attack victims, and allows folks with inactive enzymes to enjoy a beverage or two, it's going to alleviate a lot of misery. Yay science!

Finally, from the Wretched Excess files, World's Most Expensive Meat Pie Made, Eaten. According to Decanter Magazine,

The world's most expensive pie – made with two bottles of 82 Mouton among other choice ingredients – has just been created, and wolfed down, in Lancashire.

 The First Growth sauce – the two bottles were reduced to one to intensify the flavour – was by no means the most expensive ingredient in the steak and mushroom pie created by chef Spencer Burge at the Fence Gate Inn in Burnley, Lancs.

 The pie was made with Japanese Wagyu beef, famed for its unique marbling, velvety texture – and price tag of about £500 a kilo.

 There were Chinese mushrooms so rare they are picked under armed guard, black truffles, 24ct gold leaf – and a couple of bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Rosé to wash it all down.

 With the mushrooms costing around £2000, and the Mouton worth about £375 a bottle, a slice of the pie was on the menu at £1000. There were eight slices. Add to that the price of a bottle of Cristal Rosé - £200 – and the meal turned out to be an expensive one.

I've had the 82 Mouton. When I bought it back in 1989 it was expensive, but not that bad. When I drank it in 1995 it was stunningly, crazy good. To put it in a sauce . . . that falls somewhere between grinding the Venus di Milo up for tooth powder and smashing Ming vases because they make a pretty sound.

I'm the last guy to criticise people for enjoying themselves as they would, and heaven knows, some of my time has been spent pursuing excess. But there comes a point where a potlach that devalues the goods you're consuming should embarrass you. I expect it leaves a stain on your soul in some way--at least, it should if there's any justice.

Still, I can't help but wonder what it tasted like . . .

Finally, in local news, somebody broke into my car, smashing through the driver's side window after efforts to jimmy the lock resulted in only a pile of metal shavings where the lock cylinder used to be. There was nothing much of value in the car: they took a flashlight I was fond of, but left the $300 worth of wine in the trunk alone--according to current RCMP officer (and former Winexpert accounting/production/purchasing Wiz) Christine, 'You can't run from cops with bottle of wine in your pockets'. Makes sense, although they busted my CD's (in retaliation for my not having anything of real value I guess) which was petty.

Have you seen this garment?

The one thing they took that really irritated me was my jacket. It's an inexpensive piece of company logo-wear, but I really liked it. It was one of the few jackets I've ever had that fit nicely and looked sharp. The important thing is, there are only a few dozen of these jackets in existence, and only two or three in that size (XXL). If you happen to be around Surrey/White Rock and see someone wearing a jacket that looks like the one above, do give me a call.

I'd very much like to chat with the person wearing it, to see what I can do to help them make better life choices in the future.

It's the least I can do.

Aye, you can call me Angus MacGringo, of the clan MacGringo. Tequila and haggis for all!

Richard Orben once said, 'A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in'. By that measure, I had a pretty successful time the last two weeks. This was our third trip to the Caribbean side of Mexico and it just gets better every darn time. I know this is technically a blog about wine, but there really isn't any in Mexico--sure, Mexico makes wine, but it's universally bad, and while they give the cheap stuff away at all-inclusive joints, it's not worth drinking, being the very cheapest imported swill.

Two-millennia old customs shack on the canal. Some things never change.

We did a little trekking, visiting the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. Over a million acres, it takes up a significant portion of the Caribbean coast of Mexico, and is a very important wildlife and archaeological preserve. We jungle trekked (I can report that while small, Mexican mosquitos are as bloodthirsty as their Canadian cousins) hung out at the Muyil pyramid and did a wonderful and delightful trip: we boated across a freshwater bay and floated down a canal linking it to another natural bay, all through the roots of a mangrove forest.

Somewhere, down the lazy river

It was a complete and utter delight, with bromeliads, mangroves, termite nests, orchids, history, and inverted life jackets. I'd go back in a second, if they'd have me. Of course, like all Mayan experience trips it included a visit to a cenote, which being a hole in the ground, I could have skipped (trust me, you've seen one cenote, you've seen all of them) but it preceded a stunningly good lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall that had the most delicious pickled vegetables for an appetiser, and grilled grouper that was so good I wanted to weep tears of fish-happiness.

Of course, we couldn't be on the go all the time. Sometimes you just have to know when to harbour your strength and plan your next move . . .

So much pressure . . . must hold on . . . must keep . . . napping

My next move? Instruction sets, employee performance reviews, final touches on my F11 plan, got to go drop in on  Coastal winemakers (see you there Bert) pick up some wines for a comparison tasting, write up a few sooper-seekrit new product descriptions, answer the rest of these emails (nice of everyone to write me while I was gone!) and generally get useful, fast. Whew, it's good to be back.

No, it's only this beautiful on days ending in a 'y'

I'm off, only this time it's not for wine business. Instead of the exotic locales of Philadelphia and St. Louis I'm heading to boring old Mexico. We're staying on the Caribbean side at a place called Xcaret. It's an all-inclusive resort inside a nature park, next to a Disneyland-style Mayan theme park.

I won't be blogging, texting, tweeting, emailing, facebooking or answering the phone for the next two weeks (my wife swears that if she catches me on a computer she's going to break my typing fingers--such a kidder . . . I think). This is the third time we'll be staying there and we've got a full itinerary. We've already seen Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, Tulum, Coba, and Pak Chen but Dawn has a couple more trips set up already, looking at nature preserves and climbing pyramids.

Myself, I could spend the whole trip lying in a hammock, letting people bring me snacks and the wide array of alcohol beverages I so richly deserve, but apparently that's now how vacations are done--go figure. Of course, there's the compensation of 11 restaurants, 14 bars (including a swim-up pool bar, which really cushions the slide to the floor at the end of the night) and plenty of time to relax and enjoy the sun.

I'll return tanned, rested and ready in two weeks. Don't expect any stories about wine: it's all universally horrible in the tourist areas, and Mexican winemaking, to be charitable, is in its infancy. Instead, I'll try to bring back some Tequila reviews . . . if any remain in my memory.

See you all when I get back.

Brenda, Tim, Gladys and Floyd

Had the chance to step out for lunch today with my parents and my sister, who was in from Kelowna, in BC's interior. I'd love to report that we enjoyed a couple of bottles of wine with our repast, but my parents are teetotal and Brenda was very abstemious, so I made do with a pint of Crannóg Ales Crannóg Ales Crannóg AlesStout, a fine brew.

I'm on the road a lot and most of my family is scattered to the winds, so we don't see each other that often, but when I can make time for them it's a real treat. Thanks for lunch Mom and Dad!

So many words, so beautiful.

I love books. I read three or four books a week, own several thousand, and would have more books than would fit in my living space if I didn't need space for beds, kitchens and the cat's laboratory. Books and reading are the secret keys to the universe. Bruce Sterling said in his immensely important work on futurism, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, that successful people in the future would be those who could read and understand information, and re-purpose it to good use. That's essentially how I make my living--that and being charming, mostly. Reading is my primary method of dealing with my world, and prosecuting my job activities.

Which makes it all the worse that I have a horrible time buying books these days. My problem is chain bookstores that seem to think books and readers are impediments to commerce. What's got my long-johns in a lump today is my ongoing consumer experience with Canada's largest bookstore chain. I won't link to it or mention it, because if you can't say something nice, wait until you have something really corrosive to say, and I haven't thought of anything suitable just yet. It's run by the wife of a passing acquaintance of mine, and while I'm sure she's a lovely person to some people, she has no business in the noble business of the book business. Instead of quietly sepulchral temples of paper dust and somnolent introspection, shelves laden with tomes to excite the fever of reading in the most jaded bibliophile, her stores are jumped-up palaces of consumer excess, laden with impulse purchase gew-gaws, cheap knick-knacks, and soulless coffee stores that sell steamed milk and high fructose corn syrup to consumers dull enough to think that six bucks is a good price to pay for 'coffee'.

The worst part is when you go to the bathroom and it's all Salvador Dali in there

Ahem. I'll just wait a minute until the sedatives kick in. As marketing guru Seth Godin says in his book, All Marketers Are Liars, books are a weird consumer item, because there's no way to tell if you're going to like that book until you read that book, at which point you don't need to buy that book (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). I'd never thought of it in any coherent sense unti I read that, but he' s perfectly right, and that's why I like to stand in a bookstore and read a chapter or three before I lay down my dough--and lay it down I do, because I need to hold books in my hand, feel them, tease the words out of them carefully, over time. I'm no closet Derridaist, but I do like to think about thinking about what I read, and that means owning the book over a long period.

But nowadays it seems some retail establishments want you to come in to their stores not to buy their primary merchandise but rather so they can sell you on ancillary items and use your time to market you things you may or may not need. It's like those 'free' web email services. Why are you using one? Because you need a fast, slick, public email address that you can access from any computer attached to the Internets. What do you get instead of a simple email service? Ads, and plenty of them, targeted at you from keywords culled from the content of your supposedly private email message, and your name sold to marketing companies. Treachery!

Here's a hint, Giant Abusive Bookstore, I didn't get in my car and drive to you shop so you could market your tacky junk to me: I came to buy books. I came with a wad of cash in my pocket. In terms of a sale, I am a sure thing, a pushover. I'm trying to cram my money in your hand as hard as I can. I am effectively a hopeless addict trying to score my intoxicant of choice, begging you to make a profit from me.

Wharrgarbl!

And you're rejecting me. How? Because instead of having the latest release of the bestselling author that I wanted, you've got four tables of stuffed animals, children's games, sugary treats, and compact discs. Grrr.

Worst yet, the come-ons are enough to make my hair burst into flames. 'I'm sorry sir, we don't have that in stock. But we can order it for you and have it delivered.' If I had wanted to order that book over the Internets, I would not have driven to your soulless emporium of not-book-sales in a strip mall outside of my town. I would have sat at home in my skivvies, eating spray cheese out of a can, surfing for books in the privacy of my sanctum sanctorum. Having an employee suggest to me that I should waste my time driving somewhere to have another human being order my book for me is the worst sort of patronising cover-up for your inability to stock your primary product.

I'm fully aware that a bookstore cannot conceivably stock the entire inventory of published books in any kind of usable retail space. But you'd expect them to carry, say, the top 200 NY Times bestsellers, yes? So would I, and thus my acrimony and disappointment at seeing overpriced boutique chocolates and kiddie paraphernalia in a spot where a book could lie in wait for my eager hands.

Well, I feel better. This won't influence Giant Abusive Bookstore because they are not, and never have been, in the business of selling books to readers. They are in the business of marketing goods to consumers. Nothing wrong with marketing, but as Joe Strummer said, 'Selling is what selling sells', and at the end of the day, customers are are not 'targets' and retail stores are not conduits for marketing, and I'm not going out of my way to be marketed to, I'm going out of my way to look for books.

And yes, I spent $150 anyway. Curses.

David seems nonplussed. Weakling!

I, on the other hand, have all the confidence in the world . . . for now

Air temperature was about 7°C (46°F)—pretty warm for January 1st. However, there was a stiff breeze pulling chop off the tops of the waves, and water temperature was only 4°C (36°F), just about the lowest temperature before fresh water forms ice crystals. Ulp!

There were around 350 people there, although I didn't hear official figures.

Check out the wave action. Lady in blue is consulting her cardiologist. Boy on left is hugging mommy.

After a long wait in the teeth of the wind we finally got the countdown and sprinted in. For a charming (and local-booster type) look at the wacky action, check out this video

Yes, I'm in there. I think I just don't show up on film.

After the mad scramble and the water that felt like knives of ice to our viscera, we stumbled out into the waiting arms of the new year.

'Hey, I feel great!'

'Help, I can't feel my anything!'

Afterwards David and I repaired to my hot tub (actually a kiddie pool filled with water the temperature of a cup of scalding coffee) and soaked up Bourbon until our veins would support the flow of liquid blood. It's a real advantage living only a few hundred metres from the beach—other folks had to drag their hypothermic carcasses through parking lots and back to Surrey and Langley!

David and I agreed: the best thing about taking part in the Polar Bear swim is that whatever else, few things in the upcoming year will be as singularly painful as the first few moments of January First.

Funny Cow Blue, Marcia Baldwin Looks blue-licious!

The last day of the year is traditionally one where new resolutions are made. In this context, my dictionary says a resolution is 'a a decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner'. Deciding to behave a certain way is much easier than actually doing it but that's human nature all over.

One of my two resolutions this year is to work on my overall fitness. I'm a competitive power-lifter and while the weightlifting has kept me strong and my joints and bones working well, lately when I step on the scale it says, 'one at a time, please'. Even my wife's new Wii fitness game device makes a discomfited noise when I step on it. Who knew video games were jerks?

It's useful to review past resolutions at this time of year, and see which ones panned out, and which didn't. My resolution to stop procrastinating has been pushed back again, and my efforts to work on my patience were too frustrating, but one resolution that I made many years ago seems to be standing me in good stead: about 15 years ago I resolved to eat better.

This was an easy resolution to keep, for the most part. My wife is a Red Seal chef who firmly believes in the best ingredients and simple, healthful preparations. As astounding a concept as it may be, she has never eaten fast food, and wouldn't let me either. Five years ago we planted our own organic/bio-dynamic garden, an switched over to whole and organic foods. If the goal was to double my food budget, that worked out pretty well. Our health (aside from the increasing and inevitable entropic curve associated with a cruise through ones fifth decade) is very good: no cholesterol, low blood pressure, no chronic conditions. To be sure, genetics plays a component (as does my longstanding, regular consumption of red wine!), but I feel better than I did when I was much younger and an eager consumer of fast-food hamburgers and fried foodstuffs.

You want fries with that?

Vindication has come our way as well: in 2004 I saw Morgan Spurlock's documentary, Supersize Me. If you haven't seen it yet, it's like watching a car crash happen right in front of you, but instead of cars it's hamburgers, and instead of injuries and property damage, it's cardiovascular disease and obesity. I haven't eaten as much as a single McNugget since then.

A few years after that I picked up a copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. It dovetailed very neatly with a lot of ideas I had about food, nutrition and respect for the resources I was using. In particular it solidified my decision to continue being a happy carnivore--as long as I was sure of my place in the food chain and knew exactly where the animals I was eating came from, and took responsibility for their humane use. I figure if the creator hadn't intended us to eat animals, she wouldn't have made them from tasty, tasty meat.

Early in 2008 I read Pollan's next book, In Defense of Food. This clinched it for me, and his thesis, 'Eat food, not too much, mostly plants' might seem bizarrely simplistic, when you dig down it's pretty startling to think that a large part of the western diet is made from things our grandparents would not have recognised as food: hydrogenated fats, corn in everything, 'mechanically separated meat', dyes, preservatives, emulsifiers, 'stabilisers', thickeners, enhancers . . . it goes on, and you might think, 'Oh Tim! Those things may not be the best food choices, but at least they're safe and government controlled.' Like most folks I too trust Agriculture Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the USFDA to make sure that the foods I buy aren't actually harmful.

Grade Z goodness

Today's New York Times kind of throws a monkey-wrench into that idea. It turns out that agribusiness processors in the USA have come up with a novel way to reduce the incidence of lethal e coli and salmonella bacteria from ground beef: they're injecting it with ammonia. From the Times article:

Mr. Roth spent the 1990s looking to give Beef Products a competitive edge by turning fatty slaughterhouse trimmings into usable lean beef.

Mr. Roth and others in the industry had discovered that liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge resulted in a lean product that was desirable to hamburger-makers.

The greater challenge was eliminating E. coli and salmonella, which are more prevalent in fatty trimmings than in higher grades of beef. According to a 2003 study financed by Beef Products, the trimmings “typically includes most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” and contains “larger microbiological populations.” Beef Products said it also used trimmings from inside cuts of meat

Pathogens died when enough ammonia was used to raise the alkalinity of the beef to a high level, company research found. But early on, school lunch officials and other customers complained about the taste and smell of the beef. Samples of the processed beef obtained by The Times revealed lower levels of alkalinity, suggesting less ammonia was used.

Beef Products acknowledged lowering the alkalinity, and the U.S.D.A. said it had determined that “at least some of B.P.I.’s product was no longer receiving the full lethality treatment.”

 Trimmings? Outer surfaces of the carcass? That's hide, not meat--I'm not eager to eat my shoes, belt and wallet for lunch.  And all this shaves three cents off a pound of meat, which then has to be treated with ammonia (the same thing in your bottle of window cleaner) to a pH of 9.5+ to kill the enormous colonies of lethal bacteria. At that pH it would be suitable for sanitising counter tops, not for eating.

 It's not like I think I have the answer to everything, or that seizing on one food fad or another, however well-intentioned, is a guaranteed pathway to perfect health and a better world. But it stands to reason that it's better to eat food that's actually made out of, uh, food, than it is to eat mechanically not-food processed to within an inch of human understanding. I'm going to keep on grinding my own chuck for hamburgers, from happy organic cows who ate grass under open skies--if nothing else it'll help me sleep better at night.

What's that? The second resolution? I'm going to learn to play the Ukulele. Okay, maybe not like Jake Shimabukuro, but I'm practicing!

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.

Affected runs are:

• Selection White Merlot, 0234309
• Selection White Zinfandel, 0334309
• Selection Italian Amarone, 0434309
• World vineyard French Sauvignon Blanc, 0334809
• World Vineyard Zinfandel/Shiraz, 0434809
• World Vineyard California Pinot Noir, 0534809
• World Vineyard Chilean Malbec, 0634809

This change is temporary, and we'll revert back to normal (as normal as we get) after these runs. I'm assuming that Santa somehow scooped the yellow caps for purposes of his own, so I'll cut the jolly old elf some slack on this one.

While no substitute for a talon-like grip, de-cappers do a fine job of opening those kit tops

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.

Not that this was all just religious ceremony: in pre-industrial, pre-literate societies somebody has to be in charge of telling people when to plant, when to sow and when to bring in the washing. Useful stuff, knowing what the sun would do next--although the Chinese proposition of banging on pots and pans to drive away eclipses probably wasn't that effective.

My personal favorite personification of solar worship is Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Latin for 'The Festival of the Unconquered Sun'. Rome  practiced solar worship when their dominant religion was Mithraism, and tacked on the 'Invictus' bit as an honorific, talking up how great the sun really was. There's some scholarly debate about Mithraism being conflated with Christianity, but that's for eggheads with too many pins dancing on the heads of their angels. Truth is, very little is known about Mithras worship and festivals, but I'm all for taking a break in the middle of winter to celebrate the return of the sun and warmer weather.

With all that in mind, I'm on my way to getting ready for midwinter festivities: I've finally gotten my tree up, laid in (and into) some egg nog, and seen some friends. I bought the cats toques, objects both shiny and furry, and a new helicopter (I don't know what they do with the things, but I'm happy they keep learning new skills), I've made my rice crispie treats (and eaten them . . .) and now it remains to do a bit of shopping and cleaning. I'll spend the 25th with my dear old Mum and me dad, and then it's a big old dinner with my bride on the 26th--I'm thinking of spatchcocking a turkey again, and doing it up with all the good stuff. It just doesn't feel right until I've had mashed potatoes and turkey gravy.

After that, it's a bit of a rest and back to it: I've got programs to program, I'm looking at doing an upgrade to our instructions (my head aches to think of it) and some where in there I'm taking a week off to go to Mexico, to lie in a pool and soak up local culture (if by culture you understand I mean, 'tequila').

Because that's my kind of sun worship!

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!

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.

Start looking for your kits to arrive in January, and have fun making them!

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.

The bad news is, the warehouse contained the back libraries of some prominent California wineries, like Whitehall Lane, Justin, Sonoma-Cutrer, Saintsbury and a friend of mine, Signorello.

While the structure suffered $10 million in damage, that was eventually dwarfed by the damage to the wines inside, finally capped at over $200 million. The loss went way beyond mere money, however. For many wineries the presence of their bottles in tastings and on shelves is their key marketing strategy, and the loss of entire product lines and vintages is a devastating one. One asks, what terrible event could have caused such a fire?

A jerk, that's what. According to CBS News in Sacramento:

Mark C. Anderson pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Sacramento Monday afternoon to a 19-count federal indictment in connection with a 2005 arson that destroyed millions of bottles of wine at a warehouse in Vallejo.

Turns out rather than storing the wine for his customers Anderson was siphoning it off and trying to sell it without their knowledge. As a side note, he also cheated on his taxes, and I've heard rumours he was mean to children and did not like apple pie, kittens or sunny days. To cover up his malfeasance he decided to pull off a scheme worthy of a Scooby Doo villain and burn the joint down so evidence of his chicanery would be destroyed. Facing charges of arson, mail fraud, tax evasion use of a fictitious name and interstate transportation of fraudulently obtained property he was staring down the barrel of between 150 and 200 years in prison if convicted on all counts, so he cut a deal and will do just over 15 years in the Greybar Hotel.

I certainly know there are worse crimes that go on every day, and I hope that justice is served in those cases as well. But it pains me to think of this one. It's a case of the utter perversion of the capitalist ethic of creating value and preserving it to grow a business. Instead, Anderson was a classic Cashitalist, stealing to enrich himself, ruining his own business and destroying the business of others for short-term gain and personal enrichment. Even though I'm in recovery from the People's Socialist Healthcare Republic of Canada (don't give me guff: my people are Reds from way back, I just bear up under it) it brings out the John Maynard Keynes in me. When someone thinks they can steal while pretending to be in business, that's kleptomania, and when they destroy other people's livelihoods to cover their thievery . . . well that's just plain naughty.

Lump of coal for you, Mr. Anderson. I understand they don't serve wine in the big house either.