Wine - Seeing the World Through the Bottom of a Glass

Wine, Sport and the Olympic Ideal

2008-08-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

This wonderful conversation comes from, and is reposted with permission from, The Wine Conversation.

This weekend I was watching a great deal of the Olympics, as were around a billion other people. I wonder how many people were considering the link between the Olympics and Wine?

At first it seems a strange thing to compare, but on Saturday morning I turned on the television to watch the excellent BBC coverage with my daughter.

She is just over 3 and therefore this is her first Olympics. How exciting is that? Your first chance to see all these sports; these wonderful sights of humans achieving such heights of physical strength, skill and sportsmanship. What better education and model for an impressionable mind?

So what does it have to do with wine?

Well, after a bit of rowing, and her wonderment at the gymnastics, coverage turned to ... boxing.

Who would want a 3 year old to watch boxing? Two men in a ring doing exactly what we tell kids not to do. "No fighting!" "No punching!" "Play nicely together!"

I almost turned the channel to watch one of the dozen channels dedicated to MORE cartoons. Then I stopped. First, I wanted to watch it (there are a couple of very good British boxers). Secondly, it is an Olympic sport too, so why should I shield my daughter from it more than any other?

It occurred to me that allowing her to watch boxing is similar to be being prepared to allow her to see me drink wine (I should point out that I am only talking of AMATEUR boxing).

Both alcohol and violence are "wrong" in a general sense, but we are talking here about a controlled, ritualised performance. Amateur boxing is not ABOUT the violence, and wine is not ABOUT the alcohol, but they are part of the package.

The boxers have spent years developing themselves physically and their skills, and the judges are not there to decide how much they hurt the other contestant, but how skillful they were at landing a punch. Of course, people do get hurt, and it does still involve pain and physical damage (no question about that), but all those involved are aware of this and have chosen to take part.

Alcohol is a damaging substance, and winemakers are "alcohol pushers" - but they are not doing this to hurt drinkers. Wine is an expression of the skill of grape growers and wine makers, and a way of experiencing this personally for those of us not directly involved in the production process.

My daughter didn't like the boxing (naturally) and after I explained why they were doing what they were doing, she was still worried about them, but at least understood that this was friendly competition. However, so far it is one of the few sports she has seen that she doesn't want to grow up to do (she does want to row, become a gymnast, dive, lift weights and sail).

There are those who would ban boxing just as there are those who would ban wine, or at least tax it out of existence.

Banning or hiding wine is not going to stop some people abusing much stronger and damaging alcohol any more than banning or hiding boxing will halt street violence (or worse, the horrible kinds of atrocities in Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia that I also had to explain to my daughter).

In fact, I believe that a certain amount of escapism or "letting off steam" is important to humans everywhere. Cultures that manage to find positive ways to do this through responsible consumption of alcohol, or responsible attitudes to sports are more at ease with themselves. This is one of the best things we can learn from the Olympics, as the ultimate expression of this in sport.

On that note, I was very affected by seeing two competitors sharing a hug and a kiss on the podium. One was Russian, another a Georgian. There was something very symbolic about the fact that they had been competing in a shooting discipline. There was also something symbolic about the fact that those who could take this positive, conciliatory attitude were women.

I'm glad my daughter is learning valuable lessons like that!

Wine, the NFL, and competing with the government

2008-07-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

First a hat tip to Got Tannins?, one of the many wonderful wine-related sites on the internet.

The NFL has been in the news today, with the $500,000 "Nipplegate" Super Bowl show fine reversed by a Court of Appeals. But Got Tannins? points us to another NFL story, the League's over-the-top can-you-friggin'-believe-it hypocrisy about alcohol (and who gets to pocket the profits from it). In a way, it reminds me of States' attitudes toward "illegal gambling" and the lottery. They don't care about the people, just the competition.

Charles Woodson, the University of Michigan alum and defensive back for the Oakland Raiders, is also a wine afficianado. In fact, he likes the stuff so much he created his own brand, Charles Woodson Wines. Some of the proceeds from the sale of Charles Woodson Wines go to Mott Children's Hospital. How did the NFL react? Well, they don't call it the "No Fun League" for nothing:

After he did an interview about his passion for wine recently, and as news of Friday's event spread, the NFL contacted his representatives this week to remind him of the league's alcohol policy, specifically that any interviews supporting alcohol would be seen as an endorsement and "may have a detrimental effect on the great number of young fans who follow our game."

Well 'hey,' you might say, that sounds pretty responsible of the NFL, caring about their brand and its influence on the maleable minds of our tykes and tykettes. Right?

Wrong.

Coors Becomes Official Beer Sponsor of NFL

Coors Brewing Co. on Wednesday announced it will become the official beer sponsor of the National Football League beginning with the 2002-03 season. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, analysts speculated that the five-year contract could be worth $300 million, making it the largest such marketing deal in NFL history.

Beer sponsorship worth big bucks to NFL

The National Football League has launched a bidding war to find the "official beer sponsor" for the 2006 season and beyond, according to two of the brewers in negotiations.
The NFL is seeking a multiyear deal, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The league's beer sponsor has the rights to use the NFL shield, playoffs and Super Bowl logos in advertising and promotional efforts. Incumbent Coors Brewing signed a $300 million, five-year deal in 2002. That contract gave the NFL an option to seek a new partner after four seasons.

Anheuser-Busch Wraps Deals To Sponsor Next 6 Super Bowls

Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis has completed agreements to be the exclusive sponsor in the beer category for the next six Super Bowls.

Anheuser-Busch Pushes the Big Beers for the Super Bowl

Fox Broadcasting, which will carry Super Bowl XLII, is charging an estimated average of $2.7 million for each 30-second commercial in the game. The audience in the United States for the telecast by Fox, part of the News Corporation, is expected to exceed 90 million viewers.

As the leading Super Bowl advertiser and a stalwart sponsor of TV sports, Anheuser-Busch pays less than the average rate. The company does, however, pay extra fees each year to be the only beer marketer to run spots in the game, shutting out rivals like Molson Coors and SABMiller.

Anheuser-Busch’s deals for exclusivity in the beer category with the networks that currently share the rights to broadcast the Super Bowl — CBS, Fox and NBC — extend through 2012.

I don't think the NFL has a big problem with alcohol. I think the NFL has a big problem with competition- what are the players doing hawking alcohol? That's the NFL's domain.

And that, as I noted in the introduction, reminds me of states, lotteries, and gambling laws.

HERE is a report from 2004, stating that the forty states (and D.C.) pulled in almost $45 Billion dollars in 2003, with the states keeping a third, or $15 Billion. That is a boatload of money, one scratch-off at a time. There can not be any doubt that states are in the gambling business, and in it big. You don't believe me? Just look at casinos.

Pawlenty's budget plan relies on $200 million from new casino

Pawlenty had said he would not use gambling revenue to balance the budget, but his budget includes $200 million from a one-time casino license fee. He's proposing a new casino in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, to be run by the state and interested tribes.

House approves record-breaking Illinois tax increase for casinos

Legislators and economic development leaders say although the Illinois Assembly's passage of a bill to increase casinos' taxes will help plug $200 million of the $5 billion gaping hole in the state's budget shortfall, it will also thwart the development of new casinos here and hamper operation of existing casinos.

Does that picture look familiar? Is it from the Hoosier Lottery, or maybe the Florida Lottery? Nope. Those are Bolita balls. Bolita is an illegal game, something the government would never want you to do, because it is a sin and destroys the family. Here is how it works- a bunch of balls with numbers on them are put in a bag. Somebody starts pulling out the balls at random. The person with a "bolita ticket" with the right numbers on it wins money from the pool of people who bought tickets. This is such a criminal enterprise that people in Florida have been sent to prison for running it. It is such a disgusting "game" that the only people willing to run it were people with names like Santo Trafficante, Jr.:

Oh, and this guy:

Gambling is a crime in Florida (unless you're the government, that is). Well 'sure,' you might say, 'but when the State runs gambling it is regulated, the games are fair, people aren't getting ripped off.'

Really?

Let's look at the Hoosier lottery just for kicks.

THIS is a fun class-action lawsuit. The Hoosier Lottery is alleged to have sold millions of tickets for which there were no possible prizes:

The overstatement of prizes occurred because half of the 5 million Cash Blast tickets printed were defective, according to their claims.

The lottery reprinted the 2.5 million tickets but did not announce that the prizes associated with the defective tickets were no longer available.

On June 22, 2006 — more than a year after taking the flawed tickets off the market — the lottery noted on its Web site that seven of the initial 10 $250,000 prizes associated with the game remained available, the suit says.

By July 7, 2006, after realizing it had too many prizes listed on its Web site, the lottery announced that the number of $250,000 prizes remaining had dropped to one. The number of prizes of $50 or more fell from 65,570 to 5,197.

But wait, as they say, there's more. From the Indianapolis Star:

People who plopped down $20 for the Hoosier Lottery's $1 Million Solid Gold scratch-off game faced long odds of winning the biggest cash prize -- 1 in 400,000.

Would they have played if they knew the odds were zero? They did for more than a month -- they just didn't know it.

...

A winner took the last $1 million prize for the Solid Gold game May 28, but tickets remained on sale last week and could stay on sale in some places until mid-month.

...

One other game, the $5 Monthly Money, also has no top prize available. Someone claimed its last $2.4 million prize June 26.

No bolita seller or numbers runner could get away with a scam of this magnitude. I am thinking the State couldn't, either, if it didn't have a statutory monopoly on the game.

The next time somebody starts preaching to you about protecting the children, or the wages of sin, take a look at who is speaking, because I would give you three-to-one odds (if it weren't illegal) that they are more interested in their pockets than your kids.

Wine, Labor, and Workers

2008-06-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today we look at wine, labor, and work conditions.

The wine business is one of the more environmentally progressive businesses in the world. Sure, there are enormous wine-manufacturing companies operating by the ton, rather than the case, but every year more vineyards move to organic and even biodynamic growing. This is not just true of ex-hippie California boutiques, but of some of France's great Bordeauxs and Burgundies, and elsewhere around the world.

One of the constants in any agricultural enterprise is the need to bring in the product. Combines have turned that into an industrial/mechanical operation for corn, wheat, soy, and similar crops. But wine, at least good wine, is always picked by hand. In the summer. When it is hot.

Fortunately, grapes and grape pickers both like cooler temperatures. So what do they do? They pick grapes at night. Here is one description, from Far Niente Winery:

Whether it is late-night picking or early morning picking, we start anywhere from 2am to 4am…before Starbucks has a functioning barista. There is something a tad eerie about vineyards at night with the bright flood lights that make a single shockingly bright area around the tractors, while the rest of the field is pitch black. Lots of shadows. We haven't had Dracula, werewolves, zombies, or other things that go “bump” in the night…except for the sound of clusters falling into lug boxes we pick.

...

Have you ever picked grapes? Actually, have you picked any farm produce where you were paid by how much you pick? It is hard work. There is a sense of accomplishment and pride but most of all, it is tough. It is cool and often foggy when we pick at night. We try to be done before 10am when it warms up. Not only does it keep us cooler, it keeps the fruit cool. Better for the fruit and better for us.

...

It is harder to see in the dark. If you aren’t sure, go outside about midnight and try to wash your car under a street lamp. (Better yet, wash mine.) Look at it the next day and it will be mostly clean…except for the spots you missed. Same thing applies to grapes so we send people through before hand to remove any clusters we don’t like and especially to get rid of leaves in the fruiting area. We didn’t used to do this and have found it is another detail that improves grapes and their resulting wines…whether or not they get picked in the middle of the night.

...

So, the next time you are awake in the middle of the night during harvest, I hope that you think of all the people in our vineyards who may be bringing in the grapes that hold the potential and excitement of a great Napa Valley vintage. Then roll over and DON’T HOG THE COVERS!

Unfortunately, not all grapes are picked at night. HERE is a tragic story of a pregnant teenager dying from the heat, and from her drive to keep working.

Until her death on May 16, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez was another undocumented farmworker at the bottom rung of California's farm production chain.

On Wednesday, nestled in a white satin coffin, the 17-year-old girl became to farm labor advocates more a symbol of what they say are secretive and abusive conditions in some of the state's orchards and vineyards.

...

When Vasquez Jimenez collapsed, she had been on the job three days, pruning vines for $8 an hour in a vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming.

During eight hours of work beginning at 6 a.m. in heat that topped 95 degrees, Bautista said that workers were given only one water break, at 10:30 a.m. And the water was a 10-minute walk away – too far, he said, to keep up with the crew and avoid being scolded.

...

Later, Bautista said, the foreman told a driver to take the pair to a store to buy rubbing alcohol and apply it to see if it would revive Vasquez Jimenez. When that failed, the driver took the couple to a clinic in Lodi, Bautista said, where her body temperature had reached more than 108 degrees.

"The foreman told me to say that she wasn't working for a contractor, that she got sick while exercising," Bautista said in Spanish. "He said she was underage, and it would cause a lot of problems."

...

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez delivered a eulogy in Spanish at the Lodi church Wednesday.

"What value does a farmworker's life have? Is it less than the life of any other human?" he said.

Tragically, this girls death was not unique. In fact, California (and while I hate to laud any Republican, Arnold) has been in the forefront of agricultural worker protection, requiring shade, breaks, and water, all laws apparently violated in this case. But deaths from picking are nothing new. In North Carolina a 44-year old man died picking tobacco:

On August 1, 2006, a 44-year-old Hispanic migrant farm worker (the victim) died after succumbing to heat stroke while working in a tobacco field on a farm in North Carolina. The victim arrived on the farm from Mexico on July 21, 2006. On July 24 he was assigned to work in the tobacco fields, where he worked for the next week. On August 1, 2006, he started work at 7 a.m., had a short break between 9 and 10 a.m. that included soda and crackers, and ate lunch between noon and 1 p.m. The weather was hot and humid with a heat index (a measure of the combined effects of high temperatures and high humidity on the body) between 100 and 110. He had been working in a tobacco field when around 3 p.m. he complained to the crew leader that he was not feeling well. The victim drank some water and was driven back to the workers’ housing and left alone to rest. At approximately 3:45 p.m. the victim was found unconscious on the steps of the house. Emergency medical service (EMS) personnel were immediately called and responded within five minutes. The victim was transported to the hospital where his core body temperature was recorded at 108º F and he was pronounced dead.

Perversely, child labor laws actually encourage outdoor labor:

Federal laws permit a child aged 13 to work in 100-degree heat in a strawberry field, but do not permit that child to work in an air-conditioned office. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) the legal age to perform most farm work is only 12 if a parent accompanies the working child. Children who are 14 or older can work unlimited hours in the fields before or after school hours. The same law requires a minimum age of 14 years for non-agricultural work and limits such work to 3 hours per day while school is in session.

Furthermore, federal laws allow children to perform hazardous work in agriculture at age 16, while the minimum age for hazardous work in all other industries is 18.

These people are invisible. They are the cheap labor behind cheap produce. They are the "illegal aliens" the Lou Dobbs of the world find so threatening. They are the illiterate African Americans raised in the south and deprived of anything more than a third grade education, forced by Jim Crow into the same slavery as their grandparents, under a different label. I met a person like that once. I will close this diary with his story.

Whenever I see the words "migrant labor" I think of one of my first clients. I'm going back to the mid 80s, and he was in his 60s, so he was born in 1925 or so. He was an illiterate black man raised in the South. So how did he end up with his freedom entrusted to a grossly unqualified and inexperienced public defender? Good question.

A few years earlier he had been arrested for possession of marijuana, well, one joint. The sentence was not onerous by normal standards, credit for time served (overnight in jail) and court costs of $50. He paid $25 because that was all he had, and needed to pay the other $25 to get the case closed.

Skip forward three years. He was in Okeechobee picking blueberries. Did I mention he was a migrant fruit-picker with barely a third grade education? Black children in the south in the 1930s weren't given more opportunity than that, and the legacy last their entire lifetime, as well as that of their children. Well, the place he was staying changed its rental policy, from end of the week to end of the day. Unfortunately, the farm kept its end of the week policy. Therefore, he couldn't pay the rent. He came home from a day of stooping in the Florida sun, picking bushel after bushel of blueberries, to find everything he owned out on the curb. Having no idea what to do next, or how to save what he called "my Sunday suit," he called the police for help. They ran his name and found a bench warrant for "Violation of Probation," an old warrant for not paying that $25 and not knowing enough to ask for a waiver, three years earlier.

That is when it got truly kafkaesque. He went to the local jail waiting to be transferred to Alachua County, where he caught the possession charge. He was in jail in Okeechobee for two days, then transferred all day via unairconditioned bus, handcuffed. Then he was brought to court, but the judge who issued the bench warrant was on vacation, so he was sent back to jail to await her return. Three days later we found him in the jail, scheduled to be there at least another week for a damned $25 fine.

We put his case in front of another judge, only with a lot of begging and yelling. The new judge said he would let him go, if the client payed $25. Hell, the poor guy had lost everything he owned because he could pay less than that for a day's lodging.

I paid the $25. And while he was in Gainesville he went to the VA Hosital to get his inflamed gums treated, then we got him a bus ticket and some cash to return to Okechobee.

That was twenty years ago. I don't think a month goes by I don't think of that old fellow. I am sure he has left us by now. If I believed in an afterlife I would hope he was somewhere that finally gave him as good a chance for happiness as anybody else.

In his life, he was born with two outs, two strikes, 10 runs down, and a strong wind blowing in. Do I have an inspirational story of how he overcame it? Nope. He just lived, survived, kept breathing from one day to the next. He was just a man, not a hero, not an object lesson, just a man born into an evil society that treated him as less than human. Emancipation Proclamation or not, the man was raised to be slave, cheap helpless labor subject to the whims of the working class. What I will always remember, though is that the injustices inflicted upon him so many years ago did not end then, but followed him his whole life, and his children to whom he could not read, and their children, who came from him, ad infinitum unless somebody extraordinary broke the string. THAT is the legacy of slavery and racism.

Before I met him I had the fantasy that everybody had an equal opportunity, that you could make of your life what you put into it. That was the fantasy of a privileged upbringing.

That man taught me more than I have the words to describe. And today, because of this diary, I think of him again.

And wish him well. And remember anew that opportunity is not equal, it is a gift given by an accident of birth in an unjust society.

Recent wine tasting notes, from Two Days Per Bottle:

J. Hofstatter Lagrein 2003

Denominazione di Origine Controllata, Alto Adige, Product of Italy. 13% alcohol, $19.98.

The color was dark, almost black, with bright purple edges. Te cork was almost black, with wine almost half an inch up the edges.

Right out the bottle this wine had a huge nose of blueberry, burnt caramel and vanilla. The palate started with bright red fruits and cranberries, followed by a touch of mint and some orange peel. Mild velvety tannins only showed up at the finish, which dropped quickly but not entirely, lingering with berries and cream.

This is a very good wine and at a very good price. I am curious to see if it opens more overnight and becomes something extraordinary.

Second night. Now it is a softer, more balanced, mature-tasting wine. Four or five hours open, plus a night under the Vacuu-Vin, have the same effect as several hours of decanting, giving just enough instant-aging to give you an idea how it might change with more cellar time.

The nose with not as explosive, but surrendered more layers, including dark cherry, plum, cloves, black pepper and, at the end, a touch of mint. The palate changed rom last night's slightly acidic red fruits to softer black ones, including blackberry and black cherries, plus cloves and lavendar. About an hour after re-opening it started with cocoa and black fruit, followed by the tarter cherries, cloves, and florals. Tannins were far less obvious on the much softer finish.

This was a good wine, an interesting wine, offering plenty of tastes and layers. Based upon its changes overnight, I also think it could benefit from another year or two, not much more, in the cellar.

Wine Corks and AIDS

2008-05-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today we look at wine, wine corks, and AIDS.

Much has been written of cork and wine corks, from how to remove one that fell into the bottle to cork taint and whether the whole darn thing should be replaced with plastic, or glass, or screw tops, or even (yikes!) beer bottle crown caps. But one thing people rarely talk about is what to do with the corks after they come out of the bottle. Sure, a lot of us recycle the bottles, but what about the corks? They are wood, they are natural, and they certainly could have a second life, right?

You could start my making a trivet:

A coarkboard made out of corks also seems pretty obvious:

But in the long-term, craft projects are not the answer. Fortunately, (hat tip to Pour More for the link), there is a company out there that wants your corks. Heck, if the project works, it will even PAY you for your corks. The company is Yemm and Hart, in Marquand, Missouri. They are taking wine corks and turning them into tiles. This seems like a worthy enterprise, not just to recycle a few corks, but as a small part of the whole process - seeing our consumer products as part of a cycle, rather than a one-way trip to a landfill. Also, the corks we recycle today might very well save a tree or two tomorrow.

What other little bits of life's flotsam and jetsam might you be throwing away, or even recycling, that might be put to better use? One thing you might not think about is medicine bottles.

Kenya is having an almost incomprehensibel AIDS epidemic, with more than two million people infected with the HIV virus. The United States is contributing millions of dollars. In 2001 Kenya passed Section 80 of the Industrial Property Act, which

enabled the government to issue compulsory licenses to local manufacturers to produce generic versions of pharmaceuticals, such as antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS patients, without seeking approval from the drug company that holds the patent rights.

Governments can issue compulsory licenses to produce medicines more cheaply than prices offered by drug companies without seeking patent holder consent under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). TRIPS allows countries, particularly in the developing world, to make drugs to safeguard public health in national emergencies or for non-commercial purposes.

A funny thing happens, though between manufacture and delivery. The drugs are made in bulk and distributed in bulk. Then it is the patient's turn. How do they get their drugs?

Yup. You got it. No bottles. Not even those little paper cups they use in nursing homes. Just stick out your hand, get your meds, then walk home with them. By the way, try not to sweat - you don't want them to melt before you can take them.

How can you help? Churches, synagogues, and other charitable organizations are trying to do something about it. Really, it is quite simple. Collect your empty pill bottles, remove the label, wash them out, and take them to your house of worship. If it doesn't already have a program I have great news for you - you get to start a new project!

I guess all I am asking is that everybody stop and look around their own home. Here in America we throw away things every day that could be recycled or reused. The phrase "one man's garbage is another man's treasure" is not just a trite expression. It is a fact. What you throw away could save a tree, save the environment, perhaps even save a life.

So, while we're at it, what else? What else do we throw away that somebody else wants, or even needs? What do we recycle that might have an evern better use? Throw the ideas out there. Maybe we can help somebody.

Wine- Iowa Wine, is a lower drinking age far behind?

2008-05-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Today we look at Iowa, wine, and the "first in the nation" caucus.

From Wines and Vines:

Iowa Growers Formalize Association

Grapegrowers in northwestern Iowa, who have been meeting monthly for the past five years, decided in April to formalize the arrangement by founding the Northwest Iowa Grape Growers Association.

...

According to Wines & Vines' 2008 Annual Directory, Iowa currently has about 40 bonded wineries. Five separate wine trails are active within the state: Amana Colonies, Heart of Iowa, Scenic Rivers, Western Iowa and the Iowa Wine Trail.

...

Did you know Iowa had a wine industry? Neither did I. But they do. They have a Wine Trail, actually, two Wine Trails, more than fifty wineries, and even wine festivals and events.

For people who love wine, this has to be great news. Expect to see a lower drinking age across the nation, as Presidential wanna-bes propose legislation that mandates lower ages as a condition of receiving highway funds. You can also expect a reversal of existing wine-shipping laws, allowing out of state wineries to ship to anyone, anywhere. That is the sort of thing that happens once something gets Iowa's attention.

Iowa, you see, is very proud of its status as First in the Nation for its Presidential Caucus. Unfortunately for the environment, the economy, and heck, the rest of the nation and perhaps the rest of the world, it is more than just a matter of civic pride. It is also a matter of perverse politics trumping intelligent policy.

I have written previously about the absurdity of corn ethanol, perhaps the single most inefficient form of mass-produced energy in modern history. It takes more than a calorie to create a calorie's worth of ethanol. In addition, wheat land is being planted with corn to make corn based ethanol, driving the price of wheat through the ceiling. Corn is being turned into fuel instead of food. People are starving. People in Haiti are eating dirt. But we keep making ethanol.

Why?

That's why.

Heck, they're not even subtle about it. Look at this website. It unashamedly links Iowa's "First in the Nation" caucus status to its "First in the Nation" in ethanol production nationwide, including:

Iowa has 29 ethanol plants in operation, producing approximately 1.98 billion gallons per year. Eight of those plants are currently expanding capacity. And 10 new ethanol plants are under construction.

All of this, of course, is tied directly to Iowa's status as "First in the Nation":

Iowa, whose first-in-the-nation caucus is vital for politicians who want to be president, has reaped a windfall of federal spending in recent years, collecting billions of dollars in subsidies for ethanol production and a disproportionate share of federal funding, according to a review of government records.

...

Meanwhile, a new study on ethanol production by the Cato Institute says that Iowa gets a $2 billion benefit annually as a result of subsidies and trade barriers for the fuel, which is made from corn, Iowa's largest crop.

John McCain used to hate ethanol. Not anymore:

McCain has argued that government support for ethanol actually raises gasoline prices. He has claimed ethanol does nothing to make the U.S. more energy independent. He has even questioned the science behind making fuel from corn - contending that ethanol provides less energy than the fossil fuels consumed to produce it.

...

In a flip-flop so absurd it'll be a wonder if it doesn't get lampooned by late-night comedians - not to mention opponents' negative ads - McCain is now proclaiming himself a "strong" ethanol supporter.

"I support ethanol and I think it is a vital, a vital alternative energy source not only because of our dependency on foreign oil but its greenhouse gas reduction effects," he said in an August speech in Grinnell, Iowa, as reported by the Associated Press.

Barack Obama even attacked Clinton in Iowa over her less than enthusiastic support for ethanol:

“It’s hard to believe that she is a strong ethanol supporter given her track record and this is something that represents a major reversal and what we need is consistency on these issues,” he told the newspaper. “If she’s willing to shift this quickly on this issue, we don’t know whether she will shift back when it gets hard.”

The Register's interview comes as Obama is starting a six-day visit to the state leading up to this weekend's Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines. He appears this evening in Cedar Rapids, before starting a campaign swing Wednesday morning through southeast Iowa.

The New York senator has in the past defended votes against ethanol, saying she feared various measures involving the fuel could have spiked energy costs.

From the Washington Post:

One of the sharpest substantive divides is over ethanol, an issue of particular potency in Iowa. The vote in question was an effort to block a proposed amendment to the 2005 energy bill that would have established an ethanol mandate for refineries. "If there were ever an onerous, anti-competitive, anti-free-market provision, this is it," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who led the effort and who warned that non-farming states could face spikes in gasoline prices because of supply limitations. Clinton at the time was campaigning for reelection and was one of 28 senators to support her colleague's failed bid.

But hey, this isn't about corn. It's about wine. Isn't it?

Oh yeah, sorry. I got distracted.

Iowa has wineries and wine trails. Pro-wine legislation should not be far behind.

Bacchus for President

And now, the best review I could find anywhere for an Iowa wine (I do not vouch for it, not having tried it myself. I can tell you this review seems quite, well, enthusiastic, given others I have read, but what the heck, try it an let me know how it was):

2005 Park Farm Winery Chambourcin Vintner's Reserve (USA, Iowa)

88

Remarkably similar to a Pinot Noir. Translucent ruby color. Some smoke and cedar on the nose, along with ripe red berry and a bit of rose petal. Not a sophisticated wine to mull over, but extremely quaffable. Lacks finish, but the lush berry flavor, smooth mouthfeel and respectable structure make this a winner.

Nature, Big Pharma, and orphan drugs

2008-04-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

Today we look at nature, Big Pharma, and orphan drugs.

Have you ever heard of the French Paradox? According to Wiki:

The French paradox refers to the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats.[1] The phenomenon was first noted by Irish physician Samuel Black in 1819.

Some say it exists. Some say it does not, but instead that French cardiovascular disease is simply under-reported. One thing that came from the concept, however, was discovery of the medicinal properties of Resveratrol. Resveratrol, again according to Wiki, is

a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants when under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi.

Its most common natural source is the skin of grapes, and particularly in wine. Depending upon the wine, and its parent grape, resveratrol content can range from 0.4 to 40 mg/L. The biggest commercial source for resveratrol as a dietary supplement is japanese knotweed, with as much as 187 mg/kg in the dried root.

Interest in resveratrol really took off with a study that showed yeast lived longer when treated with the stuff. That was followed with a study showing increased life span in houseflies and nematodes. The study was successfully reproduced on nematodes, but not on houseflies.

Intake of resveratrol through wine has been studied, and shown significant promise, in mice. The downside? You would have to drink 100 to 1000 bottles a day to get that sort of dosing. With the cost of the Euro these days, and the price of even a decent Bordeaux '05 going for $50 or more, that is probably not realistic for most people. /snark.

Resveratrol is starting to look like a miracle drug. Not only will it help you live longer, it will keep you from gaining weight, inhibit growth of cancer cells, inhibit platelet growth and artherosclerosis, and even enhance the effect of antiretroviral drugs.

And that is where it gets interesting.

Have you heard of Orphan Drugs? An Orphan Drug

is any drug developed under the Orphan Drug Act of January 1983 ("ODA"), a federal law concerning rare diseases ("orphan diseases"), defined as diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States or low prevalence is taken as prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 in the community.

Orphan drugs are developed with government subsidies, through tax breaks, research, and extended patents. The whole idea of orphan drugs is to encourage development of drugs which would otherwise not have a market, due to the small number of people suffering a disease.

Let me tell you a quick story about one little orphan drug, Epogen. Epogen, you see, was developed as an orphan drug to treat anemia in patients with kidney failure. Amgen developed the drug through government subsidies because demand would be so low. Right? Well, not really. The bad new for Amgen, you see, is that Epogen sales went down the first quarter of '08, to a mere $554 million from $625 million in the first quarter the year before. Epogen, you see, has for a decade now been the treatment of choice for anemia as a result of chemotheraphy. Thank you, United States taxpayers, for subsidizing our single bigget profit maker. Love, Amgen.

Which brings us back to the news, and resveratrol.

Sirtis Pharmaceuticals, a small Cambridge biotech firm, developed a drug from resveratrol, a drug that held huge promise for anti-aging, athletic performance, weight loss, antiretroviral treatment, heck, everything. 'Hey man,' you might ask, 'if it treats everything why are you talking about orphan drugs?' Excellent question. The answer, of course, is why pay to develop something when the taxpayers will do it for you.

On April 1, 2008 (and no, it was not an April Fool's joke, though it should have been), the FDA granted Sirtis orphan drugs status for Resveratrol, for the treatment of MELAS Syndrome.

MELAS syndrome -- or mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes -- is a fatal disease that comes from a DNA mutation that causes mitochondria, which energize cells, to malfunction.

It's unknown exactly how many Americans have the rare disease, but Sirtris believes the number of U.S. patients with MELAS is fewer than 20,000.

Okay, that's not the punch line. Here is the set-up:

With 57 employees, the biotech firm reported a 2007 net loss of $31.1 million and no revenue.

And NOW for the punch line:

Glaxo to Buy Sirtris, Maker of Red Wine-Based Drug

GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe's biggest drugmaker, agreed to buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. for about $720 million, adding an experimental treatment derived from red wine that's thought to slow the effects of aging.

Resveratrol, a well-studied natural ingredient of red wine, and a natural compound that has shown promise in almost every field of medicine, has been granted orphan drug status and will be developed at the expense of the American taxpayer. Further, it will be granted an extra-long patent life, guaranteeing that it will cost four or five figures for every single use, including the dozens of off-label use that will most certainly overshadow MELAS Syndrome use the second it hits the shelves.

All this, from something that is found naturally in grape skins.

It's time for me to go. I have to get an early start if I'm going to drink 100 bottles of wine a day. New York Pinot Noirs seem to have the highest resveratrol content, so here is a review to get you started:

Excellent Burgundian nose, cherries, truffle and other mushroom notes. Mellow and restrained but not weak. Silky smooth on the palate with long earthy and pleasant finish. Could have easily confused this New Yorker with Burgundy. Loved this bottle. Beautifully crafted. 90 points.

The '04 is available at Heron Hill Vineyards for $24.99 a bottle.

Wine, Women, and Beauty

2008-04-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

Today we look at wine, women, and body image.

Wine and beauty are funny things. Each is "in the eye of the beholder," yet there are standards, and even trends, over time. The standards, for both, have been changing rapidly lately. For the better? For the worse? In wine, that is really a judgment call. But in the beauty of women it is another story all together, for naturally-impossible standards are actually getting destructive.

First, the wine.

I wrote an essay the other day, "Blind Tasting Wine and Blind Hearing Candidates," that started out talking about different tastes in wine, and different target markets. For a very long time there were classics standards of beauty for wine. It was balanced, soft, lean, fruit and earth, tannins and alcohol, all danced elegantly together, sometimes taking turns leading, but never dancing alone.

Many consider the 1945 Bordeaux the vintage of the century. Here is a 1991 Wine Spectator review of the 1945 Mouton-Rothschild:

100 points Wine Spectator: "Wine doesn't get much better than this. From a legendary vintage, this was the best Mouton of the tasting. It started out very minty, but then brown sugar, chocolate, dried plum, tar and cedar notes kicked in to offer a remarkably balanced, complex Bordeaux that was both powerful and elegant. Still full of vitality, with the deep ruby and almost purple color of a much younger wine and enough tannins to last many more years." (05/91)

Wine is really pretty simple at its core. It is grape juice, skins, and yeast excrement. Grapes differ, one from the other, in several ways. The most obvious is the type of grape. But that is only the beginning. There are different strains of each type of grape, some naturally differing from one region to another, others intentionally cloned for certain attributes. Take two graes, two EXACTLY IDENTICAL GRAPES, and grow them in different countries, and you get two different wines. Heck, grow them in two different vineyards, one in a valley and another ona hillsidde 1000 feet away, and you get two different wines. The grape grows differently depending upon the ground (curiously, grapes grow best in poor farmland, needing rocky thin soil that forces the ain root to search deep for water), the weather, temperatures, timing of rain (rain when the berries are ripe causes fungus and can destroy the crop), hail, and perhaps even other plants growing in the area. But the core is the grape. Natural yeast resides on the skin of the grape, which is how they discovered wine in the first place. The skin and seeds conribute tannins, which give great reds their long life and their spine. And there you have it, wine.

But something is happening these days. You see, a fellow named Robert Parker Jr., an American lawyer, and probably the most influental critic about anything ever. He came up with his 100-point system, an inanity that starts, really, at about 75, and scores two different wines 89 or 90, an utterly meaningless distinction that catapaults the latter to huge sales and the former to ignominy. Parker, you see, likes "big" wines, fruit-forward oaky big-tannin high-alcohol wines. Since he came on the scene wines have been "growing," getting more new French oak or American oak with each vintage. A few vintners have fought the good fight, most notably Warren Winiarski, of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, who kept making classic Bordeaux-styled wines even as other American vineyards ued more and more and newer and newer oak.

On the grocery shelves, and on the lower shelves of the liquor stores, the mass producers are following the trend, and using lots of tricks to do so. The high-end vineyards can "Parkerize" their wine with new American and French oak barrels. But oak is expensive. The lower end and mass produced wines use oak planks, or oak chips, or even "oak essence," powdered oak stirred into the mix. They might even add some cherry or other fruit flavors, even though they're not allowed to do so, and you will never see it on the label.

I had a glass of one of those grocery-store over-manipulated "enhanced" wines the other day and it really got me thinking. As a society, we have lost track of elegance, of beauty with any sort of depth or class. Let me show you what I mean.

Beauty. Particularly female beauty. I am old enough to remember when the almost universal answer to the question "who is the most beautiful woman in the world" was "Grace Kelly":

She was, truly, an extraordinary beauty, not just for bone structure, or hair color, or figure, but for who she was, how she carried herself, the extraordinary sophistication and class that elevated her beyond the mere physical. Even in a bathing suit, she was never less than Grace Kelly, even before she was royalty:

A decade later, classic beauty was still a universal truth. Audrey Hepburn was the new face of beauty, and she carried the same extraordinary grace of Grace Kelly before her:

So what is today's ideal? Well, let's just sy it's been "Parkerized" to the extreme:

Just like a fine wine starts and ends with grapes, but can be manipulated with oaks, flavors, and extracts, beauty can be manipulated with the goal of enhancement, but ultimately created an absurdity.

Okay, you might ask, thanks for the wine talk and the prety pictures, but why should I care? Great question.

You should care because when we went from this:

to this:

we lost something good, and gained something bad. We lost the truth of what the world and nature had to give us. We gained an impossible image of beauty, with tragic consequences.

Last month a girl, a young woman, died during breast enlargement surgery. What made a young woman, a cheerleader, popular, well-liked, successful, feel she needed larger breasts? What happened to our image of beauty? When did our children get the message that mere natural beauty was not enough, that "enhancement" was the acceptable baseline?

Breast implants are the new sweet sixteen gift, up 100% in the last four years. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has as policy statement on breast augmentation in teens. Here is an interesting tidbit:

The Food and Drug Administration considers aesthetic breast augmentation for patients less than 18 years of age to be an off label use.

What do they recommend?

Adolescent candidates for (purely) aesthetic breast augmentation should be at least 18 years of age. Breast augmentation that is done for aesthetic reasons is best delayed until the patient has sufficient emotional and physical maturity to make an informed decision based on an understanding of the factors involved in this procedure. This includes being realistic about the surgery, expected outcome and possible additional surgeries.

Will that matter? Will teens still flock to plastic surgeons, more every year, trying to meet an impossible standard of beauty? I have not even attempted to go into the absurd standards of height and weight, in a day when the ideal size is a negative number. That I will have to save for another diary, when I write about some of the thinner summer quafs.

And now, a pair of wine reviews. Two different pinots, one naturally wonderful and the other, the more trendy one, well,

Merry Edwards Russian River Pinot Noir 2005
This was terrific. The nose was intriguing, evolving for an hour from opening. Red berries were there, but so was sage, then the sage went away and cinnamon joined the party, followed by dill. It was soft and very inviting, quite hard to just smell for a while and not drink. First impression on the palate was soft smoothness, mouth-filling buttery in texture. Very ripe cherries, some strawberry, cinnamon, and butter were all there. Tannins were soft and smooth. Finish kept going utnil I ruined it with the wine to follow. This is a terrific, elegant, sedate pinot.

Kosta Browne Sonoma Pinot Noir 2005
Just how hard are they working at this one? It was barely recognizable as pinot, with creme broulet and vanilla overpowering the nose. There was not a hint of fruit there. The palate, too, was overworked, with oak, vanilla, and pie crust so strong fruit was nowhere to be found. This was a truly "Parkerized" pinot, an intentionally "huge" wine that completely lost track of what it was.

Wine - blind tasting wine and blind hearing candidates

2008-04-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today we look at wine, labels, and personal filters.

Today's entry was provoked by a book called The Wine Trials, discussed in the New York Times in Eric Asimov's The Pour, and again (and better) at Fermentation. The basis of The Wine Trials is a study finding that people preferred cheap wines to expensive ones in blind tastings. But, Asimov asks, what does that mean? Does it mean the best wine is really the cheapest, or that the expensive labels gave upon quality have been riding on name alone for years? Or does it mean the cheaper wines are aimed at a different audience than the more expensive ones? As Asimov points out, a room full of random volunteers might prefer "Porky's" to Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," but does that make it a better movie?

Less expensive wines do, perhaps, cater to a different audience. Oenophiles, aka "wine snobs" to many, recognize these right out of the box, or sometimes even bottle - huge fruit, huge oak (sometimes you can just taste the oak powder, thrown into huge stainless steel vats to imitate oak barrell aging), vanilla, and sugar. These are things added to mass-market wines. Is that bad? Not if you like huge fruit, huge oak, vanilla and sugar. You will never mistake it for a first growth Bordeaux, but it is clearly what the grocery-store-bottle-of-wine clientelle is looking for and getting.

But that does not explain why the taste tests are different when people see the label. If they like the big manipulated wines better blind, why don't they say so with the bag gone? Do the label and price really change perception? Or are people too embarrassed to say they really don't "know" enough about wine to be "good" judges of the product? The obvious answer is the latter, but I think a lot of the former is there, too. There can be little doubt people change what they think of something depending upon their existing perception of it. "Is that a really 'good' (i.e. 'expensive') wine? Then that musty taste must be the RIGHT taste, right?"

This phenomenon is no more obvious than in today's political environment. Are you an Obama supporter? Or do you prefer Clinton? Is John McCain what we need to keep America strong? How would feel about what they say if you didn't know who said it? Does the label change what we hear?

Yes. It does.

The big kerfuffle this week is Obama's statement at a private fundraiser in San Francisco. The keyword, the one you've heard even if you don't follow it all, is "bitter." Obama supporters applaud the statement, proclaiming their candidate's honesty and bravery, his willingness to speak unvarnished truth. Clinton supporters think it was a naive thing to say, not so much for the content but for the naivette it demonstrates as a candidate, describing it as a fatal remark guaranteed to hand the Presidence to McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. McCain supporters see it a third way, going straight to the comment itself and say Obama hates "real Americans." So who's right?

Here's what he said. I am reproducing more than you usually see, because (a) I want the whole context, and (b) the first paragraph includes another statement just as potentially explosive, and only now getting some attention:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Those were his words. Theoretically, they speak for themselves. Why, then, are so many people interpreting them in so many different ways? Let's start with Obama himself. They're his words. He gets the first shot:

What Sen. Obama said is that over the last 25-30 years, working class people in places like Pennsylvania have been falling behind, and that politicians in Washington haven’t been looking out for them. He also said that, as a result, many people have become frustrated, angry and even bitter about all the broken promises.

He was right.

The politicians who are now saying that we shouldn’t be frustrated are the ones who are out of touch.

Is that really what he said? If you listen to his supporters, absolutely. Take quick trip to Daily Kos, the biggest Democratic blog on the internet, and you will find "Robert Reich on Bitterness and the Press" on the front page. You will also find Recommended Diaries (the most popular reader contributions, promoted by the blog readers) including Sen. Obama: "Who's In Touch?" and Obama says "Shame on her" in brilliant response!. Other recent reader diaries include Why Bittergate is completely made up, Thomas Frank "WTMW Kansas": People are bitter in small town, and Religion, Guns, and Bitterness, among others.

The front paged diary quoted Robert Reich on the issue of bitterness, and its use for political gain:

Are Americans who have been left behind frustrated? Of course. And their frustrations, their anger and, yes, sometimes their bitterness, have been used since then -- by demagogues, by nationalists and xenophobes, by radical conservatives, by political nuts and fanatical fruitcakes – to blame immigrants and foreign traders, to blame blacks and the poor, to blame "liberal elites," to blame anyone and anything.

What is their read on what Obama said? Basically, it's "hell yes people are bitter, and they have a right to be." The economy is passing these people from closed-down manufacturing towns down, and they have plenty to be bitter about. Not only that, they argue, but also anybody who says they should NOT be bitter is really the one who doesn't understand the working class.

But was that really the problem? Was it all about the word "bitter"? Not according to Clinton or her followers. Let's look at how she responded to the story:

"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who face hard times are bitter," Clinton said during a campaign event in Philadelphia. "Well that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania. I meet people who are resilient, optimist positive who are rolling up their sleeves."

"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights hard for your future, your jobs, your families."

Senator Evan Bayh, a Clinton supporter, had this to say on how the statement might hurt the Party in November:

The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidate, whether it’s Al Gore or John Kerry. And I’m afraid this is the kind of fodder they might use to really harm him with.

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack added:

I found his remarks undercutting his message of hope … he suggests that somehow the faith of those who live in small towns is superficial. I think it’s difficult for a Democratic candidate to be successful in a general election if he misreads and misunderstands people who live in small communities.

They don't seem to be focusing so much on the "bitter" as the "clinging to ... religion" as the flub. Clinton herself laid out just that message yesterday, saying:

The Democratic party has been unfortunately viewed by many people over the last decades as being elitist and out of touch we have waged elections over that you don’t have to think too far to remember that good men running for president were viewed as being elitist and out of touch with the values and the lives of millions of Americans. So I think this is a very significant concern that people have expressed. You know the front page of the paper today in Scranton is very pointed and the mayor and mayors across Pennsylvanian and people across our country have all reacted.

That's what Clinton's campaign is saying. What are her supporters saying? To find that out, we need to dive back into the liberal blogosphere, this time to MyDD. Recommended diaries there include Looks like this story's got legs..., Sen. Obama must be feeling down today..., and Why would anyone be offended?. That last one probably does the best job of going to the heart of the issue for Clinton supporters, as it is based entirely upon the potential political effect of the speech:

Here's why people are offended.

1. It's not the usage of "bitter."

If Obama had stated that voters were bitter about the state of the economy, no one would have blinked an eye. It's not the most flattering way to say that someone's angry, but it would have been an innocuous poor turning of phrase.

The controversial and insulting part of his speech is the part where he says that bitterness is the reason small town voters in Pennsylvania "cling" to their religion, guns, and anti-immigrant/anti-trade sentiments. That trivializes some of the most deeply held convictions of these people as mere inevitable peripherals of poverty, a condition itself which isn't exactly a flattering attribution to a large diverse voting block (non-urban Pennsylvania/Ohio/America).

It also addressed the argument that Obama's statement was true, made so often at Daily Kos. Once again, the focus was the political effect:

2. It doesn't matter if what he said was arguably "true."
It is inappropriate to say something disparaging and then blithely defend it solely on the basis of its truth.

Example 1:

"You're really fat because you eat so many carbs."

"Say what!?"

"But it's true. I mean it can be scientifically and medically proven. You're over 650 pounds and if you ate less pasta, you would store less energy."

Example 2:

"Black people are impoverished so they cling to crime."

"WHAT!?" [outrage, and rightfully so]

"But it's true. It's in all the sociology texts, justice system statistics, etc. It's not their fault though; it's just the poor socioeconomic conditions to which America and its government has abandoned them." (See a parallel? a la "I didn't insult you, I just stated [what I consider] to be a socioeconomic fact.")

The Clinton summary? Obama's statement was politically stupid, injurious to the Democratic Party's ability to win in November. Nominate Obama, they say, and the Republicans will beat him over the head with "clinging to religion" every day between now and Election Day. Also inherent in that argument is that the "Reagan Democrats," the people Obama supporters think he brings 'back to the fold,' will stay Republican in droves in response to the comment.

How about McCain? What did he and his followers hear? This was the first reaction:

McCain's campaign also criticized the comment Friday. "It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," said Steve Schmidt, a senior advisor to McCain. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

The McCain camp also responded to Obama's follow-up, noting that it focused on "bitter," rather than "clinging to," and calling it "spin":

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, issued a similar response.

“Instead of apologizing to small town Americans for dismissing their values, Barack Obama arrogantly tried to spin his way out of his outrageous San Francisco remarks,” Mr. Bounds said, adding: “You can’t be more out of touch than that.”

McCain himself said:

"I think those comments are elitist,” he said, referring to Obama's comment
that some small-town voters are bitter over the economy and, because of that, they "cling to guns and religion."

“I think anybody who disparages people who are hardworking honest dedicated people who have cherished the Second Amendment and the right to hunt and their culture that they value and they’ve grown up with sometimes in the case of generations and saying that’s because they are unhappy with their economic conditions,” McCain told an audience of reporters at the Associated Press Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

So how are McCain's supporters responding to the whole kerfuffle? To find that out, we need to take a hard right turn in the blogosphere, to places like Red States, where two front page diaries announce Voters Disagree With Obama's Comments Demeaning Small Town America and Watch For The Bait and Switch. The first diary suggests, based upon a Rasmussen poll, the comment will be more injurious during the general election than the primary. The second makes the same observation as the Clinton campaign, that Obama is trying to shift the focus from "cling to ... religion" to "bitter:"

The switch here (see the video above) is to say that the issue is whether or not people are frustrated over the economy. Um, no, that's not it at all. The issue is Obama's characterization of the reaction of people in small-town Pennsylvania to those circumstances - the fact that he (1) equated religion and guns with bad things people believe in only because they are frustrated, (2) suggested that people in places like central PA are racists, (3) suggesting that people in places like central PA don't know what's good for them and that their beliefs are artifacts of their economic circumstances and (4) implied, by this litany, that he himself doesn't believe in things like religion and, amusingly, anti-trade sentiment, even though he has made both out to be key themes of his campaign and even though he has lately been pretending at outreach to gun owners.

It is no surprise that the politicians and their campaigns are spinning the words to their benefit. That is what they do. What I am curious about is why their supporters, active, involved individuals, could all listen to the same words and get entirely different meanings. Sure, some of them are advocates and you need to take what they say with a grain of salt. But most of them are not. Most of them genuinely believe what they heard is actually what was said. To believe otherwise is to believe on Obama supporters are honest and everybody else is lying. Or is that Clinton supporters are honest, or may McCain supporters?

A better conclusion is that people hear candidates like they taste wine - the label isn't everything, but it means one hell of a lot. If they know they're drinking a Lafitte, or a Petrus, by damn they're going to find a way to like it, and if they see it coming out of a box the sneer begins before the first sniff.

So what are we supposed to take from this? I'll give you my opinion. We should all get off our high horses, our utter confidence that "I" know what he said and what he meant, and "YOU" don't. Or even worse, "I" know what he said and what he meant, and "YOU" are lying. Good wine tastings are done blind. If only politics could be done the same way.

Today's wine tasting note:

2006 La Crema Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast

Clear light garnet color. The smell was fruity, mostly tart cherries and strawberry, with nary a hint of earth. A little hot, the alchohol was obvious The taste started tart cherries and strawberries, too, but slowly added a bit of sage and the tiniest hint of mushrooms. Not a soft wine, it was fresh and acidic. The finish, like so many moderately priced pinots, was black tea tannic. The finish was short, still tart and acidic. This is a very typical new world Pinot, a good food wine but nothing that will make you say "Wow!"

What Would Jesus Drink?

2008-04-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today we look at wine, religion, and politics.

Alabama Baptists sniff noses at wine trail

Alabama has all sorts of tourist trails — there's one for civil rights, another for birds and yet another for old churches. The newest one was introduced Tuesday to promote the state's wineries, but Baptists aren't joining in the toast.

...

A Baptist leader in neighboring Chilton County said his group opposed plans for a winery there and doesn't like the idea of luring tourists to his home turf or anywhere else in Alabama to imbibe.

"We are on record as being opposed to any kind of alcohol-related industry," said the Rev. Robert Griffin, moderator of the Chilton Baptist Association and pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Clanton. "I would support visiting old, historic churches, but as far as visiting wineries..."

This was not religion commanding the actions of its own adherents, like when the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging the exclusion of Southern Baptists who drink from election to the convention’s boards, committees and entities. No, this was religion telling OTHER people what they were allowed to do, and doing it through government action.

Four years ago, Athens, Alabama, passed an ordinance permitting the sale of beer and wine for the first time since Prohibition. It was a tremendous success, bringing restaurants and other businesses to town.

Since legal alcohol sales began in 2004, Athens has seen an influx of restaurants — those selling alcohol and those that do not — as well as other retail businesses. Where previously downtown Athens drew only home-cooking-style restaurants and delis that served only lunch, it will have three new restaurants this year — including Giovanni’s, Oasis and LuVici’s.

That sounds great, doesn't it? So how did some of Athen's citizens respond? How do you think they responded. Three years later alcohol was back on the ballot, and church leaders were asking members to pray and fast in support of a ban.. They lost. But to me, what is important is that they even tried.

What's the big deal, you might say, about a little restaurant in a little Alabama town? Not much. But what about when Wal*Mart gets involved? THEN is it a big deal?

Wal*Mart is based in a dry county in Arkansas. However, as it moves from dry goods to grocery, from superstore to Sam's Club, it finds more and more of its profits come from the sale of yeast excrement. And it also finds itself going head-to-head with its customer base.

Wal-Mart has financed dozens of local elections, contributing from $5,000 to $20,000 a campaign, said Tim Reeves of Beverage Election Specialists, which supports local alcohol referendums.

...

Attempts by Wal-Mart and others to allow alcohol sales in other places that remain dry — 415 counties in the South and in Kansas still prohibit such sales — are meeting fierce resistance from some church groups and religious leaders. They argue that returning to the days when liquor flowed will mean more family violence, under-age drinking, drunken driving and a general moral decay in the community.

"Hey man, this is about religion. How dare you?" Is that what you're asking? Isn't this about people's perception of morality, of sin? Isn't that really up to them and their local political decision-making? It might say "yes," if it wasn't all a bunch of hypocritical hooey. You see, for every law, there is a way around it.

"You can't have a restaurant with a liquor license," the law says, "but you can have a private club":

Two more liquor licenses have been approved for Faulkner County restaurants.

La Huerta Mexican restaurant, 1052 Harrison Suite 8 in Conway, was approved for a private club permit this week, according to Kathy Gibson, document examiner for the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. She said the ABC received 888 signatures in support of the permit and no objections.

He said he believes he will receive the actual permit on Nov. 25 or 26, and he thinks he will be ready to start serving by that time. He plans to serve margaritas and beer. Gusano's Chicago-Style Pizzeria also received approval conditional upon health department approval for the restaurant to open.

Sometimes I think hypocrisy is America's true religion.

Alcohol is not the only are where religion flexes its political muscle. In fact, it is probably one of the least innocuous areas of all. It is merely, for the purposes of this blog, the gateway, the introduction to the concept. And mind you, please, the problem is not religion itself. The problem, at least from my point of view, is when you think YOUR religion should control what happens in MY life, when you think the book you read on Sunday should be the same book the courts read Monday through Friday.

In 1979 Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority. Its goal, much like the goal of people who would deny alcohol sales (actually, the same people), was never the morality of its own people. That was always presumed to be true, even if it didn't actually play out that way ( Ted Haggard, anybody?). No, their goal was to control the actions of OTHERS, to censor the media, to outlaw abortion and homosexuality, to promote their own view of the world. The "Moral Majority" is credited by many with Reagan's victories in 1980 and 1984. After that, it seemed to have lost its steam. But it came roaring back under a different name, the Christian Coalition, in the 1990s, this time under Pat Robertson, a former Presidential candidate. Many believe we can thank them for George W. Bush's victory in 2000.

Thanks a lot, people.

Okay, enough politics. Now let's get to the really important question -

WWJD: What would Jesus drink?

One of the most popular stories of the Bible is the Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus turned water into fine wine.

As a wine lover, every time this gospel turns up in the liturgical calendar, I can't help speculating on just what kind of wine Jesus made. ...

As you might expect, many people in Italy make their own wines, and the country is dotted with thousands of small commercial wineries that make wine for local consumption. These are simple but tasty wines to go with every day meals and cost the equivalent of about $2 or $3 a liter. They are meant to be consumed as soon as they are bottled, and have absolutely no aging potential.

...

Back in the time of Christ, the wines most likely were similar in style because they were made in "wineries" that were simply a series of large, open-air pits carved out of stone. ...

The wine Jesus made also would have been red, but it would have had the characteristics of one of the best vintages. I think a key factor was that because He made wine on the spot it was fresh and had lively fruit flavors, which would have really set it apart from the normally oxidized plonk of the day. But it would not have been too far removed from what was "normal" for that time and region so that it wouldn't have seemed foreign and strange to the guests.

...

I don't think Jesus would have made something resembling our new world wines. It might have approximated a nice Cotes du Rhone wine such as the one I am drinking as I write this. But I would love to hear other theories on this topic.

Go read the whole thing. It's a terrific piece, and even speculates on what the Anti-Christ might do if he gets his hands on a bottle of wine. The horrors are unimagineable.

Cheers!

Turning wine into fuel, and other sins

2008-04-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

"If my grandfather could taste what I'm turning into alcohol, he'd turn over in his grave."

The combination of a glut in wine and increased oil prices have led grape growers, and even genuine wine producers, to start turning better and better grades of wine into ethanol. In 2005, French producers turned enough wine to make 133 million bottles into fuel. And the trend continues.

There is so much surplus wine in Europe that the European Union is holding it in vast multi-million gallon wine "lakes." In 2007 it auctioned off 18 million gallons for ethanol production.

Australia, too, is looking to get in on the action, hoping to turn some of its wine into ethanol (though recent droughts, discussed at some length here, might change that).

Good, right? Well, maybe not. The whole purpose is to prop up wine prices, not to create biofuel. It turns out not only that wine is an incredibly expensive and inefficient biofuel, but that biofuel itself might have some hidden problems that were not adequately considered. Not big problems, just little things like crippling inflation and actual starvation.

Let's start this look by giving a well-deserved shout-out to the California wine growers, who had the good sense to look at the whole concept. It takes about 10 gallons of wine to make a gallon of ethanol. Add to that the cost to process it, to transport it, etc., and the need to keep its price competitive with oil (even at $100/bbl), and it becomes cost-prohibitive. It makes more sense, if you can't sell your grapes for wine, to pull them up and grow something else. The only reason Europe is doing it is to subsidize their wine growers.

What else happens, though, when you start making ethanol out of other agricultural products, the ones people actually eat, and the ones that are not in a glut? In particular, what happens when the government subsidizes such production for political reasons, not economic or environmental ones? Let's see, shall we?

Ethanol can be made from lots of different sources. The two big ones these days are corn and sugar. Environmentally, they are simply not competitive. Corn ethanol offers a 0-3% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Sugar ethanol offers a 50-70% reduction in the same gasses. Guess which one the United States government subsidizes? If you guessed "corn" you win. Here's another one. Guess which one the United States government hits with a $0.53/gallon import tariff? Yup, sugar. But why?

Have you ever heard the phrase "Big Sugar"? If you haven't, you should Google it. It is one of the most powerful lobbies in the country, controlled by a tiny handful of companies.

Biofuels are contributing to inflation and hunger world-wide. Have you bought a bagel lately? Did you notice how much more it cost than last year? Bakers are paying three times what they paid year ago for flour. Why? Part of the increase is the increased cost of oil, with increased transportation costs. But a bigger part is the move on agricultural land from food production to biofuel production.

Start with a basic food-fact, calories. A calorie is a description of energy calculated in heat:

Any of several approximately equal units of heat, each measured as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C from a standard initial temperature, especially from 3.98°C, 14.5°C, or 19.5°C, at 1 atmosphere pressure.

That energy can be used to fuel a car or to fuel a body. How do they correlate?

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.

The UN says:

"People are simply being priced out of food markets. . . . We have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach."

Thirty percent of this year's grain harvest in the United States will go ethanol production. Ten percent will go in Europe. Additionally, the drive to increase biofuel production is leading to increased clearing in the Brazilian rain forest. In Mexico, the bread staple, the tortilla, has doubled in price this year, entirely from diversion of corn from food to biofuel. Wheat prices in Pakistan have doubled. Developing countries find themselves competing with cars and trucks for the very staple of life, bread.

But wait, there's more. You see, increased corn ethanol production is predicted in increase the Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone":

What is the conclusion? Drink more wine. And on that note, today's Wine Tasting Note:

1997 Chateau Gloria St. Julien

Color was medium garnet but slightly cloudy. The scent was very floral, with violet and lilacs, along wtih black fruit and a whiff of nutmeg. Blackcurrants and violets start the palate, followed by black raspberries and then soft tannins. It finished with a hint of bloody meat and black fruit. This was a little thin on the mouth feel, almost watered down. Finish was medium-long.

On the second night this was still floral, with a little unsweetened cocoa joining the blackberries on the nose. The palate still had the same blackberries and violets, but some leather, unsweetened cocoa and hints of tar were there, too. Finish was still medium-long, and the tannins softer.

If you have this, drink it now. It is good, not great, but it's not going to get any better.

The internet is changing the world, one bottle at a time

2008-04-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

What can wine tell us about the world? Plenty, it turns out. It is one of civilization's oldest products. At one time it was a necessity, when food was served rotten and water was where you washed and evacuated. Now it is enjoying a resurgence. It is an agricultural product, and a unique one. You see, vineyards have kept records of temperature, yield, and ripeness-dates for centuries, giving us incredibly precise records that tell us reams about the global environment. It is also a luxury item, particularly at the top end. As such, its sale and purchase can tell us volumes about the global economy.

Today we look at how modern technology is changing the way people sell, and the way people buy.

Hat tip to Fermentation, a Wine Blog for the initial story, and inspiration, for this diary.

The internet is doing more than changing the way we buy things. Sure, it's convenient to do our holiday shopping at home, no crowds, no parking, and no sales tax (shhhh! don't tell anybody, that part's a secret). But it is more, far more, than that. The internet gives us access to goods we would never otherwise see. It also gives producers, small producers, who would otherwise never get off the ground, a chance to reach consumers. Wine is the perfect example of this trend. It is a luxury product, fills a unique niche, and allows small producers and sellers to carefully target potential customers. And specialty wine, a subset of wine itself, allows even more careful focus. A tiny little vineyard might not have a chance in the brick and mortar world, forced to sell its grapes to a larger consortium for lack of ability to market its own wine, to make relationships with wholesalers and shippers, and get off the ground. But with the internet, it is possible.

Israeli Wine Direct is a new niche website. When people think "Kosher wine" they think syruppy Concord Grape wine. Kosher wines have come miles, and many of the very good ones (truth be told, there are not yet great ones) come from Israel. Israel itself has a growing wine-making business, but many producers are small, not yet able to maintain an international presence. Israeli Wine Direct travels the Israeli wineries and offers the wines through its own wine club. This would simply not be possible in the old brick and mortar days. Sure, mail order existed, but how would you even hear about it? Now, emailing blogs, cross-posting, and a little cheap internet advertising, and you're in business.

Winemonger does the same thing for Austrian wines. Did you know Austria makes some great white wines? Not many other people do, either. Not just that, but if you did know, the chances of walking into your favorite wine store and finding one are about the same as finding a '61 Latour in good shape on the bottom shelf of the bargain bit. Winemonger, though, gives those Austrian wineries access to American markets, and American consumers access to Austrian wines.

Truly Fine Wines provides the same access to micro-vineyards and their products in Germany, the sorts of things you might remember from a trip, but never get your hands on over here.

It's not just foreign wines, either. In 2006 California direct sales increased 33% (the huge jump because of the Supreme Court's Granholm decision). From '06 to '07 it popped another 7%. This is not so much about just wine sales, but sales from little wineries, the kind that make a few hundred or may thousand cases a year, rather than 50,000 or 100,000. These are wineries that used to be vineyards, selling their berries to other wineries, but now have the ability to market their own product. This is great for the consumer, too. Why? Well, these are wines made by the people who grow the grapes, make the wine, and put their name on the label. It is often a labor of love, a family affair, with kids in the vineyards, walking the dogs (trained to sniff out pests or playing in the warehouse. I once called one of these vineyards and had to wait a minute, because the woman who answered was giving her three-year-old a bath. How can you not love that?

The internet is giving small business opportunity they never had before, and consumers new and better choices every day. We have talked about this for years, and seen it once in a while. Today, we see it really working, as we see the world through the bottom of a glass.