With 2011 well upon us, we can first thank God for ending 2010 and pray that this year brings a great growing season and the economic upturn we all need. Before moving on to the wine industry, I need to throw out a couple things that make me wonder where we’ve fallen off the common sense wagon.
First, the local idea of spending several million dollars on a bike and pedestrian freeway overpass borders on lunacy. We don’t have money to piddle away for something that isn’t needed. I’m not an advocate of bicycles anyway, since I really think the bike lanes create more driving problems than they purport to help and, when do we spend this kind of money, it’s for less than 0.5 percent of our population. I also think that bikes, just as cars, should be registered at $100 per year or more, since they don’t get the special treatment we drivers get to donate to the cause through gas taxes.
One last shot at our civilized society: How can we justify spending about half the entire Ag Commissioner’s budget on animal care when children right in our own backyard are homeless and hungry? Let the pet owners foot the bill. Sorry for the digression. I think I’m just getting old.
A breath of fresh air
I mentioned last issue that I think having a breathalyzer in all wine tasting rooms could go a long way in telling society that we in the premium wine industry are truly concerned with moderate consumption. I definitely don’t recommend making it a mandatory test, but I believe it would be a valuable educational tool. This is a bit of speaking with forked tongue, I might add. A couple of our most prestigious large wineries produce several products that don’t quite fit under the heading of “premium.” I say forked tongue, because they purport to be wonderful moderate to high-end producers, but in reality, they make a major amount of “wino” wines—a major profit producer. Some of you may be too young to remember when the term “wino” meant anybody who drank wine. Instead, you conjure up visions of what today would be a homeless person sitting on the curb holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a screwtop in the other. Is it possible that this could be part of the reason for many wine drinkers to eschew screwtops? Memories are really good when we want them to be, aren’t they?
Ignorance is no excuse, or so they say. If we ignore these kinds of products, they won’t go away and will still tarnish our image as an upscale, sophisticated, educated society. For those of you who have extremely short memories and/or live in a tunnel, let me introduce you to today’s image blemishers.
First, all of the so-called “pop” wines are basically categorized as “a cheap drunk,” not that any of us would claim to know anything about such things. Constellation, as well as Foster’s of Australia, is in a race to see who can screw up the premium wine industry the quickest. It’s probably at least one of the top two or three companies that garner a significant portion of its net profit from the infamous Richard’s Wild Irish Rose with several truckloads a day shipped to Washington, D.C., and other nearby locales. Constellation’s other major entry into this field is Cisco—an 18 percent alcohol product (I have trouble calling it wine). It’s frequently referred to as “liquid crack”—whatever that means. Everyone should be familiar with MD 20/20, or “Mad Dog,” as we call this Mogan David product.
Not to be left out of this magic circle, of course, is our very wonderful premium wine company—the small, family owned winery in Modesto, E.&J. Gallo. All California-raised people most certainly won’t forget from our younger days (or maybe for some, current days) the likes of Thunderbird (let’s hear the applause), Night Train (which probably should be called nighty-night), along with Ripple and Boone’s Farm (let’s hear the drum roll). I’m notably out of this whole culture, but I fear these inexpensive, temporary highs have been replaced by other, more dramatic and expensive ones.
The entire wine industry sweeps these products under the rug and totally ignores that they’re included in the legal description of wine, and certainly not overlooked by the do-gooders who want prohibition back. With all of this in mind, it probably wouldn’t be a real good idea to walk up to people with brown paper bags and have them blow into your breathalyzer to prove they should stop drinking.
Now for the rest of us, it would be very educational—and hopefully would add to driving safety—to have a breathalyzer available. With far too many tasting rooms within walking distance of Healdsburg Plaza, it’s very easy to over-indulge and not even realize it. The brisk walk to the next one (about 100 feet probably) might wake you up some, but after 10 tasting stops, you may want to rest for a while. Or, if a breathalyzer were available, you might get a dose of reality.
Our local industry has been extremely lucky in regards to DUIs, but we also need to admit that tasting for the young millennials is a different experience from those of us who have escaped that age group in one piece. Not long ago, tasting was a quiet, serious undertaking in a very quiet atmosphere. Today, there’s a party atmosphere among the youths out for a good time. This isn’t meant to be good or bad, but awareness of one’s alcohol tolerance should be important.
On the humorous side, the other day, one of my friends and I were talking about this topic and he said, “There’s a difference between us and them kids—we’re professional drunks, we can handle it.” It was funny at least at the time, and maybe more truth than poetry.
OK, off to practice my profession. Keep up your homework and buy a bottle of Thunderbird to make you feel young again.
