• Help Out With a Great Wine Story: Kids & Wine
  Do you parents let your small children, say 4, 5, 6, 7-years old taste wine? Is it a proper, even healthy, thing to do? If you do, is there a fear in the back of your mind that the agents of the state will break down your door and make an example of you?
  (tags: wine family children parents)

History, it is said, teaches us that when times are hard, people don’t particularly choose to drink less. Often, we drink more. Factor in our desire to celebrate the good times with the alcoholic beverage of our choice, and it’s easy to see why beer, wine, and spirits appear recession-proof: there’s always a good market for booze.

Image source: about.com

One can always measure our current global mood just by glancing at the market charts. These days, those charts display a distinct downward slant, and the floor to falling stock prices hasn’t yet revealed itself. Nearly everywhere, people and institutions are lamenting their various economic adversities just as loudly as when they were consumed, in the recent past, by irrational exuberance. Which, we can easily suppose, is one of the main fuels for our current so-called recession in the first place.

But must our collective human mood be extraordinarily high or low to, in the aggregate, cause us to reach for that bottle? Is economic depression a result of collective human depression?

While not a definitive answer, I think we experience a cyclical mindset in America, a collective emotional oscillation if you will. We largely look toward alcoholic beverages as refuge or reward rather than as a daily ritual with meals. We find bad excuses for our alcohol consumption rather than good reasons. Certainly wine in America has not enjoyed an association with food and family as is the tradition in countries where wine consumption has played a part in people’s daily lives for centuries. Here in the States, alcohol consumption is still more of an escape from our travails – whether affectedly joyous or otherwise – than an everyday toast to our well-being.

Certainly there are other voices speaking about how wine plays a part in everyday life – or how it could in America. I’m heartened that others feel our relationship with wine would be so much more mature in this nation if we had grown up drinking it at the dinner table with our parents. I cannot improve on this point, as I did not grow up in such an atypical environment for the times, but it is easy for me to suggest that as we continue to embrace it in our American culture, wine might just become the glue that will hold our families together during tough times as well as kindle our joy when times are good.

Why? Because I suspect that we can, if we choose, talk about wine with our kids. Let’s choose to pour them a little with dinner under the auspices of our care and supervision. Let’s choose to facilitate respect for wine (and other alcoholic beverages) and therefore act responsibly about it. If we do these things, we will dispel wine’s mystery: our children will no longer view alcohol as something taboo to later binge on or take solace in, and the incidence of disastrous consequences due to excess and misguided consumption habits will, over time, decrease at all age levels.

When government spending of our tax dollars is earmarked toward applying cures to society’s ills rather than preventing its problems, then we have a long way to go compared to societies that have made wine part of their everyday culture.* If we could build enough critical mass here in America to solidify this notion of family wine acceptance enough to overturn our bluenose laws, then I assert that the potential knitting together of families that follows could theoretically result in reduced government bail-outs.

Over time, that is. After all, cultures do not change overnight. People have to want to forsake apathy; they have to want to make a change. As with many things, I believe positive change starts with family habits.

Yes, I know: it’s a stretch. And I’m no trained theorist. Nevertheless, I could probably contribute more about this topic, but I feel it will be better served by two-way dialog. Therefore, here’s your chance to weigh in – on your own blog, if not here in comments to this post. So, folks:

Do you find yourself agreeing with my assertions? Or am I just an idealistic Yankee who’s totally off his nut?

There’s not much written about the subject of wine, families, and American culture, so if you’re inclined to glean more from this topic, I invite you to read an excellent post written recently by Dr. Debs titled Teaching Your Children About Wine. You might even check out Dr. Vino’s recent poll, OMG The stock market is crashing! Recession is nigh! Whither wine?

~winehiker

*If you are aware of any statistics that support or contradict this statement, please share!

This new year seems to be roaring out of the starting gate! With all that’s been going on in my life since the first of January, I’m finding myself hard-pressed to keep up with the blogging here on Winehiker Witiculture. California Wine Hikes, now in its third season, is booking tours at its fastest rate thus far. My day job as a technical writer is keeping me hopping like a one-legged Lindy dancer. And I have speaking engagements lined up for this quarter.

I also need to get out and hike – just to balance the stress I’m feeling – but fitting in a few hours’ hiking has been rather tough to do as well. (It’s dark after work!) Yet hiking is what I’ll be doing this Sunday as I take in a 7-mile loop with friends at Henry Coe State Park.

It’s all rather breathtaking! The real challenge that’s upon me, though, is that in addition to all of the above, I’m moonlighting.

It’s not that I’m hard-pressed for money or that I regularly engage in spending my off-hours staying switched on. On the contrary, when I hear knocking sounds on that Door of Opportunity, I find myself hard-pressed not to listen. This time around, I couldn’t not listen. And it’s because I write this blog that I heard the knocking in the first place.

Naturally I wish I could tell you some of the details about what was behind that Door, but I’m contractually obligated from divulging my client until the job is done – hopefully during the first week of February.

For now, I hope you’ll remain content to know that I am rewriting 40 pages of content for a Napa Valley winery website. I’ll definitely share that website with you next month after my client approves my work.

~winehiker

I wrote last May about a moth that hitched a ride from Australia and subsequently threatened a whole slough of California agricultural crops, including grapevines. As a result, state and federal authorities embarked on a Fall campaign of aerial pheromone spraying in a repeated attempt to thwart the spread of the light brown apple moth.

The larvae of the Light Brown Apple Moth attack numerous horticultural crops in Australia, New Zealand, and now California. It is known to feed on 123 species belonging to 55 different plant families, and attacks nearly all types of fruit crops, ornamentals, vegetables, and greenhouse crops.

Naturally, a lot of people got sick, and exhibited such symptoms as skin, eye, and respiratory irritation. The San Jose Mercury News reported late last week that as many as 300 people in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties:

“complained of feeling short of breath and experiencing sharp stomach pains after the first application of a pheromone spray called CheckMate.”

While CheckMate has been widely used on crops, this was the first time this organophosphate pesticide had been used in heavily-populated areas.

You gotta wonder why. Right?

Spraying efforts were halted in October due to court injunction, but the issue is still -ahem- up in the air. According to the Mercury, an advisory group is working with the state of California and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is expected to announce plans for a pest-eradication campaign later this month. Whatever that means.

Choosing to be the idealist for a moment, I hope to presume that this advisory group will include members (or at least sympathizers) of the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), which advocates sterile moth release and biological controls to combat the infestation of this pesky pest. It’s the only real sensible solution.

~winehiker

Recently Discover Networks contacted me to let me know that my merchant account could now accept the Discover/Novus Card. That was mighty nice of those folks! Up until now, the californiawinehikes.com shopping cart accepted only MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.

To allow my customers to use their Discover cards to book a California Wine Hikes tour, all I had to do was launch my shopping cart admin account, click the Discover checkbox, then add the DiscoverCard icon to the book now feature on my tour pages. Easy peasy!

I also intend to accept the American Express card on the site someday, though at present, I find it a relatively expensive proposition. Hey, I spend a fair share on my business using my American Express card, so do you think they’ll waive the fees and just let me turn it on like Discover Networks did?

Well, one can dream.

I’m dreaming of a day in which we won’t need plastic credit cards to get what we want. Instead we’ll only have to touch the nanochip implants embedded in our temples to wirelessly synchronize with the online shopping carts containing the stuff we want to buy, blink twice, and…

…NO!! Bad dream!! No biscuit!!!

And you thought I was going to pun mercilessly about “Discover”-ing the winehiking experience, didn’t you? Clearly, it’s time for me to go hit the trail.

~winehiker

I learned the other day that my January 8th presentation at Cinnabar Winery’s downtown Saratoga tasting room has been rescheduled. (See my earlier post, The Winehiker Live! at Cinnabar Winery’s tasting room.)

Judging by the correspondence that I regularly receive here at Winehiker Central, the concept of winehiking enjoys broad appeal, so it’s quite possible that the Christmas holidays had an impact on peoples’ ability to attend. Or, perhaps folks were focused on tidying up after a recent major storm. One thing’s for sure: I get a few extra weeks to refine my presentation and make it even more fun than it already is. Want to learn the difference between a coast live oak and poison oak? I will actually show you!

If you’re going to be in the 408 area code, I hope you’ll sign up to visit Cinnabar’s tasting room on the evening of Tuesday, March 11th. You can expect to be roundly entertained by this-here winehiker guy, and taste some pretty good Santa Cruz Mountain wines and cheeses, too. Tickets will go on sale at the Cinnabar Winery website in early February.

~winehiker

Outdoor exercise, good food and wine, and the camaraderie of friends new and old make a California Wine Hikes adventure the extra-special vacation that it is. How do I know? Many good miles, my friend, many great wines, and many satisfied smiles. That’s what’s in store for you on our York Mountain & Edna Valley Hiker’s Paradise tour slated for June 8-12. It’s a tour for ardent hikers and wine lovers alike – one that offers challenging and rewarding hiking and also highlights the best cool-climate wines of the California central coast.

Despite being one of California’s smallest appellations – containing only a half dozen vineyards and just one winery – the history and terroir of York Mountain have earned it a large reputation. Tucked away among the oak-studded eastern slopes of the Santa Lucia Mountains, York Mountain represents one of the more unique grape-growing climates in California. The region, only seven miles from the Pacific Ocean, is significantly cooler and wetter than its downhill neighbor to the east, Paso Robles. Vineyards in the York Mountain appellation are situated at an average of 1,500 feet and benefit from low-vigor soil, steep slopes, long hours of sunshine, and cool coastal breezes. It’s no wonder that some of California’s best Pinot Noir and white Rhone-style wines are produced here.

Across San Luis Obispo County to the south, and exhibiting one of California’s longest growing seasons, the small but fertile Edna Valley offers wines displaying the complex flavors associated with California’s great cool-climate regions. The hilly, east-west orientation of Edna Valley, shadowed by volcanic mountains, makes for a distinct Central Coast microclimate. With black humus and clay-rich soils, cooling Pacific winds, and morning fog cover, Edna Valley is known best for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noir production.

Visiting – and savoring – the winery experience in these two regions might almost seem like plenty to do in five days. But oh! – just wait until you see the view from atop Cerro Alto Peak! At an elevation of 2,624 feet above the Pacific Coast southwest of Paso Robles, Cerro Alto offers an uncompromising 360° view that encompasses a great expanse of the Central California Coast, the Inland Valley, and the Nine Sisters. And that’s just one of three hikes you can enjoy on this grand Central Coast adventure.

If you’re interested in joining California Wine Hikes on this tour, feel free to find out more. But you might want to hurry – spots are already limited, and registration for this late-Spring tour closes on January 25th.

I’ll see you in the Paso Robles wine country!

~winehiker

Image source: Twitter.com

Earlier today, while working on my upcoming presentation, I kept a running tab on my internationally-scattered group of Twitter friends, one of whom, Carol Bancroft of Pour More, realized she hadn’t updated her blogroll* to include a number of her wine-blogging Twitter friends. She offered to add whomever she had heretofore omitted to her list, commenting:

I am not stingy w/ my links. [I'm] all about the camaraderie in 2008

I had just completed some thoughts about camaraderie in my presentation only moments before and therefore couldn’t help but add to the Twitter conversation with a tweet of my own:

The camaraderie amongst us wine blogging brethren and sistren has been the best thing about 2007, in my humble opinion.

Overlooking my propensity to use made-up words, Carol replied that she hoped that camaraderie would continue, and I agreed, adding:

I sense that camaraderie will continue, simply because we want it to. I hope we’ll all find a way to get some face time.

If Twitter didn’t confine each of us Twitter users to a scant 140 characters, I could have added more. The conversation did later cause me to say something that I had been wrestling with for my presentation, but on Twitter, while thinking of one person – Carol – as my audience, it just came to me naturally:

What’s coinky-dinky about this word camaraderie is it’s a big notion within my sense of the experience that lies beyond the vineyard’s edge.

Sometimes it’s not how you say it, it’s just about saying it, period. That’s the sound byte nature of Twitter, the use of which many have dubbed microblogging. The simple fact is, you don’t have to say much to generate discussion, foster thought, or build camaraderie on Twitter. It’s important to note that don’t have to author a blog, either. You just have to want to say something – anything halfway meaningful, to my mind – to deepen relationships already established (via individual blogs, or not) and to develop new friendships alike, all by virtue of responding – albeit loosely – to the question that gets to the very heart of Twitter:

What are you doing?

For this simple reason, Twitter is a powerful web-based community application.** However, Twitter – great as it has become among its many thousands of daily adherents – is still just an online tool, one that I hope will regularly be a way for people to use computers to get themselves away from them. Indeed, some of us – widespread as we are – are already talking about getting together in 2008. Secondarily, some of us are talking about shipping some of our favorite wines to each other in regions where those wines are not in great supply on local shelves.

New year, new tools, new world, surely. But in the interest of camaraderie, there’s nothing more valuable than face time with your friends. It won’t hurt, either, to gain some of that face time on the trail. With a good bottle waiting, of course.

So what do you want to say today?

~winehiker

*Many bloggers feature a list of their favorite blogs. I’ve got a few listed in my blogroll; you can view them by category in the sidebar to your right.
**Check out the California Wine Hikes About Us page, which displays the latest running dialog amongst my collection of wine and hiking Twitter friends.