Word: plonking
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That would be the remains of the Franco-Swiss Winery, built in 1876. By the 1880s, the Franco-Swiss was pumping out more than 100,000 gallons of wine every year - and we're not talking run-of-the-mill plonk. "The quality of grapes produced by it is evidenced by the wines now in the cellar," wrote the St. Helena Star in 1882, "one of which - the Zinfandel Claret - we have rarely seen equaled." Most wine aficionados believe that the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" - the historic blind tasting by French critics who, to their own shock, preferred American entries...
...made with garlic, chili and ginger, or pick up disks of sweetened beef jerky for the ride north. Freshly churned ice cream is available for dessert. And just as the American West has its Californian vineyards, so this vicinity is home to several Thai wineries, which offer up passable plonk...
...owing in part to escalating gas prices, local farmers are demanding financial aid from Paris. But European Union rules limit how much help the French government can extend; Brussels has repeatedly urged growers to cut costs by letting nearly 500,000 acres of land lie fallow and by swapping plonk production for more expensive, higher-quality wine...
...created when the forebrain makes "the best of a bad job in producing even partially coherent dream imagery from the relatively noisy signals" sent up to it from the brain stem at the onset of REM. Their paper served to yank dreaming from the realms of the psychological and plonk it in a dreary, physiological bucket...
...nose in the glass and talk about how woody it smells." Yet as it adjusts, Bordeaux faces an image problem. The top wines in the region command huge prices because of their worldwide prestige, and their makers have no interest in being associated, even remotely, with the down-market plonk some merchants are now cooking up. But producers in the middle aren't happy, either; they worry that the massive price increases pushed through by the likes of Château Pontet-Canet will give Bordeaux a reputation among ordinary consumers for being unaffordable. "What does it do to Bordeaux...