Word: wining
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...vintner is the winery's wizard, responsible for deciding what grapes to plant where, when to harvest, how long to age a wine and in what kind of container. The names and reputations of California's star vintners are as well known to oenophiles as those of celebrity chefs are to ardent foodies. Sometimes their comings and goings provide rich material for gossip. Five days before the start of this year's harvest, Lake County's ambitious Kendall- Jackson Vineyard hired away John Hawley, the chief vintner at Sonoma's Clos du Bois. That was the sneaky equivalent...
...worst. The vintners feel besieged by a burgeoning neo-prohibitionist movement that seeks not to ban alcohol but to surround its sale with crippling restrictions. Many winemakers thought it unhappily symbolic that the Oakland Athletics, playing in a stadium less than 40 miles from the state's leading wine county, celebrated their American League championship win with foaming bottles of carbonated cider. League president Bobby Brown thought it unseemly that role-model athletes should be seen on national TV swigging champagne...
...Robert Mondavi, California's winemakers have banded together to promote table wine as a liquid form of food and as "the beverage of moderation." Yet the industry remains on the defensive, in part because some major members have divided loyalties. Despite its increased production of varietals, E. & J. Gallo, the nation's largest wine producer by far, earns considerable profit from Thunderbird, a cheap, fortified beverage that winos call "sneaky pete." And some corporate proprietors of prestigious wineries -- such as Britain's Grand Metropolitan or Hiram Walker, which owns Clos du Bois -- have major investments in hard liquor...
With his customary common sense, Thomas Jefferson in 1791 applauded a congressional bill that subjected liquor, but not American-made wines, to an excise tax. "It is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich," he wrote. "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey." Jefferson, alas, failed miserably to convert fellow citizens to his favorite beverage. Americans last year drank 23.5 gal. of beer and 26.6 gal. of coffee per capita but only 2.1 gal. of wine...
That standing is unlikely to increase soon. Starting Jan. 1, vintners must cope with an increase in the federal excise tax on table wine from 17 cents to $1.07 per gal., which may add 50 cents to the retail price of a standard (750- ml) bottle of wine. Pessimists in the industry predict that the increase could reduce wine consumption by 12% and lead to the loss of 7,000 jobs. The tax hike comes at a time when many growers are also worried about phylloxera, a mite-size plant louse that is gnawing away at vines, primarily in Napa...