Ice’s ‘inhumane’ arrest of well-known vineyard manager shakes Oregon wine industry – Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/oregon-vineyard-manager-arrest-ice
#abduction #agriculture

@wineecon our English distributor has worked tirelessly for decades to open a market for Oregon wine. He is finding once-reliable customers turning away US wines on principle. He tries to make the case that they're hurting the wrong people, but the US brand is tarnished.

The wine grape variety Aligoté is mostly associated with the Burgundy region of France (where it's often blended into sparkling Crémant or with cassis as kir). However, 93% of the global Aligoté vineyard is planted outside of France, mainly in Ukraine (incl. Crimea), Moldova, and Romania

Vineyard workers drinking wine in the Chabag Colony in Shabo, Bessarabia (now Ukraine), early 1900s. The Colony of Chabag was founded by Swiss winegrowers from Vevey (Canton Vaud) in 1822. With the invasion of the Red Army in 1944, most settlers of Swiss descent left the colony and returned to Switzerland or settled in Romania or Austria. Today, Shabo still hosts the Shabo Wine Cultural Center (on Swiss street).

Interesting against the background of new tariffs. In 2024, Canada accounted for 34% of U.S. wine export value, followed by the UK (13%), China (7%), Japan (7%), and South Korea (4%).

There is more and more evidence that organic production is under pressure in France. I've heard it on the ground, and now there are more articles like these
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/losing-its-green-whos-to-blame-for-frances-organic-retreat/
and videos like these:
https://youtu.be/2QUVNizzi2s

Ultimately, it is the market that makes these decisions - it can't be forced on them unless the system is heavily subsidised. Mainstream organics, at least in wine production, seems to be a long way off...

#VitiBIo #OrganicViticulture #Viticulture #Wine #France

@SabrosiaVit Terrific post and supporting materials. Here in the 🇺🇸 it's even harder because organic subsidies are 🙄 and the govt won't even let us put organic on the label lest ppl think wine is somehow healthy. So like the video from Benjamin and Emilie points out, to make organics work you have to also produce the wine and sell it; you can't make it if you just sell grapes or sell to a co-op like they do.
Organics is an act of love. Without consumer support it's out of reach for many growers.

Sometimes you see an image so striking that you have to state plainly that there are concentration camps inside the US with kidnapped people in them suffering

@mathowie Bingo.

@simonjwoolf Well done, thank you Simon!

@mathowie
This sounds like a cry for help ?

I had a tasting recently that shocked me by it's hollowness and expense. Are the rich and gullible really in such over-supply? It's amazing how wine seems to create such a yearning to be part of the in-crowd that people will stifle their own judgement to take part.

Very interesting how two broken teeth on a bevel gear can bring bottling to a sudden halt

Robert A. McCabe (American *1934) A caique (traditional, wooden Greek fishing boat) laden with grapes arrives at port at sunset, Katapola, Amorgos, Greece, 1960s. From Robert A. McCabe’s fascinating photo book “Wooden Boats of the Aegean”

If we didn't have wine tastings covid would have had to invent them

I see that Recurrent Ventures, the VC geniuses who fired (checks notes) ** Elaine Chukan Brown** as American Editor at Jancis Robinson.com, have just shuttered Popular Science as a magazine. SMH.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23978042/popular-science-digital-magazine-discontinued

Found this amazing Dyer's Polyphore in front of the winery. Sooooo weirrrrd

"Ohai, this is Windows. You may have noticed that I killed all the long-running jobs that you left going overnight and restarted your computer so that I could inject some AI-flavored bullshit you never asked for into your (*) operating system. You're welcome!!!”

(*) “It's not actually yours, of course. The OS now works for our Marketing Department rather than you. kthxbai.”

#Windows #enshittification

Looks like I'm set for Halloween

Paul Gregutt nails it again 🎯 "Demoting fine wine to its most base function – collectibility – completely denies why the wine existed in the first place."
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulgregutt/p/that-rare-and-collectible-wine-of?r=iw70&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post