Quotulatiousness

February 24, 2011

Ontario’s wine industry: stupid from 2007?

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Michael Pinkus has more than a couple of bones to pick with Ontario wineries:

This is what I wrote while sitting at my table just minutes after my Cuvee pre-tasting:
“Here I sit tasting the wines from the fruit of the labour of Ontario winemakers for the 2011 Cuvee media pre-tasting … It is here we taste what the competition organizers and judges have deemed the best. Actually let’s get more specific, before us is one wine from each winery that entered the competition and we are told “These wines represent each participating winery’s top scoring wine from the Cuvee judging held in January”. In other words these are the top scoring wines from each individual winery’s submission … 62 wines in total. [. . . A few] were fantastic, well made wines worthy of their price (especially the Pelham which was an absolute steal at $24.95). But then there were others, whom I will not mention here by name but instead by price: a $45 Reserve Cabernet Franc, a $45 Cab-Merlot, a $55 Red Blend, a $40 Reserve Franc and a $35 Red Blend, that should all be ashamed of themselves for unleashing sub-par quality at astronomical prices. I’m talking about sub-par wines at above par prices for what the consumer is getting. This is not just about hurting the individual winery’s reputation but also, as one colleague pointed out to me, Ontario’s reputation as a whole. It’s time to stop trying to get all your money back at one shot — this is a long term investment people, and a tough one at that.

[. . .]

I was prepared to post that on the blog and just walk away (in effect, putting my own head in the sand) letting the chips fall where they may, but then it started to eat at me more and more. I want to keep writing about his industry, but what can I say? The final straw happened two days later at the bi-weekly media LCBO Vintages tasting and I have to admit to you I was appalled by a few of the Ontario wines being offered. I hopped on the train back home and found myself thinking about both tastings and penned the following:

I have been gentle on some of you over the years but seriously if these wines represent the best Ontario has to offer, give me a break. If the wines I tried at the Cuvee preview are some of the best wines wineries have to offer, then some wineries are in BIG trouble: (what was with that nasty-ass Merlot Icewine?). Don’t care what they submit: (a flat, flabby, bland Sauvignon Blanc, is that really what your winery does best?). Have given up: (a Gewurzt that has no Gewurzt characteristic to it what-so-ever). Are not paying attention: (a fume blanc so heavy handed on the fume that there was no fruit at all). And are just wasting grapes: (a poor excuse for an ’07 made with Franc and Sauv, an ’07!!!).

Two days later, at the LCBO Vintages tasting (for the March 19, 2011 release) I had to pull out my best conspiracy-theory to explain some of the Ontario wines we sampled. I know full well that the LCBO isn’t trying to be helpful to the Ontario wine industry, but never did I think they would stoop to this level: the tasting included a lackluster Sauvignon Blanc and a horrible Red Blend (you know who you are) … I suggest to you that the LCBO takes some of these atrocious wines to make Ontario look bad … advertise a red, from a good vintage like 2005, for under $15, and people will buy it, sip on it and just as quickly spit it out, vowing never to buy Ontario wines again. Thanks for nothing LCBO.

I’m not saying they do that with every Ontario wine (case in point: Cave Spring Cellars 2009 Estate Gewurztraminer), but I think they throw in a ringer every-so-often just to screw with their major competition, the wineries. Am I just paranoid? Well find out for yourself, buy each and every Ontario wine that comes thru Vintages and you tell me they are in the caliber claimed by the Board’s Vintages website: “the fine wine and premium spirits business unit of the LCBO. Our experts shop the world for fine wine and premium spirits of exceptional value.” Now, not every wine is to everybody’s taste you’ll say — true — but some of those wines the board tries to pawn off as “fine” are only fine for salad purposes and that’s all. I don’t buy this argument. As they say on ESPN NFL Football broadcasts, “C’mon Man”, this just ain’t happening.

Sturgeon’s Law claims that “Ninety percent of everything is crap”, and that applies to wine just as much as it does to novels. A big difference for wine is that even the crap is far better than it was just ten years ago. Nowadays, a crap wine is merely boring, not undrinkable as they once were. But that being said, Michael’s comments are worth paying heed — Ontario’s wine industry has problems galore from nature (cool climate wine production but a customer base accustomed to imported hot climate wines), legal obstacles (Ontario still treats wineries as if they produce radioactive waste, not wine), and the normal exigencies of competition: there’s no need to compound these problems with avoidable ones like poor quality control or (as Michael suggests) contempt for their customers.

The truth about software licenses

Filed under: Humour, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:53

Dilbert.com

They’re called “factoids”, not “facts”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

There’s a factoid in common circulation at the moment that, measured by SAT scores, the states that ban collective bargaining for teachers rank almost dead last, while Wisconsin ranks 2nd. Neal McCluskey explains that this is not particularly true:

Now, aside from the factoid, if true, providing no real insight into whether collective bargaining is good or bad for education — there are myriad variables at work other than collective bargaining, none of which does this control for — but the factoid itself is highly dubious. Again, it is hard to find the original source for this, but I looked up 2009 ACT and SAT state rankings, and at the very least it seems highly unlikely that Virginia ranks 44th out of all states. According to the ACT ranking, for instance, Virginia places 22nd, and on the SAT (assuming the linked to list is accurate — I’m doing this fast), it ranked 33rd. It’s hard to see how those would be combined for a 44th place overall finish.

How about the Wisconsin second place-finish? Well, that is accurate for the SAT, but notably only 5 percent of Wisconsin students took the SAT — a negligible rate. On the ACT, which is the main test taken in the Badger State, Wisconsin finished 13th — not bad, but hardly great.

So what does this tell you? Not that collective bargaining is educationally good or bad — like I said, you just can’t get there from here — but that you have to be very careful about your sources of information. Unfortunately, that seems especially true when you’re dealing with education.

UK’s largest off-grid housing development

Filed under: Britain, Environment — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:37

If you’re really a fan of alternative energy, you might want to keep an eye on this new development in Brighton:

The six apartment buildings, to be built at the mouth of Shoreham port near Brighton, will be linked by wind turbines, and their southern face will be tiled in solar thermal and photovoltaics panels.

Batteries will be charged during the day in order to keep the lights on at night, and the apartments themselves will be heavily insulated in order to keep power use as low as possible.

But resident behaviour will also play a key role, says the developer, Colin Brace of Bohogreen, who has worked on previous low-carbon projects. “We can’t tell people that you only have so much power, and no more. But there are studies showing that if you give people renewable energy they think, oh good, it’s free, and their energy use actually goes up. So an important aspect of the project will be to educate people about their energy use.

“The apartments will be designed to encourage communal living as much as possible,” says Brace, “rather than having everyone in their own rooms using their own sources of power.” There will also be LED lights on the wind turbines which light up red, amber and green to show which block is using power most heavily, in order to foster “a healthy sense of competition between residents to keep their power use low”.

I wouldn’t want to live in a development where the neighbours are pre-selected for their “greener than thou” attitudes, frankly. The LED lights of shame would probably encourage more neighbour nosiness into the lives of the other residents.

Of course, all that healthy greenery comes at a slight premium to ordinary housing:

The apartments in Portzed will be up to 22% more expensive than an “on-grid” development, due to the extra costs of installing high-spec insulation and renewables. At current market rates, that could add £20-24,000 to the final price of a two-bedroom flat. The developers believe however that there is a high demand for this kind of home due to their rarity. The financing for the project is already in place and the project is expected to be financial viable.

The core of the Irish financial crisis

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:13

Theodore Dalrymple explains the underlying reason for Ireland’s financial woes:

If you want to study the economic crisis of the last few years, go to Ireland, where you will find it in its purest form. Ireland is a small country, with a population of just 4.4 million, and the connection between clientelistic politics, bankers’ cupidity, and the mass psychology of bubble markets is easiest to comprehend there.

Dotted around the country, outside of almost every town and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, are housing estates — completed, half-completed, and never-to-be-completed — which are unsaleable, will almost certainly never be inhabited, and are destined to fall into graceless ruins. Some 300,000 new dwellings now stand empty in the Irish Republic, a number whose equivalent in the United States would be approximately 21 million.

[. . .]

A house in Shrewsbury Road, Dublin, sold for $80 million in 2005 but, now standing empty, is on the way to dereliction, and no house on the road — a millionaires’ row — has sold for the last two years, despite a fall in prices of at least 66 percent. During the boom, taxi drivers and shop assistants would tell you about the third or fourth house they had bought — on borrowed money, of course — and of their apartments in Europe, from Malaga to Budapest to the Black Sea Coast of Bulgaria. It was not so much a boom as a gold rush, or a modern reenactment of the Tulipomania.

Wisconsin’s proposed labour laws not uncommon

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:07

To read all the huffing and puffing, you might get the impression that if the proposed labour law changes be enacted, Wisconsin public workers would be uniquely disenfranchised. As Josh Barro points out, however, that’s not very accurate:

The truth, as laid out in a GAO report from 2002, is that there are already 12 states with no public employee collective bargaining law at all. In these states, state workers have no right to collective bargaining; local employees have collective bargaining only if local elected officials choose to grant it. (And in a few states, notably Virginia and North Carolina, state law forbids localities to allow collective bargaining.) Another 12 states grant collective bargaining rights only to certain classes of employees, such as only state workers or only teachers. Only 26 states have a collective bargaining law covering nearly all public workers.

So that means that the model from which Walker proposes to break, much to the horror and outrage of public worker unions and their backers, is a model only actually followed by 25 other states. And indeed, by retaining limited bargaining rights for most workers (and fuller rights for a few classes, including police and firefighters) Walker is going less far in restricting public-sector collective bargaining than a substantial number of states already do.

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

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