Leaky Buckets, Rain and New Alcohol Legislation in Ireland

August the First. Technically it's now Autumn 2008. Seeing as it's raining outside just about as much as it was last summer ie yesterday, I can confidently predict a rainy start to the Fall.

Let's talk about the Big Fall in Ireland right now. Our economy has been leaking buckets for most of 2008. We all know that if a bucket leaks it either has to be filled up again or it empties. Ours is emptying.

I never had any faith in our leading politicos who took all the credit for the good times when they never seemed to have anything to show that they were in control. Year on year their budget estimates were out on both income and expenditure by billions! They tell us that times are hard now and we will all have to work harder to make it better. I say if they were in control on the way up they would know what to do on the way down. It's all a bit like it's our fault they have no money to spend..

Last night we had a Bill published into law governing the sale and use of alcohol in Ireland. A golden opportunity wasted. Vested interests have successfully lobbied the Minister and he watered the original Bill down.

Rather than moving forward with legislation which would have forced education re alcohol onto sales staff and the public alike we STILL have a situation where a nineteen year old is allowed to sell as much as he likes to an eighteen year old with no training whatsoever!

Rather than moving forward with legislation which would have forced super markets and forecourt stores to keep alcohol separate from other grocery items we STILL have the situation where vodka for instance can be sold beside the sweet counter!

Ah, but the Guards now have the right to confiscate alcohol when they perceive a threat to common society. Let me be the first to say that this will never happen in the private home where a wife has been beaten by a pugilistic husband; let me be the first to say this will never happen at a society wedding where the next step after getting tanked up is to race cars down the road after hours before shooting coke in the nightclubs. No, this will be used to clear out cider parties around campfires and to victimise poor old drunks standing at our street corners. This will be used as a sort of social cleansing tool and will have nothing really to do with alcohol abuse in the wider society.

Am I cynical? Absolutely. Anyone who can produce a leaky bucket economy such as ours shouldn't be allowed near anything as fragile, as sensitive or as important as the use and misuse of alcohol in society. Tears and rain have a lot in common. We have them both in buckets in Ireland. Now we don't have anyone who knows what to do about the holes in the buckets.

TechnoWines: Myth, Fantasy or Filling our Shelves Already?

TechnoWines. It's a great sound bite. Say it once and it can't be put back into the bottle! It doesn't really mean anything but it does sound disparaging.

"God, that tastes a bit technowine like, man".

"I know what you mean, dude. TechnoWine."

Poor wine maker. All he was trying to do was to make a better wine.

It's been a while since I visited a winery that didn't have something gadgety in it. Do they exist any longer? So what's wrong with calling a wine by its true colours?......TechnoWine....TechnoWine....

Not too long ago the wine trade on this side of the world was introduced to a new lexicon of wine words. These were based on an Australian, and to an extent a Californian, approach to wine making.

Science and Technology combined to clean up vineyards and wineries; to take the mystery out of wine making and to 'make better wines'.

I came in to the trade a few years before most of this took hold. So we needed Masters of Wine to tell us what a Flying Wine Maker was. (We were disappointed with the answer!) We held our breath when it was reported that stainless steel had been seen at Yquem. Hang Time warmed our crotches and cold soaking sounded like a therapy reserved for a commune somewhere up in the hills.

This new scientific understanding of what happens to grape must during the wine making process allowed new styles of wine to develop. It allowed vineyards to flourish where they had never been planted before. It brought the wine world forward at a pace undreamed of even in the nineteen seventies.

TechnoWine. Sure, it's all Techno driven. What then is the problem? Why do we still want to pretend that some wines are 'made' and some are manufactured?

Well, I suppose it's because we haven't been completely taken in. We seem to instinctively know that wine is supposed to be more natural than it is techy and that some wines are a lot less natural than they ought to be. In other words, 'show me the wine that has been 'manufactured'; I'll kick it off the team'.

We also seem to want to preserve an image of the wine trade where barrels age gracefully in small dusty cellars; where Francoise cycles to work with his beret intact and where bargains can be found hidden under stairwells. Just like our reliance on the sound of a natural cork being popped!

Screwcaps, nomacorks and plastic closures sum up the debate to date. We are at a crossroads. We are a long way from our destination. Before we arrive (if we ever do!) we will learn a whole new lexicon of wine words.

These will embrace both the old and the new; the unscientific and the scientific; green issues and climate altered vines; styles unheard of today -who would have thought of a Rose Port only a few years ago! - and voices in the wilderness crying out to be heard.

I tried Mateus Rose Shiraz last week for the first time. It's a style I wouldn't want my daughter to bring home - a bit sugary and flippant - but its well made. It does everything that Mateus has done well for a long time now. I hope they continue to keep going into the future.

I tried Jacobs Creek Shiraz Grenache again recently. It's a fab little number. We won't have a trade in the future without wines like these. They are the engine room. We won't have a trade tomorrow without them! They're techybabbies. Techno wine anybody?

Actually, if its possible I'd like mine organic, bio dynamic or at the very least based on a sustainable agriculture. I'd further like mine to have been made in a winery where additives are used sparingly or not at all and where the wine maker has privately signed up to the Kyoto Protocol; reads all the latest journals; travels to, and learns from, other winemakers and who nods to his dad whenever he offers him advice; I want my winemaker to ignore anything that sounds like he's going back into the past. I want my wine to taste like it is going forward.

OK then. Bring on the techies!