Grasping at Windmills

Asymmetric warfare is on in California’s wine country. She’s this place everybody wants a piece of. Sweet to drink, fine to sleep with and when you’re done owning her you’ll flip her and move on down the line.

That’s life tangled in the vines. No broad brushing the truth here. The developers masquerading in denim overalls have it figured out. Pull that violin out and play the sentimental heart tugging tune.

Big Agriculture’s the bully and you will dance to their tune. I said dance, and lift your feet a little higher when I say dance. The wine making isn’t the thing it’s the incessant expansion. The valley is built out. That deal is done. What about the hillsides? That games on.

Most American’s don’t have the money to play. International billionaires can come and take a piece of it. Trophy property is so tedious to maintain. How many times can someone eat at the French Laundry?

The environmentalist is a tenderhearted patsy going up against a cold calculating developer who eats obstacles in their way with a crack of the back of their lawyers hand. The goodie two shoes haven’t a chance.

I was in France last month. We were in the Languedoc-Roussillon. We visited O’ Vineyards outside of Carcassonne. No traffic, no crowds, no run up in real estate prices. Tasted some reds I’d drink again. The winemaker was a good man. He was making a heroic effort to bring quality. Toiling in obscurity searching for poetry in the sunlight. Bravo

Everybody wants a piece of Napa. They want her. They need her. They must have her. This isn’t going to end pretty. Ask our salmon and steelhead? They’re extinct… in just the last ten years. It was a good run for five million of them, but what the hell we have a crush to get out. You are so not getting it man. Environmentalists are so low energy…