• What makes a quality wine list? San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonne has a thoughtful piece up about restaurants that don't do enough to make their wine lists relevant. "What set off a real debate," he wrote, "was when I suggested that the biggest failure of ambition lies in lists populated with supermarket brands -- meaning mass-market wines you can easily find on a shelf -- as well as some well-worn labels that represent the prior generation of wine drinking." This is a subject that comes up often around here, given how the Wine Curmudgeon feels about the minimal effort that so many restaurants make with their wine list. What's especially interesting is that Bonne isn't taking chains to task; he is criticizing some of the best restaurants in one of the best restaurant towns in the U.S.
• Raising alcohol taxes: Cash-strapped states have been trying to find a way to raise booze taxes, some of which haven't gone up in decades. Resistance has been fierce, not only from the various and powerful liquor lobbies, but from consumers. We don't, obviously, want to pay more for a bottle of wine. But, asks the Los Angeles Times, what if raising taxes made the world a healthier place to live and saved lives? "Adjusting those taxes to account for the inflation that has taken place since Ronald Reagan's first term in the White House would not only make alcohol more expensive; it would also prevent between 600 and 800 deaths per year, according to the July 23 study by researchers from the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville." This is a powerful argument, though I don't see it as something that state legislators will bring up. "My honored colleagues, we must raise taxes to save lives." Can't you hear the hooting from the audience?
• Russia bans Moldovan wine: Talk about curmudgeonly. Russia has banned shipments of Moldovan wine for quality and health reasons, and one Russian official said the wine was so bad that "it should be used to paint fences." No doubt there are other, not-wine-related issues going on here, given that Moldova used to be part of the Soviet Union, and the Russians have been throwing their weight around in regards to their former property (be it invading Georgia or cutting off natural gas shipments to the Ukraine). Because that's an especially harsh thing to say since the Russians have had their own wine quality problems and fraud problems.
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