The French used to jeer at Americans for the health warnings required on the back labels of American wines and wines imported from other countries. “Zut alors,” they would sneer, “we are adults. We know how to drink wine. It is part of our French culture and heritage. You sissy American worry-warts!”

But ha-ha to you, Pierre, now the French, who are undergoing a national turmoil of political correctness — packages of snack foods in France carry directives to eat more fruit and vegetables — are seeing mandatory warning labels on the back labels of their wines.

Worse, though, far worse — and thanks to the vigilant Tom Wark at Fermentation for pointing this out last Thursday and providing links — is that a county court in Paris recently ruled that a story in the newspaper Le Parisien about Champagne, an editorial piece (not a paid advertisement) that offered recommendations, prices and details about the champagne houses, amounted to a form of advertising. The court said — I’m quoting a story by Oliver Styles on decanter.com for Jan. 10 — that the article “was intended to promote sales of alcoholic beverages in exercising a psychological effect on the reader that incited him or her to buy alcohol.”

A spokesman for the French National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction added, “Any communication in favour of an alcoholic drink, such as a series of articles in favour of Champagne, constitutes advertising and is therefore subject to the public health code.”

The implications of this move on freedom of the press are horrendous. Will newspaper articles about the drug industry and specific medicines have to carry long sidebars about proper dosage and possible side-effects? Will newspaper stories about the automobile industry be required to state: “Buckle Up for Safety: It’s the Law”? Must a piece about the merger of fast-food chains include a box with a black border that describes the dangers of trans-fats and childhood obesity?

And think about this. When you’re served a bottle of wine in a restaurant, the waiter shows you the front of the bottle but not the back. Are we entering a situation in which waiters will be required to display the front label — “Sir, Chateau Le Chien Perdu 2004″ — and then the back label — “And, the obligatory health warning, as authorized by Ordinance 2451.” Or the waiter dribbles a splash in your glass for you to evaluate, leans down and whispers confidentially, “Sir, be sure when you leave the restaurant not to operate any heavy machinery. Fork lifts, drill-presses, you know.” Or perhaps wine lists themselves will have to carry health warnings at the bottom of every page.

And then there are wine blogs. Oh, yes, do you think we will be exempt?

In order to forestall that eventuality — because all things are possible in this world — I will go ahead and provide the warning now:

The BiggerThanYourHead Warning Label

Warning:
1. This blog may incite you to purchase and drink wine, and that wine may taste to good you, leading you to purchase another bottle.
2. The wine that this blog incites you to purchase may match the food in your lunch or dinner so perfectly that you will be transported to a state of complete satisfaction.
3. This blog may inspire you to seek out many different styles and types of wines, leading you to expand your awareness, knowledge and pleasure.
4. Since you’re an adult and already know that drinking too much wine or other alcoholic beverages may result in temporary impairment or, in the case of desperately prolonged consumption, permanent health problems, this blog expects you to drink moderately, to behave yourself and not act like a freakin’ maniac and bring harm to yourself and others.

In the Nov. 15 issue of Wine Enthusiast — “We’re No. 2!” — editor and publisher Adam Strum writes in his editorial that “prices of wine have actually decreased over the past years while quality has definitely improved.”

Is this statement true?

Strum repeats that “prices for wine are going down while quality is increasing across the board.” He continues: “Think about the flavor, mouthfeel and balance of a $10 wine 10 years ago and today. I’ll be glad to answer for you: No comparison. It’s just as true at the $15 and $20 level. You can buy truly excellent, world-class wine now for $20 where 10 years ago that same amount would not have delivered the same quality.”

“The reason for this,” he says, “is competition.”

So, the issue doesn’t seem to be that prices for wine are going down, but that better wine is available in the $10 niche (or $15 or $20). It’s true that if one bottle of wine costs $10 and another costs $50, the average price is $30, while if four bottles of wine cost $10 and one bottle costs $50, the average price is $18. Those figures add up to more cheap wine on the market on average but not decreasing prices for wine in general. Of course Strum is writing in Wine Enthusiast’s “Special Value Issue,” so he has a bit of an ax to grind, and there’s not a thing wrong with that; it’s his magazine, and many terrific inexpensive wines are reviewed in this issue. I mean, I like to discover a great little cheap wine as much as the next person does.

Anyway, I disagree that inexpensive wines are necessarily getting better; some $10 and $11 wines from Australia actually aren’t as good now as they were 10 years ago; the specter of sameness and anonymity has fallen upon them. I do agree that we need to look to Spain, southern Italy and Argentina for the best values in cheap wines.

The truth, however, is that wine prices are going up, despite lots of cheap wine being available. If you’ve been buying wine or writing about wine for 20 years or longer, you know that this is the case. Just over the past decade, vineyard land has gotten more expensive, grapes have gotten more expensive and so have French oak barrels.

Perhaps one winery will serve as an example of the trend.

Morgan Winery was founded in Monterey County in 1982 by Dan Lee, who had made wine for Durney Vineyards and Jekel Vineyards. At first he concentrated on chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and several pinot noirs from Carneros and Monterey. Gradually, Lee turned Morgan into primarily an estate winery with the best wines derived from designated vineyards in what is now the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation. While I have quibbled from time to time about the amount of oak that might influence a particular wine — Lee is generally quite judicious with new oak — or feeling that a wine wasn’t up to the quality of its predecessors, I am usually grateful to try Morgan’s wines for their varietal purity, intensity and integrity.

Let’s look at the prices of a few wines from the Morgan stable for the past 10 years. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the winery but as an illustration of price trends in California.

The suggested retail price of the Morgan Sauvignon Blanc 1998 was $12; for vintage 2006, it’s $16, not a huge increase (33%) but still there.

When Morgan’s Cote du Crow’s Rhone-style blend of syrah and grenache debuted with the 2001 vintage, the wine cost $13; the price of the recently released Cote du Crow’s 2006 is $20, an increase of about 53% over five years. Morgan’s Metallico Chardonnay, which also debuted with the 2001 vintage, was originally priced at $20 and has only gone up to $22 with the 2006 version.

Morgan’s best pinot noirs come from Gary’s Vineyards, Rosella’s Vineyard and the Double L Vineyard. For 2000, their suggested retail prices were $38, $38 and $42 respectively; for 2005, the latest year, they’re all $55. (I’ll admit that I was startled when I saw those price sheets.) Now these wines are produced in very limited quantities, usually no more than 300 or 400 cases. Still over six vintages, they show an increase of 44% for Gary’s and Rosella’s and about 30% for Double L.

I realize that this comparison is not only simple but verges on simplistic. Still in a decade that has seen health-care costs and housing costs soar, it shouldn’t be surprising that it costs more money to make wine, considering the factors of land prices, maintenance, barrels (that damned euro!), marketing, wages and storage.

So, I think that Strum is optimistic when he says that prices are falling and quality is rising. If those conditions do come about, I’ll be first in line to toast to better days.

Let’s see. The United States is mired in ugly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from which it looks as if there is no extricating ourselves. Since Sept, 11, 2001, the federal government has shown itself expert in all manner of lies and subterfuge, while civil liberties are being erased. Millions of Americans are without medical insurance, and millions of Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure. The effects of global warming grow more serious and seem irreversible unless drastic action is taken at every level of society. The gap between rich and poor, between the salaries bestowed on CEOs of companies and what their workers earn, has never been wider or more apparent.

And at this point, in anticipation, no doubt, of the coming Yuletide season, the venerable champagne house of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin chooses to run this banner ad at the bottom of The Arts section of today’s New York Times:

The Yellowboam … is the most precious bottle ever crafted by Veuve Clicquot. This limited and numbered 3 liter edition is entirely handmade from harvest to labeling. For the occasion of its 130th anniversary, the Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label has been recreated using the world’s most precious leathers: ray, ostrich, and alligator. Each bottle is sealed with a foil covered in 22.4 carat gold and topped with a collectible, gold plated muzzle cap.

The edition consists of 3,600 bottles. Prices on the Internet range from about $2,000 to $2,400.

The motto on the ad?

“So Clicquot. So Responsible.”

How about: “So Sick. So Hypocritical”

… but waited until this morning to quaff a glass of the Georges Duboeuf version for 2007. What’s it like? Whataya think? The color is a winsome cranberry-magenta. The bouquet offers notes of strawberry jam, macerated raspberries and currants and whiffs of cinnamon and clove; the typical banana scent is quite subdued. In the mouth, it’s dry but juicy, with flavors of spicy currants and raspberries. It should be served slightly chilled. How so many writers and reviewers recommend the insubstantial Beaujolais Nouveau for the complicated Thanksgiving feast is beyond me, but tastes differ (unfortunately).

The whole Beaujolais-Nouveau-Third-Thursday-of-November phenomenon is certainly a modern marketing triumph. first engineered by Georges Duboeuf in the 1970s. The frenzy, in which jet airliners transport the stuff to far-flung countries so bottles can be opened at the minute after midnight on the third Thursday of November, boggles the mind. I mean, originally Beaujolais Nouveau was a strictly local ritual, a nice way to celebrate the end of harvest in Beaujolais. That it became a worldwide occurrence is amazing; something like 30 percent of the harvest in Beaujolais now goes into Nouveau.

Signs are not good, however, for the continuation of the Beaujolais Nouveau “tradition.” According to The Tocqueville Connection (here), sales of Beaujolais Nouveau in Japan, the world’s largest market — the Japanese have a keen eye for Western fads — will be off by 20 percent in 2007. Sales of Beaujolais Nouveau in Japan peaked in 2004 at 12.5 million cases; in 2006, sales sagged to 11 million cases; this year, sales are expected to sink to 8.4 millions cases. The case amount is expected to fall in the United States, also (though not as much as in Japan), due to the nasty relationship of the wimpy dollar to the conquering euro.

None of this news dampened the spirits of the annual Trophee Lyon-Beaujolais Nouveau (”the only official competition devoted to Beaujolais Nouveau,” and we’ll let that pass without comment), which on Nov. 11, meeting at the Radisson Hotel in Lyon, passed out 10 Grand Gold Medals, 70 Gold Medals and 23 Silver Medals to this year’s producers of Beaujolais Nouveau. Gosh, did they leave anyone out? Honorary chairman of the tasting, appropriately, was Naoki Watanabe, technical director for Suntory.

Meanwhile, go to KoeppelOnWine.com for reviews of 10 Beaujolais wines from 2006 from the Georges Dubouef stable, one Beaujolais-Villages and nine cru wines from villages allowed to put their names on the labels. They’ll make you forget all about Beaujolais Nouveau. These wines are imported into the United States by W.J. Deutsch & Sons, Harrison N.Y.

Image credits: top, cityfood.com; bottom, lefigaro.fr.

Sorry, but I’ve been chortling all week about The Grapes of Galilee (little trademark sign), a line of wines produced in Israel’s Galilee region and intended for the Christian audience, though I would bet that Christians haven’t exactly been waiting around all this time to drink wine for a product that will provide “a physical connection with their spiritual homeland.” (Quoting an email press release that a thoughtful reader passed on to me.) Well, at least not the Roman Catholics and Episcopals and a few Presbyterians. And let’s not forget that at least two other major world religions claim (violently) the geography of Israel as a spiritual homeland.

The Grapes of Galilee (little trademark sign) wines are available in chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and merlot and cost about $14.

The press release goes on: “It was at a wedding in Galilee where, 2,000 years ago, Jesus is said to have turned water into wine.” Is said to? One would think that people either believe that yes, Jesus definitely turned water into wine at the vinously-challenged Wedding at Cana or else the whole thing is urban legend. It’s not as if people are walking around Galilee today saying, “You know, my grandmother said that over there is where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine.” “Getoutahere!”

And it’s not that I’m opposed to exploiting Jesus of Nazareth to market Israeli wine to American Christians (an interesting global concept itself since most wine made in Israel is kosher and is aimed at the American Jewish market.) What is one to say of religion at all when 150 years after Nietzsche declared god dead Morgan Freeman has a franchise playing him in Hollywood movies? No, I’m a firm believer in that bumper sticker you see so frequently: “WWJD.” I mean, “What Would Jesus Drink” is a subject far too rarely addressed in the popular media.

(BTW, for reactions to using the image and idea of Jesus to sell wine, see this page on www.luxist.com, where the posts range from sanctimonious to daffy to downright scary.)

Really, then, what I object to in this press release is lousy history and manipulative language used in bad faith. The email says: “Grown by the Sea of Galilee and watered by the Jordan River, the Grapes of Galilee wines are ideal for celebrations such as wedding receptions and communions, or any festive occasions where Christians seek a physical connection with their spiritual homeland.” The implication is clear: Grapes of Galilee (little trademark sign) wines are special not because they’re particularly good — and they may be sensational for all I know — but because they originate near the sea where Jesus performed miracles and are irrigated by the river whose waters John used to baptize the prophet, according to the New Testament. The owners of the label, the American Adam Haroz and his father Pini H. Haroz, seem specifically to deprecate the truest and best use of wine, at dinner with family and friends in favor of using it only for occasions that carry religious intentions or overtones. Perhaps the garish label is too embarrassing for the domestic dinner table.

Haroz pere et fils take the concept of terroir to zany heights in this incoherent, if not hysteria-tinged, paragraph about The Grapes of Galilee (little trademark sign) from their website (www.haroz.com):

“This series of wines awakens the senses, taking you on a sensual journey from the Sea of Galilee to the slopes of Mount Tabor, characterized by the rare close proximity to chalk, volcanic and Terra Rosa soils and bubbling natural springs form the Jordan River, that supply water to the vineyard. Grown in soil deemed most-suited, each variety of grape milks the land for the best it has to offer, ripening into a dream vintage. Each sip bestows upon the palate a taste of the morning dew, the basalt firmness, the element of chalk, and the red tinted soil, creating a unique ‘taste of Israel’ mosaic of flavors.”

Please, let me taste your morning dew and basalt firmness, as the bride said on the night after her Christian wedding ceremony and joyous reception, lubricated, no doubt, by bottles of The Grapes of Galilee (little trademark sign).

AND, what fries me in addition to this meretricious nonsense, is the way that various print and online media outlets in this country blithely and blandly reproduce the release from which I have quoted and perhaps add a cute comment as if it is their responsibility merely to announce this line of wines without investigating the implications or looking beneath the surface. Business as usual in the wine press. Only Michael Y. Park, on epicurious.com mentions The Grapes of Galilee (blah blah) with a slight smirk: “Double points for anyone who can come up with a joke involving the Grapes of Galilee back office, Jesus Christ, and a garden hose dripping with tap water.” Thanks for that refreshing touch of skepticism, Michael.

A few weeks ago I posted to this blog an entry that parodied the elaborate narratives that some wineries, mainly in Australia and California, print on the back labels if their wines. As if a cute tale about musical monkeys or happy little penguins is going to persuade an intelligent consumer to buy a bottle of wine. It wouldn’t, right?

Someone responded to that blog, quite sensibly, by asking what I would like to see on the back labels. Fair enough.

O.K., here’s the text on the back label of the Morgan Winery Cotes du Crow’s 2005, Monterey County ($20):

2006
55% syrah 45% grenache
Cotes du Crow’s
Monterey

Produced and Bottled by
Morgan Winery Salinas, California
(851) 751-7777 / www.morganwinery.com

And then the prescribed government warnings.

So, who needs anything more than that?

All right, maybe this, on the back label of the Pierre Sparr Reserve Riesling 2004 from Alsace ($12 to $16), after the statement of grape and appellation:

Style: Scents of lime and ripe flavors of apple and quince, with a dense texture underscored by racy acidity. Well-structured, crisp, dry with a pleasant intensity.
Food: Outstanding with seafood, shellfish, veal and pork dishes.

And then the prescribed government warming.

That’s not a bad description of the wine, though I don’t think that it has as much detail or layering as the label suggests (though it’s quite enjoyable), but these segments are, I think, helpful to the consumer as in, here’s what to expect; here’s what to drink the wine with (very generally).

The back labels of European wines tend to be more laconic than the back labels of “New World” wines. The back labels on bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux frequently indicate nothing more than the name of the producer and importer. Europeans take the grown-up approach to wine; either you know where the wine came from and what grapes it’s made of, or you don’t, so just drink the damned thing. Perhaps Americans, not living in a comfortable wine culture, need a little more coddling or at least information.

Mostly, though, the chance to impart basic information turns into an opportunity for marketing. Take this, from the back label of the Septima Malbec 2005, from Argentina’s Mendoza Valley:

Located at the foot of the Andes cordilla, in the prestigious region of Agrelo, Bodega SEPTIMA produces fine wines of great distinction. This dramatic setting of our estate winery produces fine wines rich in flavor and color and will complement any fine meal. Our label features an artist’s rendition of the unique architecture of our winery, built with hand-stacked stones from the Andes mountains.

Aside from the shaky syntax — apparently the winery’s setting will complement any fine meal — this is primarily marketing obfuscation, i.e., the region is “prestigious,” the setting is “dramatic” — as opposed to the crummy “non-dramatic” setting of , say, Pauillac — the wines have “great distinction,” and the facility is made of “hand-stacked stone,” clearly superior, if not cooler, than stones stacked by, say, paws or magic construction elves. The text continues with “Tasting Notes” and a few sentences about “Aging.”

What tries my patience is the strenuous reaching for whimsy, as this, from the back label of the (frankly terrific blockbuster) Earthquake Petite Sirah 2004, Lodi ($22 to $28), by Michael and David Phillips:

Powerful Titan, arms reaching for the sky,
Earthbound devourer, open your eyes!

Hail to the victor, the king without flaw,
Salute your new master … Petite Sirah.

I did not make that up.

… but sometimes I think the scenario in a winery must go like this:

Setting: The staff tasting room at a winery. Gathering of senior winemaker, associate winemakers and assistants and so on, tasting the young wine of the newest vintage. Sniffing, snorting, slurping, pondering and then:

Assistant to the assistant winemaker, young guy, wearing rectangular black glasses frames, a goatee and spiky hair, a black t-shirt: “Whoa, that really sucks!”

Long silence. Unobtrusive coughs, a few discreet throat-clearings.

Associate senior winemaker: “We don’t consider ‘that sucks’ to be a reasonable comment in light of the dedication and years of experience that this venerable institution of a winery AND our senior winemaker merit.”

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Right, dude, sorry, I guess I forgot myself.”

Associate senior winemaker to the senior winemaker: “Sorry, chief, he forgot himself.”

Senior winemaker (everyone genuflects): “No, no, I appreciate the evaluation, youthful though it may be. I was thinking myself that perhaps this sample doesn’t quite reflect the fine heritage of our historic vineyards and institution. How many cases did we make?”

Profound silence. Much meditation, regret, remorse, misplaced hope.

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Uh, chief, we made approximately 548,678 cases of this wine. You know, give or take.”

Senior winemaker: “Whew, that’s a shitload of bad wine. What were we gonna sell this stuff for?”

Associate senior winemaker, snapping fingers: “Price?”

First assistant winemaker: “Um. I believe that this wine was slated for the mid-upper-premium or $15 line-up.”

Senior winemaker: “Well, hell, what’s-a-matter with you boys? Create a new label, put a retail price of $8 on it and we’ll sell the bejesus out of it. Call it, er, Clos de Firefly. You” – pointing to the assistant to the assistant winemaker – “you know anything about fireflies?”

Assistant to the assistant winemaker: “Um, well, I used to collect them in a jar when I was a kid.”

Senior winemaker: “Good enough! Write a back-story for the label. Something cute. Tap into the small-town-nostalgia-chasing-fireflies-in-summer-twilight stuff, you know, the whole Booth Tarkington-Ray Bradbury crock. We can still make a million bucks from this swill. And, hey! who made this frog-gargle anyway? It wasn’t me, was it??!! Ha-ha-ha!!!”

In other words, readers, a few hours ago, on this Sunday, I posted a “Refrigerator Door Wines” page of 12 inexpensive products at KoeppelOnWine, and while some of the wines are terrific examples of their grapes, genre and price, a few left me thinking, “How the hell did these wines get out of the producer’s door?” What were they thinking? The chief culprit? The Crane Lake Sauvignon Blanc 2005, a wine that I used to recommend for people looking for a cheap reliable white to serve at parties and receptions. Not this one, which smells and tastes like a bad blend of riesling and muscat. “Jeeze, F.K.,” you might be saying, “who cares? It’s just a bottle of $6 plonk.” Yes, but the purchaser of a bottle of $6 plonk deserves a clean, well-made, varietally true wine just as much as the person who buys a $60 cabernet.

The best wine of this dozen? The Mirabile Nero d’Avola 2005 from Sicily, at $14 a super-affordable kissing-cousin to an Amarone suited for hearty red meat entrees, like, you know, if you have a haunch of venison in the freezer or a beef brisket. Also don’t miss the Jewel Collection Firma 2004, from Lodi in California, a robust and rustic blend of barbera, sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon and syrah, a real bargain at about $9.

Since former New York Times restaurant reviewer Ruth Reichl took the top editor’s job at Gourmet magazine what now seems like eons ago — the Times is on its second reviewer following her tenure — the venerable magazine for cooks and people who love food and reading about food and cooking and restaurants has evolved into a slick, glossy production that features high-concept color photography, chic typography and giddy, breathless prose for readers with short attention spans, a sort of Cigar Aficionado for foodies. Not that the magazine doesn’t offer interesting stories and great recipes; the January 2007 issue about Italy is a definite keeper.

What bothers me is the magazine’s attitude toward its editorial content. Long gone are the knowledgeable, comprehensive and well-written restaurant reviews, mainly from New York and California, that used to grace the magazine’s front pages. And Gerald Asher, whose thoughtful essays about wine regions and grapes and styles of wine were a monthly highlight of literate good sense, has been reduced to one page of wine recommendations, good recommendations, to be sure, but a task that cannot hope to fulfill his immense talents.

More troubling, though, is the magazine’s deliberate attempt to blur the line between editorial content and advertising. Gourmet increasingly includes in each issue several “Special Advertising Sections” in which the page-formats, typography and photography closely follow the format, typography and photography of “regular” articles. Readers who miss the “Special Advertising Section” notice at the top of each page could easily mistake the ads for editorial copy. Many of the full-page color ads in Gourmet — and these are not necessarily marked “Advertisement” — could pass for the opening pages of a lavishly illustrated article.

Most egregious, however, is a direct link in the November issue — “The Restaurant Issue” — between editorial copy and advertising. Beginning on page 80 is an article titled “The Mouth That Matters,” written by Dab Barber, chef-owner of Blue Hill, the highly regarded restaurant in Manhattan. It’s an amusing account of how the kitchen and dining room staff of the three-week old restaurant dealt with the presence of William Grimes, then the chief dining critic for The New York Times, over several visits. The story is accompanied, of course, by a picture of Barber. O.K., fine.

Not so fine is that a picture of Dan Barber dominates the page on which appear in a prominent place (mid-upper-right) the words “Sustainable Excellence.” The presence of a small Moet & Chandon bottle and logo at the bottom of the page tells us that this contrivance is an advertisement. Yes, that phrase “Special Advertising Section” appears at the top, but the visual and intuitive connection between the Barber’s story and the Moet & Chandon ad is inevitable, and the story itself becomes a form of advertising, the ad an extension of the story

The traditional wall between the business side and the editorial side of journalism began being chipped away at long ago; many newspapers in this country now carry banner advertising on A1, even above the newspaper name. So perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that Gourmet so easily hands its editorial integrity over to the advertising office. O.K., so I’m not surprised. Saddened, though, and disappointed.

Image of Ruth Reichl from brandoneats.typepad.com.

… I don’t pick up a bottle of wine, but so many labels nowadays carry elaborate narratives and back-stories that are supposed to make the wine more “interesting” or “enticing” or “hip” (especially hip) that buying wine is like reading the back of the cereal box at breakfast. I mean, isn’t the idea of marketing the quick sale, rather than bogging down a potential consumer with a chapter of War and Peace (or War + Peace, as it would be today) printed in teeny-weeny type. In the time it takes to read a narrative back-label — and they mainly come from Australia and California — you could pick up three other bottles from the shelf, go to the counter, pay for the wine and be on your merry way. If one of the wines is closed with a screw-cap, you can be standing on the sidewalk outside the store slurping the juice while the poor schmuck inside is still reading the label.

We get something like this, say from the back label of what we’ll call “Capt Jack Mulligan’s Left-Handed Shiraz,” a $16 quaffer from, oh, Barossa Valley. There are a million of these wines, right, inky as midnight, 15.5 percent alcohol, and The Grateful Palate imports most of them.

“Twas a great shark took Capt Jack Mulligan’s right hand in a dawn-to-dusk struggle by the Barrier Reef. Left him with eternal pain and endless thirst, which he slaked with pitchers of red rotgut in North Coast taverns, brought him by the red-lipped wenches who shivered with fear and delight when he ran that wicked hook along their lace bodices. We know these tales because our grandfather sailed with Jack Mulligan when still a lad, and at Capt Jack’s strong left hand the boy learned the lessons of courage and endurance, and our grandfather passed those lesson on to us. We make this wine to honor the tradition of Capt Jack Mulligan and the men like him who look danger in the eye and never flinch. Braving the charge of a Great White Shark? Burying a cow’s horn filled with shit in the vineyard on a scary moonless night when the creepy-crawlies bite? Never fear, Capt Jack is here. Capt Jack Mulligan’s Left-Handed Shiraz. You don’t need two hands to drink it.”

The people who write this kind of copy are wild about tradition and heritage and ancestral pride in the land, the vineyards, the grapes, the mystique, the romance and on and on. Hence — and let’s call this one “Sonoma Vespers Cuvee Orlando Furioso” —

“Three generations ago our grandfather arrived in these rolling verdant hills, unpacked a wad of dollars from his sock, and purchased three rows of vines. By the time our father came along, the name Sonoma Vespers Cuvee Orlando Furioso was synonymous with the forces that have driven our family to the extremities of our questing craft and intelligence: Passion. Precision. Power. That’s what we’re all about. Passion, precision and power give my brothers and me, and our wives and children, and a few cousins and poor Uncle Andy and a lot of Mexicans that come in to pick the grapes, our sense of life and being, and we feed passion, precision and power into our vineyards, our grapes and, above all, our rare, perfectly crafted wines. If you don’t obsess about passion, precision and power as much as we do, if you think anything less than perfection will amount to a hill of beans, then the hell with you. You may be rich enough to buy our wine, but are you good enough to drink it?”

Is there an uglier word that “gastropub”? Yum, I certainly want to eat there. Leave it to the British, heirs to Shakespeare, Milton and P.G. Wodehouse, to invent for categorizing a restaurant a word that sounds like an alien creature that transports itself on its own slime.