I Was Going to Make a Joke about Orange Wine, But That Would Be Inappropriate

So how was your week?

Yep. Same.

For those of you who haven’t seen the news in a few days, smoke from wildfires in Quebec has poured down the U.S. East Coast, resulting in some of the worst air quality numbers of all time. Here’s what the past 24 hours in my town have looked like. These aren’t colors you want to see outside of a wine vintage chart.

Great news, we stopped being hazardous and are merely slightly unhealthy!

The best thing to do has been to stay inside. Especially on Wednesday, I found I couldn’t really go out without wearing a mask. What does that remind you of? It felt like it was spring of 2020 all over again, and all the anxiety came right back with it.

I can’t help wondering if we’ll experience smoke taint in the Northeast like California has with their wildfires. It sounds like it would be more of a problem if there was more fruit on the vines, and our growing season should be in its early days. And it’s only the smoke passing through our way, not actual fires. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

In other good news, the painful swollen eyelid I’ve been dealing with since Tuesday isn’t due to all the crap in the air. It’s just a normal stye or something like that. It just hurts like hell for non-lethal air reasons!

Anyway… what else is going on?

Man uses baby stroller to steal thousands of dollars worth of wine and champagne, Lincoln Police say

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - The Lincoln Police Department arrested a man last week after they claim he used a baby stroller to steal $3,615 worth of wine and champagne from a liquor store….

…After reviewing security camera video, the employee told police he saw a man placing seven bottles of liquor in a baby stroller before leaving the store.

Police said the man returned the following day and stole two more bottles of wine…

Wow! That’s an average of just over $400 per bottle! Yer man definitely must have done his homework.

From Forbes: 1,700 Bottles Of World’s First Arctic Aged Wine Salvaged From Bottom Of The Ocean

…The bottles were sealed in a special wax fitting and sent to a depth of just over 100 feet for six months worth of aging. Water temperatures here, near the Arctic Circle, regularly approach zero degrees centigrade. In order to make sure that what they pulled back up was worth the effort, Hurtigruten enlisted Nikolai Haram Svorte—Norway’s top-rated sommelier—to test it out…

Well, that’s one way to protect your wine from smoke taint: age it at the bottom of the ocean!

And finally, want to show off your love of both wine and music? Treat yourself to a Paoletti guitar, made from wood reclaimed from used wine barrels!

…“It ranges in age from 80 to 150 years old,” Filippo tell[s] us. “In many wineries, the life of a wine barrel is a cycle. So after, maybe, eight to 10 years it is no longer any good for wine making, so it’s replaced, and we give them a new life. So the supply is, I’d say, endless. But it’s absolutely not free from the wineries – they want a lot of money for the barrels….

Take a breath (if you can), relax, and let’s try this again next week.