Notes From the
Vintner
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Welcome
to our column. We hope that you will return to
learn interesting notes on wine, and related
subjects. Wine is a great gift from God to be used
for the enjoyment of man. It is a food, and should
be treated as such. It is meant to lift up the body
and lighten the soul. 5/01/07
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It comes in threes…the bad things and the good things. The secret to surviving is to have more threes of good than threes of bad.
The first was the battle with wholesales in the General Assembly and the law suits filed in the courts against the Arkansas wine laws by people in and out of Arkansas. The end result of the General Assembly was the scraping of most of the Arkansas Native law and new laws put into place which treated us not as we wished. The Governor blocked the law to allow shipping of Arkansas wines, and we are back in that same old rut. A new type of permit is going to be issued called Farm Winery Permits. The laws are very complex, and few yet understand them. Time will tell on this issue.
Then we lost our entire fruit crop this year to a late freeze. Our small vineyard took a heavy hit and the entire crop is gone. There is a question of how the vines will come back after this freeze. This was after all the money was spent to prune, tie, and prepare the vineyard for this season. The new vineyard planted on the new property across the street from the winery is showing some signs of pushing buds…Let us pray that the vines can make a come back…The crop is lost in the vineyards, but we hope that the vines will not be damaged too bad.
The third problem is to find any fruit to make wine out of with our crop lost, because everyone else’s crop is lost too. This means that fruit will have to be found out of state, or you have to live on your inventory. This may lead to higher prices for wine…
So there you have it… THREE BAD THINGS . Now before we look for the good things, let us share three glasses of wine. You first…
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