Monopole

A vineyard owned entirely by one domaine or estate. The term is used in Burgundy (where monopoles are rare) and to a lesser extent in Champagne.

Corkscrews were first used for guns.

Answer: True.

In the fifteenth century, the progenitors of wine corkscrews were corkscrews used as gun cleaning tools. By the 18th century, wine corkscrews were expensive implements, owned by the upper classes and intended only for expensive wines since only expensive wines were bottled with corks driven flush with the top of the neck of the bottle. It wasn’t until well into the nineteenth century, with the growth of the middle class and the growing prevalence of bottled wine, that the corkscrew became a common tool among large numbers of the populace in wine drinking countries.

As we near the end of 2022, I want to pause and reflect on this excerpt from a sobering piece written by Ted Lemon, owner and winemaker of the California winery Littorai. The article was written more than three years ago. Has much changed?

“Sustainability, by its very name, implies maintaining a system that has become untenable. The argument for sustainability systems remains built on the idea of the magic pot. Sustainability is a tired term from the late 20^th century of which we should be ashamed. Sustain what? The path we are on? If climate change tells us anything, it should certainly put to death the idea that there is a global or local stasis worth sustaining. A newer buzz word is re-generative agriculture. This, too, is an illusion. We have wrought such change on our planet that there is not a person alive, nor will there be for many generations to come, who will witness the ‘regeneration’ of the natural world as it existed a few hundred years ago.”

Ted Lemon, Littorai

Monopole

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