{"id":153,"date":"2009-01-20T08:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T08:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2009-01-20T08:56:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T08:56:00","slug":"beating-around-the-bushes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=153","title":{"rendered":"Beating around the Bushes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t vote for Obama. Nor did I vote for McCain. It should come as little surprise that Your West Coast Oenophile, the founder of\u00a0Sostevinobile<\/span>, the first wine bar dedicated to local, sustainable wines, is a card-carrying member of the Green Party. Besides, that insipid institution known as the Electoral College renders my vote virtually meaningless in any Presidential election, so I followed my conscience and wrote in Al Gore.<\/span>
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Despite what yesterday\u2019s posting might seem to imply, this blog is not meant to harbor any political bias. Wine, after all, is meant to be one of life\u2019s great equalizers. That said, it should be noted that, for the past four elections, the road to the Republican nomination has gone through me<\/span>. Think this is hubris on my part? Hardly! Dole, Bush, McCain\u2014each has a first cousin with whom I have been friends. Has there been a more common thread? Aspirants for 2012, take heed!<\/span><\/div>\n
Boasts of connectivity allows me to segue into another story, of how I tried to leverage my first foray into producing my own wine label off the elder President Bush. On the morning of Nov. 9, 1988, the day immediately following the election,\u00a0I woke up with a spurt of inspiration, the genesis of which still eludes me. Nonetheless, the first words I uttered in post-election semi-stupor were \u201cGeorge Herbert Walker Blush<\/span>!\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
It did sound good, I have to admit. A rather deft slogan, \u201cA Kinder, Gentler Wine<\/span>,\u201d quickly came to mind (even Orson<\/span>\u00a0Welles\u2019\u00a0\u201cWe will sell no wine before its time\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0was not this incisive). Next came a name for our label, which continued in the vein of gentle parody: Thousand Points of Light Wine<\/span>s<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Through my aforementioned connections to certain members of the Bush family, I was able to send off a proposal to the American Bicentennial Presidential Inaugural Committee<\/a><\/span> that we donate a considerable number of cases to the Jan. 20, 1989 festivities in Washington, DC. All that remained was the incidental matter of actually bottling the wine.<\/span><\/div>\n
In 1988, the late comedian Pat Paulsen<\/a><\/span> had a winery up in Asti, CA. In fact, he owned the entire town of Asti and had proclaimed himself mayor. For those who remember his inexorable campaign, Pat Paulsen for President, this turned out to be the only government office he ever held. A better fit for Thousand Points of Light<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Wines could not be found, particularly in view of the fact that Pat had been divorced twice that year and was in serious need of a revenue-producing venture.<\/span><\/div>\n
With Pat on board, I managed to source a commitment of some 500,000 gallons of n\u00e9gotiant White Zinfandel from San Martin Winery. Keep in mind that the wine we had elected to produce was to be called George Herbert Walker Blush<\/span>\u2014not exactly a Stags Leap<\/a><\/span> Cabernet or even a Rosato di Sangiovese, but a rather pedestrian (albeit serviceable) <\/span>entrant on par with some of Ceres<\/a><\/span>\u2019 finer vintages. We titrated and tasted in the San Martin lab until we had just the right balance. I whipped up a label in white Aachen Bold lettering, with a Yale Blue background framing a picture of the White House highlighted with gold foil trim. The scintillating copy of my piquant back label did not miss a single beat.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Naturally, the final hurdle proved fatal. We were felled not by opposition from the incoming administration nor the objections of the Bush family (whom I\u2019m told really enjoyed the idea)<\/span>, but the low-level apparatchiks dwelling somewhere in the basement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. When\u00a0The Wine Institute<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0tried to submit our label for approval, it was swiftly rejected, based on ATF\u2019s interpretation of Title 27, Part 4, Subpart D, \u00a74.39, Section (a)(6) of the United States Code of Federal Regulations<\/span>, which addresses prohibited Practices in the Labeling Requirements for Wine. The section in question disallows:.<\/span><\/div>\n

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A trade or brand name that is the name of any living individual of public prominence, or existing private or public organization, or is a name that is in simulation or is an abbreviation thereof, or any graphic, pictorial, or emblematic representation of such individual or organization, if the use of such name or representation is likely falsely to lead the consumer to believe<\/span> that the product has been endorsed, made, or used by, or produced for, or under the supervision of, or in accordance with the specifications of, such individual or organization.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, to this day, I contend that not even a quasi-intelligent person could reasonably assume that the President of the United States had any connection to our wine (note my disclaimer on back)<\/span>, but try telling that to a Washington bureaucrat. Sure, if Bobby Koch<\/a><\/span> had been CEO of The Wine Institute\u00a0twenty years ago, we certainly could have rammed the approval through the ATF, but back then he wasn\u2019t even married to George W.\u2019s sister Doro. Chances are, had we chosen to fight their ruling, we\u2019d still be litigating today.<\/span><\/div>\n
And so, the only bottle of George Herbert Walker Blush\u2014A Kinder, Gentler Wine<\/span> <\/span>ever made sits perched atop my bookshelf. Tales of my subsequent venture with Pat Paulsen will take up a later installment of this blog. For now, this day belongs to the Punahou Kid<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and whether you consider him the most ill-prepared President to take office since, say, George W. Bush, or whether he portends to become the most inspirational President to take office since, say, George W. Bush, we all need him to do extraordinarily well with the formidable task he has lying ahead.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t vote for Obama. Nor did I vote for McCain. It should come as little surprise that Your West Coast Oenophile, the founder of\u00a0Sostevinobile, the first wine bar dedicated to local, sustainable wines, is a card-carrying member of the Green Party. Besides, that insipid institution known as the Electoral College renders my vote virtually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}