More Americans discovering Portugal as a vacation destination

Portuguese tourism office brings, "Portuguese experience 2014" to US travel agents in Boston, NYC, Washinton D and Miami

http://travelworldnews.com/2014/03/17/portuguese-tourism-office-launches-new-events-travel-agents/

Is the US at a "let them eat cake" moment? Luxury Wine and Hungry Children in one of the worlds wealthiest nations.

I love wine.  I sell wine for a living.  It pays my bills and buys my kids shoes.  But this is ridiculous.  Today in things that disgust me, according to wine-searcher.com, since being awarded a 100 point score by Robert Parker in the October edition of the Wine Advocate, "A bottle of 2010 Screaming Eagle, described as “utter perfection” by (Robert)Parker has risen from an average price of $1913 in October (all prices ex. sales tax) to $2797 in March, a cool 46 percent increase in six months."   This as a new study finds that the US is ranked 34th, 34th!!!, in child poverty out of 35 developed countries.   Its us and Romania bringing up the rear.  Yes, people are paying nearly $3000 dollars for a single bottle of wine as an effort to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9/hour stalls out in the US Congress.   Glad to know that the rise in child poverty is keeping apace with the rise in the price of a luxury cult cabernet from California.  

Says Max Fisher of the Washington Post on the United Nations Children's Fund Study, "The poor U.S. showing in this data may reflect growing income inequality. According to one metric of inequality, a statistical measurement called the gini coefficient, the U.S. economy is one of the most unequal in the developed world. This would explain why the United States, on child poverty, is ranked between Bulgaria and Romania, though Americans are on average six times richer than Bulgarians and Romanians."

Robert Parker also announced a new magazine that will be called 100 Points by Robert Parker, aimed at the jet-set, for "high net-worth individuals and corporate leaders."    I have a few things I would like to aim at the jet-set myself(like acerbic aphorisms, settle down revolutionaries.)

When the recession hit, people were walking around for a while with a WW2 mentality.  Your belt (if you still had one) would be tightened.  It was bad form to throw money around when so many were suffering.   There were lots of articles decrying personal jets and champagne tastings.  And whats more, it wasn't really fun to drop a couple thousand on your wine cellar after watching your net worth dip so significantly.  

When the modern day Rockefellers began to operate in the shadows,  stepping in with cash to gobble up your foreclosed on homes and bankrupt companies, the job they finally offered you back-twice the work for half the pay, felt like a blessing.   Fast forward to our so called "slow recovery," the jet engine propulsion of our rapidly dividing classes blasting the very wealthy into the stratosphere and the middle and working classes into an economic free fall.    The very wealthy make no apologies.  They are unabashedly living their 100 Point lives, far above us all.

Pretty soon the only thing farther apart than a wealthy and a poor American, will be our image of ourselves as Americans and our 34th place finish American reality.



Map: How 35 countries compare on child poverty(The US is 34th)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-how-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/

100 Parker Points Give Screaming Eagle Prices Wings
http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2014/04/100-parker-points-give-screaming-eagle-prices-wings

Parker Launches Luxury Lifestyle Mag
http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2014/03/parker-launches-luxury-lifestyle-mag

50 Greats-wildly different take from Joe Roberts

For a wildly different take on the 50 Great Portuguese Wines by Joshua Greene, check out Joe Roberts account on his 1Wine dude Blog-complete with audio of Greene's decision making process.  In a "Sliding Doors" sized difference in experience, Joe Roberts' shares his impressions from the fancy lunch presentation hosted by Greene and Evan Goldstein.   We must have wildly different palates as well as our under and over achievers are pretty much flipped, but its great to remember that we all have different tastes and opinions.  

http://www.1winedude.com/50-great-portuguese-wines-2014-joshua-greene/

Everyone seems to be wondering what the real point of this tasting was, and it is hard to make the argument that they are trying to get these wines into the US market without representation or even information about the wineries that importers and distributors would need to make these connections.   Says Roberts, "No badges, partly because there would be too many, and partly because I am also skipping price points (which would make “Overachiever” badges moot) as many of these wines don’t yet have U.S. representation (get on it, importers!)."     Why not put up some Dude bucks and bring these limited release beauties right to your readership?

Resource Renaissance, what a world?

What a crazy world we live in?  I really wish these resources had been around when I was starting out in music.  How is Shawn Colvin making that chord?  What is the tuning?  Using a Capo?  I used to make my poor guitar teacher spend half hour after half hour trying to figure out Jonatha Brooke tunings (after I had failed miserably to figure them out on my own.)   And through the magic of youtube I can now sit at my computer and watch them play, or tune or talk about tunings and writing the music.   She's dropping the D-Capo on the fourth fret.   Wow, that was...easy.  Tie a tie, braid a challah, you can do it-and fast!  I enjoy having the tools now-but what heights will these kids reach with it all at their fingertips? 

And the same is true for wine.  Not only are there a million bodies to teach and certify the trade(yes 1 million) there are exponentially more resources available every second it seems.  From winery websites to appellation and trade sites to the ever increasingly informed and creative bloggers-the world of wine is being catalogued, experienced, explained, photographed, videoed and more,  from struggling vine to struggling vine.

Here is the great Post that got me thinking about all of this, giving you a short list of fantastic Italian Wine resources from Alfonso Cerola on his On the Wine Trail in Italy blog, a great resource in and of itself.

http://acevola.blogspot.com/2014/03/great-fast-track-resources-to-learn.html