> To Umberto Rossi finding the French climate unfavourable, I just get > acquainted with wines from Elbe and Saale/Unstrut, rivers leading to the > North Sea and, believe it or not, they do work, even in between comets ;-)
Well, I didn't mean to say that you cannot make good wine there; there's been even a wine production in Cornwall, and that's the reason why English has all the technical terminology for wine-making. But climate makes a big difference. In northern areas you have to keep your grapes on the vines for a longer time in order to get a sufficient alcoholic degree; that means that your grapes are exposed for a longer time to the dangers of mold, fungi, etc. You often spoil your product. And often make a weaker wine, and that's where the bad annees come from. In hotter climates making wine is easier: provided you respect the rules of the trade and are a honest winemaker, you have many good annees (I really miss the English term for annata) and a few bad ones--with or without the comets. Having said that I pay the due respect to bordeaux, champagne and sauternes; I'm a bit more skeptical about bourgogne. If I have to pay all that money to drink that, I prefer to stick to our medium-structured wines. In case you ever come to Rome, I have a bottle of Dolcetto d'Alba ready for you. (but bring a bottle of those Elbe wines...) And getting back to Juenger, I realize that wine is a quite Juengerian product, since it needs the intervention of so many elemental forces: Erde, Sonne, auch Sternen. And it resembles Blut, if you think of it... Umberto Rossi "A commission is appointed To confer with a Volscian commission About perpetual peace"--and nobody told me!
