I just got word that due to the cuts in higher education funding, Lake Washington Technical College will be killing their 90 credit Wine Technology program. This is hard to accept, considering the fact that less than 5 miles away more than 90 wineries are represented in Woodinville wine country. Many of those wineries are small and marginally profitable, but there are more than a few big guns that might consider sponsoring this program.

Cool story from Reuters today about the discovery of a 6,000 year-old wine press in Armenia.  Follow this link for more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110111/lf_nm_life/us_wine_oldest.

For those of you following the two initiatives regarding the privatization of Washington liquor sales, be prepared for a noisy battle for the next two months. There is big money pouring into this fight on both sides, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about who is funding each camp. The names of the organizations buying political ads are meaningless, they always sound like noble causes. To really know what the fuss is all about, you need to know who is paying the bills and why. It is then up to you to choose the side that is best aligned with your own interests.

Kyle MacLachlan pours his wine at Dunham

A newly filed initiative seeks to by-pass the legislature

It seems that most every year one bill or another is introduced in the Washington legislature with the aim of getting the state out of the retail liquor business. Despite the merits of the bills, they always get killed somewhere in the political machinery by legislators beholden to the primary enemies of privatization. You may be surprised to learn that the liquor board itself is NOT one of the primary enemies of privatization.

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