Vindochine
FACES TO THE RAIN Where are the poets in a world gone mad, The sonnets, stanzas and quatrains? Words are sharpest from the edge, Where is the caesura and refrain- In our desperation and despair? Aught but screams and cries of pain- And those haunting sounds of choking, On our filth and shock, We need […]
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau Masanobu Fukuoka (1913 –2008) was a Japanese farmer and philosopher, he was a trained microbiologist and agricultural scientist and after completing his education he worked at the Yokohama Customs Bureau. In 1937 he was taken to hospital with pneumonia and whilst there had […]
I noted with interest that a special 20th anniversary edition of John Ralston Saul’s jeremiad, ‘Voltaire’s Bastards’ had been released, a book that provoked in me a great deal of thought when I first read it, (ironically) almost twenty years ago. The tome is a sustained, agitated and sometimes aggressive tirade; a rant, an anatomy […]
“In vino veritas, (in wine, truth)” ― Pliny the Elder As we approached the end of the second millennium, huge growth in wine production in some countries saw a sort of industrialization of grape growing, of the farming of grapes: hand picking, hand pruning, hand tending was out and mechanization, irrigation and the use […]
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.” ― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Consumer preferences in wine are a bit like hem-lines in the fashion industry, just as sure as they will rise, they will one day come back down again, for every action there is an opposing reaction. In fact, it seems […]
A list of the requirements to live a happy life: Freedom Self Sufficiency Friendship Thought Wine Bread & Cheese -Epicurus, (#Note: Epicurus was an avowed teetotal, the author here has substituted wine for water) The Ancient Greek philosopher and founder of the ‘School of Hedonism’, Epicurus, (341–270 BCE) realized there was a problem with desire. […]