The roots of the Fair Trade movement delve into the 1940s and 1950s, where the impetus came from religious groups and politically oriented NGOs. A pivotal moment arose with the establishment of Ten Thousand Villages, originally known as Self-Help Crafts, offering handmade goods from marginalized communities. By 1946 and 1949, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and SERRV International pioneered fair trade supply chains, primarily centered on handicrafts.
The featured wines this week include Zinfandels and Primitivos; a great example of New-World versus Old-World wine. You might be saying, “Wait. Are not they the same grape?” They were once considered the same grape, or perhaps siblings, and then some further testing and research suggested they may be different.
A Gallup survey taken back in July of 2021 revealed the average person’s alcoholic beverage preference in the US, as it is broken down by subgroups. Turns out, at a bar, men will choose beer (54 percent) over liquor (28 percent) or wine (15 percent). Women will choose wine (49 percent) over liquor (26 percent) or beer (23 percent). It further breaks it down in age groups. The 21- to 34-year-olds will choose beer, liquor, and then wine. The 35- to 54-year-olds will prefer beer, wine, and then liquor. But the 55 and older crowd will greatly choose wine first, beer, and then liquor. There are suggestions that education and household income may have contributing factors.
The holidays are over. No more parties, social gatherings, office socials or happy hours involving alcohol. In comes “Dry January,” with the intention of a cleanse and reboot for your body. During the holidays and all the events that go along with them, we tend to focus more on the event and social part, than what is in our glasses. We end up mindless drinking, which, in turn, leads to a little bit of careless drinking. One goal of “Dry January” is not just about a cleanse for the body, but also your relationship with alcohol, more specifically in this case, wine.
It is pretty typical to say that what grows together tends to be together. The phrase seems not to be confined to just food, but it also seems to extend to food-and-wine pairings. One step further, in the world of making wine, what grows together tends to get blended together. Old World traditions have been formulated to produce the same style of wine with very little interpretation year-to-year, other than how the microclimate had differed.
