Wine routes of Iberia, 2nd ed.

The half-life of meticulous scholarship,

when devoted now to the regions hereto-

fore praised for sustaining a distinctive

form of life -- as opposed, say, to the

American South's fetish for a way of life

-- has shrunk perceptibly under the novel

strain of climate adjustments, almost as

unforeseen as the transformation of Chic-

ago under the pressures of Jim Crow, asy-

lum seekers fleeing sharecropping's desert

for shelter in blue collars. There are e-

even those who say, Honduras is going out

of business under terror's pre-emption of

drought and rising sea levels. But have

these Cassandras reckoned with our Little

Father's genius for slamming the door, and

discounting the price of military hardware

to suppress the locals in situ? I fear not.

Now the chaos written on the vine of Iber-

ian viticulture has its reverberations a-

cross the vinous continent, as growers

scurry to plant varietals in spontaneous-

ly misplaced habitats, and investigate

the higher predictability in bottling Co-

ca-Cola. So much for the antiquated "chât-

eau" system, and on to the conglomerate's

dispassionate virtuosity with synthetics.

Is it the fault, strictly speaking, of a

Gamay to take on the attributes of Cab-

ernet Sauvignon under rising heat levels

and higher winds? One might as well insist

that it's the fault of an orphan, to be

suckled by wolves. Can Rome turn on a dime?

Joan Miró
Blue II
  [from a triptych]
1961