The forests of France currently being cut down for barrels are 200 years old, and are being depleted at four times the necessary rate because so many winemakers have failed to examine sensible approaches to conservation. If you about 25% of the high quality wood outside the heart and inside the cambium can be split and shapen into a stave which ends up in a piece of fine furniture that seals properly 75% thus gets simply thrown away because chips have a lousy image. Pretty stupid.

We're all having fun over on Eric Asimov's blog, The Pour, commenting on his article When Technology is Worthwhile. Check it out for the full range of opinions on this subject.

My second post in that conversation is as follows.

The issue in overoaked wines is not excess, it's artlessness.

Jim Concannon used to say that oak should work in wine like garlic in cuisine -- you use it to accentuate and lift the wine's native flavors. On the other hand, there do exist "lovers of the stinking rose," and sometimes to appeal to these freaks (as at the Gilroy Garlic Festival) garlic becomes the whole theme of a dish. It's fun for a while. So with oak, and many a novice has been temporarily taken in, later to scorn its excessive use.

A terrific new site has emerged called Appellation America, which while ambitiously furthering the notion of transforming the way we think about wine in this country, also takes on current issues generally and promises to be a rewarding stop for oeno-surfing.