Don Plummer

The facts are these, in case Mr. Will is interested: we have a serious energy crisis and an even graver potential crisis. Petroleum resources are depleting worldwide, and new reserves aren’t coming into production fast enough to offset the rate of depletion. Fuel prices are once again on the rise. Many people can’t afford to operate their automobiles now, and it’s likely to get worse. The civil unrest in the Middle East threatens to disrupt the flow of petroleum and, thus, torpedo our global economy…In this age of energy instability, do we really want to say no to rebuilding our passenger rail capabilities?

Just look around: the cities that are vibrant and alive all have excellent and convenient transportation services that the residents use frequently; they are cities that are designed for people and not automobiles. Then take a look at many of Ohio’s cities: the central cores are deserted after business hours. Walk around the downtown areas and notice the wide streets cluttered with fast-moving traffic; then look at the relative lack of safe places for people to walk. Notice the parking lot deserts where shopping and other services, as well as residences, could be built instead. If we want to rebuild our great cities, we need a real commitment to invest in public transportation.

In this series’ previous post, we discussed making wine at home as a possible solution to wine availability in an age of declining cheap energy. In this the final post of this series, we will discuss in some detail the advantages of home grape growing and wine making. Along the way, we’ll mention organic viticulture methods and briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of specific grape varieties that might be considered for a home vineyard.

Gene Logsdon writes that his inspiration for home wine making is not the large industrial-scale wineries of California or the commercial cellars of Europe, both of which produce high-quality wines, but the back yards of German and Italian immigrants in American cities from the late 1800s through much of the 20th century. They would make wine out of “everything from rhubarb to dandelions, but especially Concord and Delaware grapes” (Logsdon 78). I believe Logsdon has observed something valuable and useful that will allow the production of quality wines to continue in eastern North America after cheap energy is no longer available. I want to explore this idea here in Part 3.

In the first post of this series, I mentioned my initial encounter with winemaking and wine drinking on an island in Lake Erie, after which I read anything and everything I could find about wine. One of the first books I read was Leon D. Adams’ The Wines of America, a book long since out of print. While reading it, I was very surprised to learn that Ohio was once the leading wine producing state!

A few weeks ago, the sustainability media outlet treehugger.com ran an article titled “Is Biodynamic and Organic Wine Still Green If It Is Shipped Halfway Around The World?” Author Lloyd Alter discusses the carbon footprint of wine shipped from different parts of the world and questions whether wine shipped from such far-off places as Australia, even if it’s grown “organically,” can be considered “green”.