Winebits 806: Doug Caskey, smuggling, wine history

This week’s wine news: Doug Caskey, a long-time champion of Drink Local, retires. Plus major wine smuggling ring in China and wine history in the Americas

• So long, Doug: Doug Caskey, one of Drink Local’s greatest champions, has retired after an outstanding, 23-year tenure as the director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. I’ve known Doug for much of that time, and there are few people who cared more about getting Americans to understand that local wine was a thing, just like local food. Needless to say, that was never an easy task, but Doug didn’t let that get to him in the way it did so many of the rest of us. He also understood the intricacies of navigating wine’s legal system, something that came in handy more than once during all the years we were trying to get the world to taste local wine. Plus, who else would have thought of holding our Colorado Drink Local conference in a former church?

• A lesson learned? The Chinese, whose system of government isn’t quite as open as ours, have suffered through yet another wine smuggling scandal. For 14 months, a gang bootlegged high-end French wine, worth more than US$3 million, between Hong Kong and Shanghai, in the face of what the story in the link calls some of the toughest border controls in recent Chinese history. The WC mentions this not just because it’s an interesting story, but to point out once again the difficulty of policing alcohol restrictions. Even the Chinese were shocked: “The discovery of this wine smuggling network has sent shockwaves through China’s law enforcement agencies, highlighting the lengths to which some individuals will go to evade taxes and profit from illicit activities.” Take note, neo-Prohibitionists.

• 600 years ago? Spanish colonizers may have been drinking wine in the Americas as early as the 16^th century, reports a study in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. There is evidence that there was grape wine in the Caribbean during the earliest stages of European colonization. Evidence on an island near Puerto Rico suggested that whatever else inhabitants were doing, they were drinking wine. Says the sutdy: “After early European settlements suffered starvation as a result of a failure to adapt to local culinary practices, the colonists adopted local customs. But one thing they held onto was their wine.”