Santa Rita Bubbly

Those that read this Blog know that I am a home winemaker. Two years ago I decided to try and make a champagne. In France the prime champagnes are made from Pinot Noir grapes. Since I have 100 of those vines, I decided to try it.

The process is complicated so I won't get into the details, but unlike making white or red wine which you get to taste along the way, champagne is much more difficult. In 2006 we picked two rows of Pinot Noir fruit for our "champagne" experiment. Fermentation is a two step process - making the "cuvee" (the starting wine) takes about three months, and then the final fermentation takes place in the bottle which takes a minimum of 12 months. This second fermentation in the bottle generates CO2 gas, which is where the "bubbly" comes from, and it must be done in a bottle that will take high pressure. So until the final bottling (after almost two years), the winemaker is only guessing about the quality of the wine in the bottle. And in my case (a winemaker that has never done it before), the process is even more of an adventure.

We are now bottling this first champagne and surprise...it is quite good. I followed the classic "methode champenoise" used in France and after some hilarious experiences trying to remove the sediment and quickly add a "dosage" and cap the fizzing bottle, we now have three cases of Strickland Cellars "estate" champagne.

Will I do it again...not sure. As a winemaker I feel proud that after such a long period the final result is a success. In July we will enter this Champagne in the California Mid State Fair Winemakers Competition...so we'll see. Stand by for the results.


But I must admit, one thing I like about making beer...you get to drink it in 90 days. When you're my age, two years is a long time.

Why should we feel guilty?

During this campaign season everything we hear from the liberal side is negative. But the Democrats want to get elected, so why say anything good? We hear about how Americans are too affluent and wasteful, the economy is in the tank, we are using up the worlds resources and destroying the environment, we neglect the poor around the world, we're bullies....I could go on, but you begin to wonder how these people could live in a country they seem to dislike so much.

Paraphrasing Barak Obama from a recent speech, he said:
"We cannot drive our SUVs, eat all we want, and keep our thermostats at 72 degrees whether we live in the desert or the tundra, and expect the rest of the world to say that is OK. After all we use 25% of the worlds energy yet we are only 3 % of the population".

That is a statement right out of the Marxist textbook. He seems to feel that we should be responsible for the population of the rest of the world, and because many of them are not as well off as we are, we should feel guilty about our affluent way of life and start self-sacrificing.

I lived the "American dream" and find it difficult to think about this country in a negative way. Our ancestors came here with nothing, seeking freedom from traditions, religious persecution, and wanting to live in a society where their creativity and hard work could give them the opportunity to succeed regardless of their ethnic, religious, or educational background. Our forefathers designed and built this great country on a model that even with all it's faults, has proven to be the best in the history of the world.

Much of the world population wants to come to the USA, yet there is a liberal movement to paint this country in a negative way. Rather than looking at all the great things we have done in the world, liberals take every opportunity to put the country down and try to make us feel guilty.

I decided to do some research on Obama's statement:

He is correct - the USA consumes 25% of the worlds energy. He said we are 3% of the worlds population - actually it's 4.5 %. But this so called "brilliant" Harvard educated candidate needs to get his facts straight:

Yes, we use 25% of the world's energy but Obama forgot to mention that we are the most productive country in the history of the world and have pioneered most of the technological innovations in history. The USA produces 33% of the global GNP, leading our closest rival Japan, by a factor of two. In layman's terms this means we produce 33 % of the world's products and services while only using only 25% of the energy. The per capita productivity of the USA is ten times that of China.

So while practicing classic "election year politics", Senator Obama takes this positive fact and presents it in a negative way, and as something we should feel guilty about. Sorry, can't buy it.

Fed up

Recently in Iraq a Koran was found on a US firing range, and it had been used by a sniper for target practice. The Iraqis were very offended and the US military has disciplined the soldier and removed him from Iraq. After that, the top American commander in Baghdad and some of his officers held a formal ceremony apologizing to tribal chiefs in Radwaniyah, the area where the incident happened. Yesterday, President Bush called al - Maliki the Prime Minister of Iraq and personally apologized, and also told Maliki "The sniper would be put on trial".

I am not condoning what the soldier did, no one should deface any holy book. But for our President to announce to the world that we will put this soldier on trial? Ridiculous. Our soldiers are on their second, third, or fourth tours to a miserable place, fighting a war that has been totally mismanaged, watching captured comrades be tortured and killed, coping with IEDs and homicide bombers, so in this writers opinion we should give them some slack. Would the response be the same if one of our enemies defaced a bible? Would the President of that country call and make a personal apology to our President? I don't think so.

I for one am fed up with the "over sensitivity" and political correctness we apply when dealing with anything Muslim. Many Mideast countries including our "allies" Saudi Arabia, do not even allow a bible in their countries. Theo Van Gough in Holland takes a stand against the treatment of woman by Muslims, and is viciously murdered. A Danish newspaper prints some cartoons of Mohammad and they are now under constant security protection because of death threats. A Dutch politician makes a short movie criticizing Islam and cannot even leave his home now because of a "fatwa" or Muslim holy order for his murder.

I am watching a newscast from the Mideast this evening and people there are up in arms over this incident. They want the US "occupiers" out of Iraq and the rest of the Mideast. They are calling for this soldier to be punished by cutting his hands off - a real civilized approach to discipline.

Why do we kneel down to these people? Oil, that's why. Without Mideast oil the US economy would be hurt bad and they know it. Maybe we should just say "the hell with the Mideast", pull out, and let them go back to the 15th century. This will never happen because the consequences for us (and them) would be bad. But why keep helping people that turn around and spit in our face? Pulling out of the Mideast would hurt us bad but maybe that's the wake up call the USA needs to get their act together and become energy self sufficient again.

Drill...dammit!

I filled up my 25 gallon truck today at a whopping $4/gallon , and tomorrow we will purchase our quarterly 3-400 gallons of propane here on our ranch, which I assume will also be about $4/gallon. We can afford it....yet I think about some of our kids and those millions of Americans that cannot.


We need to drill for oil! That statement will draw the wrath of my environmentalist friends. I am an environmentalist myself, but I combine my environmentalism with a healthy mixture of common sense and realism. Mention coal, oil, or nuclear power in the same sentence with sources of energy and many people cringe because of what they constantly hear from the main stream media:

- drilling for oil destroys the environment and creates more CO2, which adds to "global warming"
- new oil refineries will destroy local environments and are not the answer
- nuclear power creates radioactive waste that is dangerous and impossible to dispose of
- coal causes pollution and should be left in the ground.

None of the above is true, but let's assume it is...then what do we do in the short term?

We import 60% of our oil needs, half of that from countries that hate the USA. Most experts agree that at best, conservation could only reduce our usage by 10%, and we should all try to conserve by this amount or more, but from a practical standpoint that will only result in a small change.


During my 30 year career I worked very close with the offshore oil industry and the nuclear power industry. I also have some experience with solar energy development and worked for a few years with a company that supplied wind power stations for remote environments. As an engineer I have even been exposed to research on hydrogen powered energy sources. I am not a novice, or just another right wing "wacko" that could care less about the environment.

Of course we need new, safe, "clean" power. But from a practical standpoint it is 20 years away.


Those that have driven through Tehachapi or Palm Springs, California have seen the hundreds of windmills on the hills "humming" away. They supply power to a few local towns, but even thousands of these windmills could only supply a minuscule fraction of what would be required to power the adjacent Southern California population's energy requirement.


In the California desert there are solar power installations that cover acres of land. These solar panels are exposed to bright sunlight more than 325 days a year, yet even these "acres" of solar cells can only supply power to small towns in the immediate area. Wind and solar energy sources, although safe and "clean" are simply not practical for the power needs of this country. And "hydrogen" is decades away.


A nuclear power plant can supply megawatts of "clean" power to large metropolitan areas but none has been approved in over 25 years. Yes, there is the problem of handling and disposing of nuclear waste but solving that technical problem is probably much easier to solve than trying to come up with another 'clean" source of energy during the next few decades. And it is a fact that US nuclear power plant designs are by far the safest in the world.


So this brings us back to oil and coal. They, along with nuclear, are our only practical energy sources for the next 10-20 years, whether we like it or not. Advances in technology now allow us to drill in an environmentally safe way, both onshore and offshore. In addition, technology is close to solving the problem of burning coal in a clean way.

During the 1990's Congress approved drilling in the Anwar area of Alaska but Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. If we had started drilling at that time, we would now be producing an additional million barrels of our own oil each day, which could replace what we get from Saudia Arabia or Venezuela. This is also a national security issue, so it seems to me that we need to pursue our energy requirements on three fronts - aggressively work on conservation, aggressively pursue development of "clean" sources of energy (nuclear, clean coal, wind, solar, hydrogen), and in the meantime drill for oil.

Epilogue: Today as I write this blog, President Bush is in Saudi Arabia asking them to produce more oil for us - something we refuse to do for ourselves. What is wrong with that picture?



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Not "Politics as Usual"

Those that read this blog know I have had knee surgery recently, so I have been somewhat confined to my home and program of rehab. My granddaughter, who is an avid reader of my blog, wrote the other day and asked "If I was OK", since I haven't written a blog recently.


Yes I am OK, in fact I have had the time to read a lot, watch TV a lot, and listen to talk radio a lot. So if anything I should be in "overload" with ideas of subjects to blog about. But the political situation is so crazy now, and the information flow from the media so intense, I suspect we are all getting saturated. So to write something new or clever about the political situation would be difficult. But... for my granddaughter here are some random thoughts:


Barack Obama - The "man with the golden voice" has proven that even gold can tarnish. Even though it looks like he cannot lose the Democratic nomination, the revelations about his relationships with his "America hating" Pastor Wright and Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers has certainly opened a lot of eyes that had been blinded by his smooth rhetoric and charisma. If Obama is sympathetic to even some of the beliefs of these radicals, I find it hard to believe he could be elected, even in a year when the Democrats should make a clean sweep. We'll see.


Hillary Clinton - By the numbers it looks like she cannot overtake Obama in elected delegates or popular vote, but don't underestimate the Clintons. The "Clintonistas" are the most potent and ruthless political machine in the history of politics. If I were into conspiracies, I would think that they are behind the Pastor Wright and Bill Ayers fiascoes, covertly feeding the flames and then moving back to watch the Obama fire burn itself out.


Whatever happens, this will be one of the most interesting political summers we have seen in our lifetimes. It appears that everything is in the hands of the Super Delegates who must be wondering deep down if Obma can win with all these allegations about past relationships, and about his own personal philosophy. Yet if he wins the elected delegates and popular vote, and then the "Supers" give Hillary the election, there will be an explosion in the Democratic party and most likely riots in Denver at the convention.


I feel so bad for the Democratic party. They have been "champions" of the African American community since the days of the Civil Rights movement, and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society'. For decades they have allocated trillions of dollars into welfare programs, subsidised housing, food stamps, affirmative action to "lift up" blacks, while still keeping them in their place as a solid Democratic voting block. And now African Americans have the nerve to produce a credible presidential candidate (who probably can't win), yet they have to give him a shot. What a dilemma for the Democrats.


And finally we have John McCain - "Mr. Lucky". Not many politicians have gone so far with so little. In a normal year he would be 30 points behind the Democratic candidate, but fortunately for him the Demos are eating each other's flesh. So John spends his time scolding his own North Carolina Republican party for running aggressive ads, and reminds us that he wants to run a "respectful" campaign. Bless his heart, if he winds up running against the Clinton machine they will chew him up and spit him out.


And ironically, McCain thinks he is doing well. I have yet to meet any of my Republican/Conservative friends that can even mention his name without holding their nose. And he continues to go after our support with statements like he made today - "Drilling for oil in the pristine Anwar area of Alaska would be like drilling in the Grand Canyon". Great analogy John, it makes me want to send a donation to the Sierra Club - except when I fill up my truck with $4/gallon gas I have nothing left!

I could go on with these random thoughts, but right now our local politics here in the Central Coast are more important...we have bigger issues. Like the $13 million our local Democratic Representative Lois Capps (an Obama supporter), wants appropriated for local tattoo removal parlors. Now that's what I call a politician doing something for the folks.