Fires in Western CO and Utah are choking my vineyard right now. I've only seen it this bad once before, in 2020. That year, the timing saved me. Same as back then, the smoke is thick right now, but the risk of taint is low. The grapes are still tiny and green. They don't really start absorbing smoke until veraison, when they turn red in August. If the fire season drags into a smoky fall, there really isn't much I can do to protect the grapes on the vine. In the cellar, the only ways to save a tainted red are more heavy-handed than I like and don't always work. Luckily the taint mostly sits in the skins. If the smoke gets bad this fall, I'll press the juice off the skins fast and make a rosé of Pinot Noir, dodging the worst of the taint.

June is OVER.

It's already a bad wildfire season out west. How does smoke taint wine? When wood burns it releases volatile phenols that grapes absorb into their skins. A trace of these compounds gives barrel-aged wine its pleasant toasty note, but wildfire smoke can make a wine taste like licking a cold fireplace. The grapes bind the smoke compounds to sugar molecules where you can't taste or smell them right away. The taint stays hidden until fermentation and aging, then comes back again in your mouth, where your saliva snaps those bonds and releases the smoke all over again. Timing matters. Smoke before veraison does little damage. Grapes are most vulnerable from about 7 days after veraison, when they start turning red, through harvest. Red wines get hit harder than whites, because the taint lives in the skins and red winemaking soaks the juice on those skins during fermentation. In the cellar the fixes are blunt. Reverse osmosis can strip the free smoke compounds out, and activated carbon or heavy fining can knock them down too. All of that pulls out color and aroma along with the taint, and none of it removes the bound smoke still locked in the wine. A "fixed" wine can taste clean at bottling and turn ashy again over the following months. For a low-intervention winemaker like me, there is no true solution. My plan for a heavy smoke year is to make a rosé. I'll press the fruit fast and pull the juice off the skins before the taint can settle in.

The Aouth American teams might have more players of European defense than the European teams at this world cup.

Has anyone made a list of the people who said they would leave Bitcoin if BIP110 does/doesn't get implemented?

This smoke is INSANE rn

Winemakers and Bitcoiners understand absolute scarcity better than 99% of the people. Gold bugs seem cute with their persistent 2% inflation. Wine is both less and more scarce than bitcoin. A bitcoiner sees vintage after vintage roll out and assumes wine is unlimited. New vintages do curb the sting of finishing an old one, but reading that as an endless supply misses the beauty in wine. Bitcoin is absolutely scarce, but it's also fungible and never consumed. It may be hard, but you always CAN replace any bitcoin you lose or spend. There is no such recourse with an old bottle of wine. You drink it, and the world has one fewer. Vintage wine may shed some monetary value on a bitcoin standard, but since each vintage is far more scarce than bitcoin, the great ones will hold their value.

The friend who got me into Bitcoin brought me a gift last week to remind me who I really am. A gay retard who voted for Liz in 2020

"Choosing the healthy option" at a bar isn't a thing. Pure alcohol is a poison. If it's bad for us anyway, why worry about it? It's easy to get caught in that all or nothing, cheat day mindset and stop asking questions. Even harder once you've had a few. If you're going from better to best with grain fed vs grass finished beef, why wouldn't you go from worse to not so bad with what you drink? Choosing your source of alcohol matters as much as choosing your source of meat. Meet your producer. Avoid drinks and mixers packed with additives or sugar. Most importantly, learn from your experience the next morning. Through trial and error you can find drinks that leave you feeling clean and clear.