Wine aficionados and supporters of Fair Trade will be excited to know that Cellar Wine & Spirits, located at 555 W. Main St. Norman, has started carrying Fair Trade Certified wine from Alta Gloria Winery, Argentina. Currently they have a Malbec and a Shiraz available. You can read more at the suppliers website:
http://www.kysela.com/argentina/altagloria.htm
Just like the producers of coffee, tea and other agricultural products, wines growers often work in difficult conditions and are paid less than a living wage. If you are a wine aficionado, you can support ethically and environmentally responsible trade practices by buying Fair Trade wine.
3 comments:
Is buying expensive wine the ethically and environmentally responsible thing to do in the first place? Just posing a thought. It seems very much like the ultimate Limmo Liberal kind of thing to do, with Nancy Pelosi doing rallies for global warming, then hopping in her limmo to take her 6 blocks up to the Capitol entrance. Likewise, it's like..if the goal is to think of poorer people and environmental harm, why are you buying expensive luxury items you don't need in the first place? Obviously you can make the argument that the money would be better spent on charity, not on a luxury item. Obviously the wine still has to be bottled, transported, etc.. since we've already established that having that wine is not necessary, is it really necessary to consume those bottles and do that transport?
Just pointing out a few interesting thoughts. Obviously buying this kind of wine is still a lot more ethically and environmentally responsible, and I applaud that, especially if people just have to have wine--can't live without it. But I would point out that buying wine, whether Fair trade or not, is still, buying a bottle of wine.
As mentioned, the blog post is meant for "wine aficionados and supporters of Fair Trade." Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to make their purchasing decisions. The objective is to highlight Fair Trade options and not to encourage consumerism. Nonetheless, the post has been edited to clarify the context.
I think it is definitely worth questioning consumption, in general.
Fair Trade products are comparably priced and not considered expensive luxury items. Besides, there are several reasons why non- Fair Trade products are cheap. Mot people aren't aware that people and the environment in other parts of the world suffer atrocities just so we can get cheap products.
Thanks for your comments.
For a recent holiday dinner, I purchased a bottle of Alta Gloria's Malbec. I believe I spent less than fifteen dollars. This is a lovely deeply colored dry red, with earthy, musty, spicy, woody, plum and dark cherry flavors. It paired well with a robustly sharp and grassy English farmhouse cheddar, Quicke's as well as both French Munster and would most likely couple nicely with Abbaye de Belloc, an ancient sheep's milk monastery cheese from the Pyrenees , either Swiss or French cave-aged Gruyere, Spanish Manchego, and Taleggio, a tame but robust, meaty, washed-rind Italian cheese. Live it up cheese-heads.
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