Archive for August 15th, 2006

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Wine Review: Alexander Valley New Gewurz 2005

August 15, 2006

Lynne Kiesling

Hmmm, haven’t done a wine review in a while; doesn’t mean we haven’t been tasting! Last night we had the New Gewurz 2005 from Alexander Valley Vineyards, a really great Sonoma County winery outside of Healdsburg. When we last were in Sonoma we visited there and had a lovely time.

The New Gewurz has a peach-and-pear nose with crisp acidity, so you know from the get-go that this will go well with food, particularly Thai or sushi. The foretaste has more of that peach and a balancing dose of honeysuckle, with a nice gentle malic acid fizz on the tongue. The mid-taste is round and fills the mouth with the fruit and acidity. The aftertaste is gently spicy, rather like a ginger beer. All in all, a very worthy wine for $8.

Alexander Valley Vineyards makes several wonderful wines in various styles and at various price points; their signature Cabernet is extremely good value for money. We are always on the lookout for their wines, and for opportunities to visit them.

Posted in Food and wine | Comments Off

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Barun Mitra: Sell the Tiger to Save It

August 15, 2006

Lynne Kiesling

I heartily recommend Barun Mitra’s op-ed column in today’s New York Times on the importance of property rights in the conservation of the tiger:

Yet for the last 30 or so years, the tiger has been priced at zero, while millions of dollars have been spent to protect it and prohibit trade that might in fact help save the species. Despite the growing environmental bureaucracy and budgets, and despite the proliferation of conservationists and conferences, the tiger is as close to extinction as it has been since Project Tiger, a conservation project backed in part by the World Wildlife Fund, was launched in 1972 and adopted by the government of India a year later.

If we truly value the tiger, this crisis presents an opportunity to help it buy its way out of the extinction it now faces. The tiger breeds easily, even in captivity; zoos in India are constantly told by the Central Zoo Authority not to breed tigers because they are expensive to maintain. In China, which has about 4,000 tigers in captivity, breeding has been perfected. According to senior officials I met in China, given a free hand, the country could produce 100,000 tigers in the next 10 to 15 years.

Yes, precisely. Instead of pricing the tiger at zero and creating a profit opportunity for poachers, why not enable the business of tiger farming? That’s what kept the bison from going extinct in the 19th century. Defining property rights over resources that have value, including wildlife, increases the likelihood that they will avoid extinction due to poaching.

Another great resource on tigers is Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes’ PERC Policy Series analysis from 1998. His thorough analysis includes references to a lot of valuable field experts, including Mitra.

Don Boudreaux’s take on the article is much the same as mine; no surprise, there.

Posted in Economics, Environmental policy | 3 Comments »

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