hat’s a gal to do? Wanda, my friend, just got her first winemaker job at a winery in Alaska. Oh yeah, there are about a half-dozen wineries there next to the Russian border where the terroir is tundra-like, which in the right year, produces gosh-darned good ice wine. The winery, I think, is owned by a third cousin of The First Dude (which makes the cousin the Third Dude?). So anyway, the winery’s got a pedigree of sorts, you betcha.

Wanda and me, we celebrated (in the lower 48) over a glass of wheat beer because wine was too expensive for her. After all, she recently completed her internship schlepping hoses and washing barrels, which incidentally, came from the Crimea or someplace like that because the owner of the winery could no longer afford barrels from Hungary, so expensive they were getting. Besides, I think the Crimea is closer to Alaska than Hungary is, so the shipping costs are pretty reasonable, which is no small concern nowadays.

Wanda asked to talk to me before she left for her new job because she’s fully aware of my vast knowledge and experience about wine. (On several occasions, on press junkets, they would hand out those clipper things and watch as we out-of-shape scribes would stoop so low as to make fools of ourselves as we attempted to cut the grapes. Also, sometimes, they would hand us a beaker and giggle as we made our own blends. One time, I put 99 percent Cab, a half-percent of Tannat and just to be different, another half-percent of Viognier into my blend. I think I got a 56.)

But I digress. Wanda, you see, is getting into the wine business at the right time; or the exact wrong time, depending. So, she wanted to know what I thought as she leaves to be near the Russian border.

First, it may be the right time, I told Wanda. More Americans are drinkin’ wine than ever before. Just look at all the wine bars on all the corners of San Francisco, and New York, and L.A. and even Miami. (I confessed I didn’t know the wine bar situation on Kodiak Island.) And all those wine bars are servin’ things like the aforementioned Tannat and Viognier, and even Furmint and Hárslevelü, the latter two of which come from Hungary.

Second, Americans are beginning to understand where those grapes – and others – come from. They’re learning about regions such as the Anderson Valley, as distinguished from the Alexander Valley; and what grapes grow best where because they’re reading about once esoteric subjects as terroir. (We still don’t know if the winemaker is a part of terroir, but Wanda assured me that once she gets to Alaska, there’s no way she won’t become part of that terroir.)

Third, there has never been a time before in history when excellent winemaking, growing practices, and cellar regimens are producing such good wine; and at lower prices.

Then I told Wanda the hard truths concerning the downside of wine as we wend our way through this century. She leaned over intently, the head of foam in her beer stein a distant memory.

First of all, I told her, now that we don’t have George Bush to bat around anymore, we’ve actually lost an ally. That’s because George was (is) the brother-in-law of Bobby Koch, the head of the Wine Institute, which is probably the most powerful wine lobby in D.C. I don’t really know what the recovering alcoholic Bush did for his relative apropos wine, but I do know that Koch, amazingly a Demo, will be thrilled with Obama because McCain is a strict Federalist; which means that Mack the Knife won’t bode well for knocking down the last remaining state dominoes that are blocking direct shipping.

Continuing with my bummer advice for Wanda as she chips away at the ice that will be sure to cover her grapes (as if that weren’t enough), I told her to be ever vigilant (not of the Russians coming across the strait) but that someday soon the ice sheet won’t come to Alaska and then what will she have then? No deep freeze, no ice wine. So I speculated, why not begin to plant Pinot? You never know. Pinot is a cool-climate grape and it’s not going to heat up very much that fast in her neck of the woods.

Lastly, before I met with Wanda the New Winemaker, I spoke to my friend Bernie the Old Attorney, who dabbles in the stock market. I asked him what he’d advise Wanda regarding the worldwide financial thing.

You know what Bernie told me? He said I should tell Wanda to keep on buying Crimean oak. The grain isn’t so tight as compared to French wood or even Hungarian. Truth be told, Crimean quercus leaks tannins like the Titanic after it had the dustup with that iceberg. But hey, ice caps will soon have gone the way of hand-cranked ice cream makers. Besides, all Wanda needs to do after her wines age in those heavy-plus toasted tannin-laden barrels is send some of it down to the mainland where I’m sure some fix-it shop would spin the bejeesus out of it, and therefore render it (literally) drinkable. Might even get her a 93.

Which would make the Third Dude in Alaska happy; and which would at least keep the First Dude in the spotlight, if only for a little while longer.

Which will all make my friend, Wanda the New Winemaker, a star and then maybe she’ll be able to land a job down in the Napa Valley, which might know all about Crimean barrels and Hárslevelü by then. Which by then will have seen the markets recover and for which they’ll be able to charge a hundred bucks for that Hárslevelü).

But Wanda, I said, don’t hold your breath (or do if you want to avoid air pollution).

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