"You 'need a permit ' from the government to 'age wine underwater ' .. ??? What the f*** department handles permits for that. Since when do you got to get government permission to do everything???"
This is just a symptom of a much larger problem.
You know the old saying: "That which is not mandatory, is strictly forbidden."
Clearly,they never got their cut....
2000 bottles of wine in the sea,
2000 bottles of wine!
Bring one up and have a sup!
1999 bottles of wine in the sea...................
Noooooooo!
They should have taken a couple of sailboats with automatic RC receivers/floatation devices, load with wine, chopped a hole in the boat bottom, called a Mayday, get rescued , come back 5 years later, trigger the RC.
You really think they destroyed all of them.
You know if you called the Department of whatever department and asked them if you need a permit (assuming they ever answered), some mouth breathing moron would just look at you and drool and then be rude, and then say “dunna know, that be youra respos-ilty.”
That’s $1,000,000 in wine. I never heard of this company. Dang, everything is illegal in California!
Its the same Fed.gov mindset that is going to force you to get rid of your gas stove or ICE automobile.
I guess auctioning for a “legal” charity never crossed anyone’s mind.
So to lay a few bottles of wine on the ocean floor for a few years, you need permission from the Corps of Engineers AND the State of California?
Look up the literal definition of “totalitarian”. As a thought exercise, try to think of something, just one thing that the government does not have it’s dirty little fingers in.
With all the corruption in California, one really wonders how much actually was destroyed.
It might have been all of it. In my 30+ years in the Federal bureaucracy, I saw a lot of really wasteful, stupid stuff.
Things where we destroyed/wasted many thousands of dollars because it was much harder to get permission not to waste the items than to simply destroy them.
By the above, I mean following the regulations was very wasteful, but fairly easy. Bucking the regulations was less wasteful, but very hard, and risky.
Absurd.
Norwegian Linie Aquavit is “aged” in sherry oak casks held the hulls of ships that cross the equator twice.
No one dies from the practice (I’ve come “close” but from “excess” and not the spirit’s fault [wink])
You know government has gone too far when you need to ask for permission for things that no one would had have ever thought would need permission. (By the way, I did not ask my local political commissar to review this post.)
“the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages Control seized roughly 2,000 bottles of wine from Ocean Fathom and destroyed them”
Well, good news for the people that already bought some, it’s now a very rare vintage!
This will only get worse until people in mass starting saying NO, and meaning it. We are a long way off from that yet. A Loooooong way off.
Out of control government is out of control.
How about aging wine in the Hudson or East river? NY might pay you to dump some cases of wine there so they can get their tax $$$$ once you try to sell it
"We destroyed all 2,000 bottles of wine - one by one," Assistant Deputy Chief Mortimer Rebensaft-Schlurfer explained.
The 15 members of our Hazardous Waste Disposal Team had to set up a special room in which to destroy the wine. "It was a really long and thorough process, taking over two weeks before we were through," Rebensaft-Schlurfer said. The wine was first transferred into special cut-glass carafes and allowed to "breath" for a few minutes before then being poured into individual nosing glasses and goblets. Nearby tables were laden with trays heaped with cubes of cheese and chunks of bread to help the Waste Disposal Specialists to "cleanse their palates" between sips.
During the process, the team - composed of roughly the same number of male and female Specialists - would occasionally comment on the characteristics of the wine they were destroying: "An impudent little cabernet with a satiny texture and hints of blackberry, citrus, and oak that is in clear violation of Paragraph 14 of Article XII of Code 453 of the 1975 Environmental Preservation Act," remarked one Specialist. "It's a good thing that we are destroying it!"
"I'll drink to that!" shouted another Waste Disposal Specialist who had just uncorked his third bottle that evening.
"No, no! We're destroying the wine - not drinking it," insisted another.
"Hey, are you going to keep all of those breadsticks to yourself?!" argued another.
Regards,