Posted on 08/17/2023 11:35:30 AM PDT by Lazamataz
On its website, California wine company Ocean Fathoms praises the waters of the Santa Barbara channel as “the perfect environment” for aging its wines. “[T]he set of special characteristics of the Channel Islands’ environment gives Ocean Fathoms a superior product,” the company claims, before praising the abundant underwater flora and fauna that attach itself to each bottle.
In 2017, Ocean Fathoms started to submerge specially designed crates of its wine in the channel, and when the bottles were retrieved 12 months later, they were sold for up to $500 each. The problem — and this is a significant one — was that the company’s owners never received the proper permits from the California Coastal Commission or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which turned that “perfect environment” into an illegal one.
...snip...
As a result, the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages Control seized roughly 2,000 bottles of wine from Ocean Fathom and destroyed them at a wastewater treatment plant in Santa Barbara. The glass bottles — the ones adorned with all of that flora and fauna — were taken to a recycling center.
(Excerpt) Read more at foodandwine.com ...
"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.
The real “crime” was not greasing the right palms.
They should have put their labels on Sutter home and destroyed those instead then shipped everything else out of state and figure it out from there! $500 a bottle-—OUCH!
I guess auctioning for a “legal” charity never crossed anyone’s mind.
Now the Gov will justablish a new
“Department of underwater wine Aging”..
It will need a building that costs at least 20 million
They will need a staff of 6-10 of each region in the US to investigate. And actually do stuff.
Then they will need staff of @ 100+, all union menmbers. To account, pay, diversify, and have on site union reps.
then impose a 500% tax on this wine. That as it is exorbitant, no one will pay.
But, this new department will never die, be staffed and grow every year.
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.
lol
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.)
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