It doesn’t take an aerospace expert to notice the last Winepisser blog post was from February. That post announced, without the usual fanfare, the Winepisser 2019 Best Wine award. Since then, this site has been nearly dead.
You can, of course, blame Ol’ Corona. Located in Peru, yours truly is under severe lockdown. Exactly 48 hours after cancelling a trip into the United States, Peru’s president, Martiz Vizcarra, smartly cancelled all flights in and out of the country. He then imposed a series of gradually increasing restrictions and quarantines. Vizcarra knows that Peru’s limited healthcare system won’t handle a full-own disaster well, and that the people here are not likely to fully grasp the dangers of the virus without a firm hand.
to his credit, Vizcarra has handled things well. He’s has made regular appearances alongside (although sitting far apart) health officials and a bright young economist, María Antonieta Alva. His tone is professional, almost fatherly, and not at all like that of the dictator of nearby Venezuela.
Peru’s population welcomed the restrictions for weeks, cheering as police arrested the occasional stray vagrant or obstinate pituco who felt the rules didn’t apply to them. Vizcarra bought valuable weeks, preventing the disease from spreading like wildfire.
Eventually, the people exhausted of it, however. Now, in more recent weeks, the general population has begun to just ignore the rules, going out in droves, ignoring requirements to wear masks, etc. The police do what they can, but the overpopulation is a serious problem, and the sheer imbalance of police vs. people usually means the mobs win out.
But, again, Vizcarra bought time which helped slow the spread of the virus, and likely saved 100,000 lives or more.
One of the restrictions, however, was the prohibition of the sale of alcohol. This was intended to reduce the temptation for neighbors to violate quarantines and curfews, by reducing the reason to have parties. It worked, too. Sure, you can still buy alcohol from local neighborhood shops, but not wine… the stores are rarely air-conditioned, and bottles have sat on steaming hot shelves for years.
So for your honorable Winepisser, this has meant not a single purchase of wine at all, for months. I’m locked down tight, in quarantine, and haven’t left the house in weeks. Under current rules, only one family member is allowed to leave the house per day, and only for essentials (food, medicine, etc.) I’m not the designated shopper.
Which has been fine in every other sense. It’s just been bad for a wine reviewer.
2019 was already a slow year for this blog, with a reduced number of reviews due to various other professional obligations. 2020 looks to be worse, as we head into mid-May without a single review of anything.