Wine is not a Drug

When I first started this blog I thought I would incorporate some google generated ads to make a few dollars for my efforts.  My blog was rejected because google does not allow their ads to appear on sites that promote “drugs or alcohol”.  I recently took my car in for service and had my laptop with me to do some research for an upcoming blog post while I waited for the repairs to be completed.  When trying to access the web site of one of the wineries I was going to write about using the car dealers wireless network I was blocked from going to that site because the network does not allow traffic to sites that promote “drugs or alcohol”.   In both cases they lumped  wine into the same category as crack, meth, and heroin.

For me and the vast majority of wine enthusiasts that I know wine is a hobby and we rarely if ever drink to the point we are drunk or are impaired.  For many cultures wine in a integral part of a meal and it makes about as much sense to ban wine content as it would to ban content about potatoes, pot roast, or bread.  For us wine is not a drug it is a food. Sure drinking too much wine is bad for you but so is eating too many apple fritters.  

Wine is also a form of art.  A winemaker can take a grape vine and depending on where they plant it, how they prune it, when they pick its grapes, how they extract the juice from those grapes, where they store that juice, and how they process that juice they create something that has never been tasted before and will will never tasted again.  The reason we drink wine is the same reason we go to the museum, to appreciate this unique one of a kind creation.

All this also does not take into account that is it legal and because it promotes tourism and employs tens of thousands of people is a key part of the economy in many parts of the world.

I’m not sure who the cyberspace police are that make the decision on which content to censor but they must not be wine drinkers and obviously must be doing this out of ignorance.  Hopefully they will eventually use cyberspace to learn the facts.