VLVL what might have been

[jbor]

>> Were any of those bottles of wine in the hotel rooms Frenesi slept in,
>> the one in the fantasy about Weed and Rex, California wines, made with
>> grapes picked by workers in the valley.
> 
> The "promotional magnum" of champagne she and Brock drink in Oklahoma is
> made from "a Concord grape variety imported from Arkansas" (214); the
> dream-future wine is "some chilly gold-green California Chenin Blan" (232),
> but there's no connection to Frenesi; and at Rex's they drink "Pancho
> Bandido", which is "a fortified demographic wine, analogous to Night Train
> or Annie Green Springs" (243).

I think I do get the connection between those wine references now. In '69
there is no nice California wine because the strikes have put an end to
viticulture in the region, and so everyone has to put up with disgusting
sludge from elsewhere instead, but in the idealised future where Weed wasn't
assassinated and "the Revolution" prevailed there's "plenty of chilly
gold-green California Chenin Blanc" for all, and with which these aging
champagne Socialists will toast their triumphs and joke about what "innocent
hippies" they were back in the day. More satire.

best