PUT A STOPPER IN THESE CORKSCREW PLANS

Among California producers, high-alcohol wines provoke sharp debate.
Many now contain at least 25 percent more alcohol than before.
Opponents call them wines on steroids. Mat Garretson's wines run to 17
percent alcohol. He acknowledges that may be a little much. "To do
more than two or three of those at a meal is kind of scary."

. The New York Times, April 13

JUNEAU -- Gov. Frank Murkowski has introduced a bill in the Alaska
Legislature to outlaw wine. Senate Bill 74-A (Alcohol) would
criminalize the use of wine and make possession of more than a magnum
a felony.

The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution makes the at-home
adult use of wine legal, but Murkowski said he did not consider "some
silly constitutional language" a prohibition to his prohibition efforts.

"Once you go off half-corked and let this new, powerful wine out of
the bottle, it's a slippery slope straight to the hard stuff," he pronounced.

Lt. Gov. Loren Leman subsequently announced that his office was
seeking to rewrite Section I of the 21st Amendment, contending that
the wording, "The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution
of the United States is hereby repealed," was unclear and misleading.

Leman said that he was also researching the possibility of challenging
the signatures of the entire 1933 Utah Legislature, upon whose
ratification the amendment became the supreme law of the land.

"Most of the people who signed off on that are, in fact, dead," Leman
explained. "So their signatures obviously cannot be valid -- or validated."

Subpoenaed out of retirement from his houseboat off Gilligan's Island,
Washington, former Attorney General Dougg Renkes testified that
alcohol was a "significant" issue for Alaska, leading to ethical
lapses, some of which have been documented on video tape, and to
conflicts of interesting natures.

State Republican party chairman Randy Ruedrich, who Gov. Murkowski
recently appointed to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, was not
immediately available for comment. However, wine stains discovered
near his computer indicate that he may have been consuming state
business on party time.

In 1990, when then-Sen. (Frank) Murkowski had his eye on re-election
in '92, Virtual Czar Bill Bennett campaigned with him in support of an
Alaska ballot initiative outlawing alcohol and gambling. Campaign
advisers believed that a "Virtue versa Vice" strategy would create an
effective smokescreen to distract voters from comments made by
Murkowski's then-colleague, Sen. Ted Stevens, who proclaimed, "Even
his daughter would make a heck of a lot better senator."

In a hearing this week on SB 74-A, Chester Smilefork, professor of
psychology at Harvard Medical School, testified that "Wine is not more
harmful today than it was in 1933. But wine aged that long rarely
tastes very good."

He said that wine grown today is "arguably" stronger than seven
decades ago. But that means people just drink less of it, Smilefork
said.

"Argue?" interjected Eagle Creek Sen. Fred Tiresome. "I used to
understand that drinking wine made people mellow out," he said, before
requesting a recess for Capitol happy hour, a tradition that would be
exempted from the provisions of SB 74-A.

Murkowski's bill asserts that wine, known in street slang as "red" or
"white," is a gateway alcohol that leads to more powerful spirits like
sherry and, ultimately, martinis.

The state introduced a study that purports to show that more than 70
percent of martini drinkers started by drinking wine. Wine has
addictive properties similar to martinis, the state brief continued,
and is demonstrably more dangerous than legal plants such as marijuana.

Alaska State Trooper Bob "Tall" Tale told the Senate Health and Social
Services Committee, "My trooper hat's off to these Alaska vintners for
the strength of their product. And I do like to take that silly hat
off whenever I can."

The Matanuska-Susitna Valley has long competed neck-and-neck with
California's Napa and Sonoma regions. Sonoma boasts the Jack London
Vineyards, and Susitna answered with Call of the Wild Winery.

Meanwhile, vinophiles are thunderstruck by the governor's
scheme.

During public testimony, Maximilian Beerbomb stated, "The only whine
that's become stronger in Alaska has been spilling from the Governor's
Mansion."

"Sniveling used to be illegal up here," Beerbomb complained. "Now they
just stick a fancy Senate bill number in front of it and try to call
it a law."