It has been roughly six years since we were witness to one of the wine world's most feared enemies. It is an enemy so fierce that it can play havoc with our beloved industry in ways that are so devastating and so horrifying that mere mortals are driven to cowering in corners.

We call them grape varieties for a reason. But let's put the horse back in front of the cart.

I write for a living, such as it is. In another line of work, I might now be long retired and living on an island so I can finish Ulysses or Long Day's Journey into Night, and I'd have time to open a Grange for fun now and then instead of having to slog through trade tastings and teach classes.

A friend got a bottle of the Maryhill Winery 2005 Malbec recently, and learned that the wine had earned a Platinum medal at the annual taste-off we do at Wine Press Northwest.

So the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition passed on Dec. 5 without a great deal of fanfare. No bells ringing, no parties with revelers toasting each other with Champagne, no page-one headline stories.

As dozens of wineries around the United States consider whether to leap into the Riesling derby, following the huge success of Chateau Ste. Michelle with that variety, one of the linchpins on which decisions are based is: Can I sell this wine?

My love for Riesling should know no bounds, but alas there is a drawback that has me gnashing my teeth. Is Riesling's image that of a sweet wine?

At Wine Press Northwest's recent Platinum wine competition, the judges considered the fate of 212 wines, with the greatest emphasis on red wines since that is the current wave of excitement and is unlikely to change in the current millennium.

It was a bottle of 1979 Buena Vista Special Selection Cabernet. It had enough dust to have been through a Sahara sandstorm and a lead foil capsule that would make a liability attorney scowl.

The word is out. Well, the word is under the radar at this point. In fact, it's so far under the radar that the word is just now only getting out. Uh, leaking out actually. Of course, you can discount the fact that a Midwest wine writer who I spoke with recently was totally unaware of the trend.

Profit is the main reason wine companies exist. OK, call me a cynic. But that's a reality of life. Without profits, a company would collapse, and wine couldn't be made.

The four are what I would call wine travelers: Wherever they go, they visit wineries. They are recent retirees, all residents of Southern California, with sufficient expendable income and they do a lot of traveling.

As a wine-producing state, Washington has gone from infancy to world powerhouse in about 25 years, and in that time, it has not always seen its success recognized.

If rosé were a human being, it would be reviled by the vast majority of wine lovers - and thus those who read this publication on a regular basis would be guffawing that a wine columnist would spend more than a millisecond chatting about this wretched bum with a sad and dejected look needing more than a shower and a nourishing meal.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Is that the way the saying goes? Or should it be, "The more things change, the more the younger generation is happy to tell the old folks how to do it better?"

Call me strange, but I love Semillon.

The best news of the last decade for white wine lovers has nothing to do with Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling, though there is good news on all those fronts.

Sure, you're going to say something like, "Tell me something I don't know," but the latest news on the Riesling front is that it's heating up, in ways that even I, a Riesling nutcase, never envisioned.

Remember those optical illusions that amused us as children, like the drawing of various lines and the question, "Which one is longer?" The reality is that the lines, though they look radically different in length, are the same length.

Those of us who consume wine on a daily basis are often more eclectic in our tastes. For us, it’s a bummer when night after night we face the same old stuff.