A local rancher has discovered that feeding wine to cows produces meat that is tastier than your usual sirloin. It must also produce tipsy livestock who lose all inhibitions and wind up yakking with their sisters all night about how traumatic the delivery of their calf was ten years ago.

I have a beef with this. One of my meatier concerns is etiquette at wine tastings. Cows are new to wine – they don’t know about spittoons or what the crackers are for or how to hold the glass or anything. They just drink till they’re loaded and then slobber and whiz all over the place. Kind of like New Yorkers, really.

I’m kidding, of course. I mean Australians.

In my opinion, binge-drinking bovines need much more tasting. Testing, I mean.

For instance, if this feeding trend leads to wider aisles in china shops and wine stores then I’m all for it. Well done!

Burning questions remain, however, particularly for restaurant patrons. Are you prepared to accept the pairing opinion of a Simmental Sommelier at your local eatery? Do you really think a cow will recommend the mouth-watering steak when it happens to be his cousin? “This wine is a terrific accompaniment to…fish,” he’ll say. Every time.

That is what is at steak. Stake – excuse me.

This being the Pacific Northwest, wine-fed beef will inevitably lead to dope-raised chickens.

Mellow yet plucky hens, fed a daily supplement of grow-op ‘grain’, will soon be the rage among chefs. There they’ll be (the chickens), loafing about their free ranges, stoned out of their beaks, staring at the clouds, thinking deep chicken thoughts like “What are the enormous white things that emerge from my cooter every day?”

Restaurants will serve ‘Baked, baked chicken, with special brownie stuffing.’ They’ll just lay on your plate, grinning in their own chickeny way. Wow, man.

I’m telling you, this wine-feeding scourge must be stomped out. Put the entire idea out to pasture where it belongs, I say. Wine is for humans, not animals. I think authorities should give this rancher a good grilling.

We need to put a cork in this scheme in order to preserve our region as a grade ‘A’ tourist destination and make our visitors enjoy our brand of welcome, not herd them like cattle through the chutes of monetary gain, into the silos of history, never to return to our granary of democracy.

“Waiter! I’ll have the half-baked metaphors done medium-well, and a glass of your finest Moolot, please.”