Wine: Janus Presides Over our growling, grinning and imbibing. BY LANCE SPARKS I slurp a cup of Full City Sumatran while I stand at the gritty window of my office on the 23rd floor of Eugene's oldest, shabbiest high-rise. Stretching out below, tentacles of urban blight reach toward the winding ribbon of the rain-swollen McKenzie River where it twists around the feet of the Coburg Hills. The last patches of the world's most fertile farmland are being scraped of topsoil, paved over in asphalt, sliced for sewers and power lines, diced into postage-stamp patches for more tacky McMansions. As far east as I can see, what had been corn fields and bean fields, orchards of filberts and walnuts, stands of old oaks and alders have yielded to backhoes and graders to make more room for soul-less shoeboxes varying only in size. I don't have to gaze to know that I'd see more of same west, north and south. [read more]
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