Why Blow Up A Winery?

Can you imagine this headline?: "NAPA, CA: This morning a bomb exploded outside the Robert Mondavi winery off of Highway 29 in Napa, tearing a gaping hole in the side of the famous mission style winery building and injuring 25 including several tourists." The thought is at once both scary and ridiculous. Who would bomb a winery? OK. OK. Who Besides a bunch of angry French winegrowers?.

Well, it looks like Spain's wineries now also have to fear from explosions, though not at the hands of the wine industry, but at the hands of the ETA, or Basque separatist movement. Last week the Rioja Alta in Haro, Spain suffered minor damages when a bomb exploded on the premises. Originally thought to be a gas leak, it has now been determined that it was in fact a terrorist bombing.

I can understand how terrorist tacticians might target a financial building, or the transportation infrastructure, but an individual winery? That just seems stupid. Especially for the Basque, who are known for their love of food and wine.

C'mon guys. You should know better than that.

Read the full story.

Posted by: Alder on November 21, 2005 7:54 AM: Tweet; Share this post elsewhere: Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit; Filed under: Wine News

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Comments (2)

boyd wrote:

11.22.05 at 12:14 PM

Apparently acts of terror utilizing or against the wine industry are of concern to our government.

http://www.ttb.gov/bioterrorlaw.htm

Aidan Maconachy wrote:

11.23.05 at 8:02 AM

The last time a winery was bombed in Spain was I believe during the Spanish civil war. I'm hoping this was a mistake, but I doubt it was targeting the wine industry per se ... perhaps political affiliations had something to do with it.

Pure speculation on my part.