One of the first questions my wife Sarah asked when I suggested that I wanted to import wines was something like, "How can you do that when you care so much about local eating?" I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this question. There are a few answers. I believe in the pleasures of the table. I know wine as connected to the land. This is different from "terroir," I view vignerons as having an intimate conversation with the earth. This conversation continues when the wines are shared at a table. Wine is a social catalyst and an agricultural good, not a commodity. So, I don't necessarily eat local because I am a tree hugger. For me it has always been about getting the best possible ingredients at peak flavor. Please read Gina Mallet's review of Michael Pollan's latest work. I am a fan of her rejection of North American puritanism.

Some ingredients like oils, spices and travel well. At least compared to a tomato.

Preserving local economies sometimes requires working beyond your own local economy. I strive to buy foods from local farmers. Some farmers who grow grapes can't sell enough wine in their local market to put food on the table. Globalization is not going away- even if you don't completely agree with Thomas Friedman, market forces and international trade are here to stay. So, let's harness some of those forces to help small family farms. They have to compete against huge wine factories that can sell wine for less than the glass bottle itself costs a small farmer.

As 100 Mile Diet authors put it, you should work to sustain your own local economy and when you go outside of it, you should only buy things at the very highest level of quality. Fair trade, environmentally friendly, handmade, and it better be delicious. To quote James MacKinnon: "as far as I’m aware, no one in the local foods movement is suggesting that we all need to get all of our food from our local food systems: trade has always been a part of human culture. It’s a question of balance. Over the past few decades we’ve swung toward getting most of our food from increasingly distant sources, and as a result we’re eating worse food at a higher environmental and social cost, and have also lost a critical connection to the landscapes and communities we live in. Local eating is about correcting that imbalance - we eat first and foremost from the places we live in, and then look outward for certain fairly traded, environmentally sustainable goodies."