DUI

Interested in all things spiritual, I was shocked to read in a column by Christopher Waters that France had a projected surplus of wine in 2004 in the amount of 200 million litres. It is possible that some of this surplus resulted because members of the coalition of the unwilling are spurning all things French including French fries, French kissing and French wines because France did not send troops to Iraq. Personally, I find the French wines not a good value for the dollar. I prefer our own Canadian wines when they are on sale, or when the LCBO insists on keeping domestic prices up, the South African and Australian wines.

I agreed with Waters that marketing was one of the main problems for French wines as they have to attract the younger drinkers with slicker ads and promotions. They need a movie like Sideways to sell their wine. I can see Gérard Despardieu behind the wheel of an old Citroen, weaving down the Rhone valley . . . That 50% of the surplus wines came from Bordeaux came as no surprise since I much prefer the Provencal wines. However what really appalled me was that the French were distilling this surplus wine into ethanol for use as factory fuel. Sacré bleu, what a waste!

That it was destined for factory consumption was good news, for if they were using the wine-based ethanol in automobiles one could easily be charged with Driving Under the Influence. Using wine to power our cars comes as close to being a sin as this atheist wants to come. True, our North American ethanol comes mostly from corn, but corn likker does not come even close to the quality of Canadian rye whiskey so I have no problem with corn-based ethanol.

Mixing things with petroleum products is not new. We even used lead in our gas at one time. After all, diesel engines will ingest almost anything and still cough out some black smoke as the compression turns everything from peanut oil and cactus juice into fumes.

My wife’s diesel Jetta will burn almost any grade of diesel fuel without emitting the old smelly fumes, perhaps because the technology has improved or maybe because the fuel is better refined for the many cars now filling up where only transport trucks stopped in years gone by. Now there are reports that diesel fuel puts more pollutants into the air per litre than gasoline, but the Jetta gets 54 miles per gallon on the highway so I suspect that this performance more than covers the pollution equivalence.

I used to burn the ethanol blend in the Impala and it would routinely turn in 34 miles to the gallon on trips so I was pleased with the fuel. After all, when you can get an 89 octane rating for the price of 87 for regular gas, why not use it? The ethanol blend was reportedly cleaner-burning as well, so another point in its favour. My wife calls the ethanol blend ‘herbal’ gas but I recently gave it another name.

I used to fuel up my motorcycle with the ethanol blend, again getting that extra bang from the higher octane even though the Honda runs well on regular gas. About a month ago I filled the bike with the herbal gas only to travel about three kilometres before the engine began coughing and sputtering, finally coming to a stop. I immediately thought of water in the gas, so I drained a little of the fuel from the carburetors (it’s an older bike) to look for the tell-take sign of water beading on my handkerchief. No sign of water.

$270 later the Honda is running well again, now using regular instead of herbal gas. There was something in the fuel that gummed up the entire system requiring a complete solvent rinse to clear out whatever was in that fuel. I do not know if the gasoline manufacturers put something in the blended gas to stabilize the ethanol with the petroleum, but there was certainly something in the gas that the Honda could not handle. My old Briggs and Stratton lawn mower still has some of the herbal gas in its tank and it runs okay, but then that engine has been coughing into action for twenty years and I doubt anything would bother it. Which reminds me, I should change its oil sometime. Maybe next year.

The article on changing Bordeaux into ethanol (no biblical reference intended) reminded me that a couple of years ago a lot of Ontario wine was spoiled by little beetles or aphids getting into the grape mix and the wine had to be thrown out. Now I’m wondering if the petrol company did not buy that wine and distil it for use as ethanol for cars. My bike may have sensed a subtle hint of Entre-deux-Lacs with an after-taste of beetle and simply refused to Drive Under the Influence.