Last week was a banner one for Colorado’s Mesa County.
The 32nd annual Colorado Mountain Winefest was held Saturday in Palisade’s beautiful Riverbend Park. By all accounts it was a glowing success. The official figures are impressive: more than 5,000 attendees from 40 states and five countries, sampling the wares of more than 50 Colorado wineries (including meaderies and cider producers, virtually all of which source their grapes, honey or fruit from Colorado’s Western Slope), and in the process injecting somewhere in the neighbouhood of $1.1 million into the local economy.
Anecdotally, it was a bucolic day, weather perfectly warm and sunny, offering what for the wine enthusiast is pretty much the ideal day — spending it with fellow wine enthusiasts sampling wine.Winefest is put on every year by the good people at the Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology (CAVE), which is a fancy way of saying an organization dedicated to supporting the state’s relatively nascent wine and grape-growing industry, and they are to be commended for their efforts. “Western Colorado” may not be synonymous with “Bordeaux,” at least not yet, but they are getting there. And, though accounting for the fact that palates differ, I would put most Colorado whites up against those from California any day.
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Just prior to that happy event, Grand Junction metaphorically hosted the world for a global trade event, the first of its kind in western Colorado, dubbed appropriately, if ambitiously, “The World Comes To Grand Junction”. State Rep. Matt Soper (R-Delta) choreographed the event, with the assistance of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, the Grand Junction Economic Partnership and the Business Incubator. They brought in the consul generals of the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Taiwan to discuss current trade relationships and potential opportunities which exist between their respective nations and Colorado. One could not help but be left with a certain level of astonishment at the volume and scope of international trade that passes through Grand Junction, let alone Colorado.
Taiwan’s involvement was particularly interesting, for a few reasons. First, like the other nations represented, Taiwan does a surprising amount of business with Colorado. A number of Grand Junction-based companies, during a fascinating and engaging panel discussion moderated expertly by State Rep. Rick Taggart (R-Grand Junction), reported on their close relationship with Taiwan, both as source for importing components and as a market for finished goods.
This in itself is not terribly surprising; we are living in a global economy after all, the other nations at the summit reported similar arrangements, and the Taiwanese are an industrious, free and capitalist people. Unlike those other nations, however, Taiwan does not enjoy official full diplomatic relations with the United States; not since former President Jimmy Carter decided it was a brilliant idea to sever official ties with Taiwan so as not to offend Communist Chinese sensibilities. That obviously complicates issues a little, including the fact that the Taiwanese consulate cannot call itself that: officially, it is the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Denver; the Consul General, Bill Huang (incidentally one of the ablest and most professional diplomats I have met) denied the use of that tile, referred to instead as “Director General”.
It was also an interesting time for Taiwan to be there given a number of world events that played out. The U.S. is not the only entity that does not officially recognize Taiwan — the United Nations, shamefully, has excluded Taiwan as a member for decades, at the behest of communist China. Well, the day of the event in Grand Junction, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed said, in response to a question from a National Review reporter about whether Taiwan’s exclusion from the U.N. holds back efforts on development, “I think exclusion of anyone holds back the goals. We said leave no one behind, and I think that the states have to find a way to make sure that we are not in that position where we’re excluding people.”
A pretty milquetoast answer, but enough of a suggestion Taiwan should assume its rightful place in the predominant world body that it soon elicited howls of protest from the ever-triggered Chinese communist regime and, of course, a subsequent compliant retreat from the U.N. Secretary General.
Taiwan is, for all intents and purposes, a free independent nation-state. They know it. China knows it. We know it. Grand Junction business people know it. Even the U.N., when not allowing itself to be blinded by Chinese propaganda, apparently knows it.
Grand Junction welcomed Taiwan as a nation last week. I wish the U.N. possessed the same grace, common sense and decency.
Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.