Abdication.

To abdicate is to renounce the throne. Why anyone would abandon their claim to the monarchy is beyond me, I'd love to be Queen.  However, not all abdications are negative in nature.  Let's face it, if Edward VIII hadn't let his libido get in the way of his duty to old Blighty we (the royal we?) wouldn't have been blessed with the unparalleled 68 year reign (thus far) of HRH ER II.  Rather, in my humble opinion, an abdication with a negative impact would be the act of usurping the employment of a crown cap closure on my favourite Grüner Veltliner (GV).  And it happened.  This particular abdication, probably of no consequence to most, has caused me quite a bit of consternation.

I loved the old closure on the H&M Hofer GV, I found the crown cap snappy and interesting.  Starting with the 2018 vintage, the Hofer GV is now sealed with a boring old screw cap.  It is my suspicion that using a crown cap on wine, when the consumer expects this type of closure to be reserved solely for beer bottles, negatively impacted the sales of this Austrian wine in the United States.  It is fair to point out that Hofer also changed the bottle shape (more Bordeaux-ish now) and the glass colour, but those two items are not nearly as distinct as a crown cap and, to be honest, probably would go unnoticed by the consumer.  Ho hum.  Alas, nothing remains unchanged.  I'll survive, I suppose, but perhaps I need to buy myself a tiara and wear it whilst enjoying a glass of this GV in the future.