Shrubs With Private Jets
TASTING NOTES: “Aroma/Flavor: black currant/plum/coriander/sage/hazelnut/cocoa powder/toffee. Texture: bright/balanced/fleshy/spicy/chewy.” (AbV 14%, pH 4.05)
VARIETALS: 56% Cabernet Sauvignon / 25% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc / 1% Malbec, 1% Petit verdot
BARRELS: New oak barrels.
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Hedges, the winery’s name, and the word’s long career from garden fence to Wall Street.
A hedge is a row of shrubs you plant to mark a boundary, and somewhere along the way “hedge your bets” turned it into a verb for protecting yourself from loss. The financial version has a founding father: Alfred Winslow Jones, a sociologist (with a Columbia PhD, no less) who started an investment partnership in 1949. His trick was to buy stocks he liked and short the ones he didn’t, so a market-wide swing would cancel out and only his picking skill would be left. The label “hedge fund” showed up later, and I find it hilarious that an industry now synonymous with private jets and eleven-figure paydays is named after the thing between you and the neighbor’s driveway.
The linguists got there too. In 1972, George Lakoff wrote a paper literally titled “Hedges,” about words like sort of, technically, loosely speaking, and kind of, the little shrubs we plant around a sentence so nobody can hold us to it. Once you know the term you hear them everywhere. I’m basically a hedge row, honestly, or at least something like one, in a way.
