Our dearest friend in New Orleans, Mr. Jerry, was ill. In fact, he was in the hospital and Jake Lorenzo wasn't sure he would get out. Then some tiny but brilliant doctor from Sri Lanka found the problem. Mr. Jerry was infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a particular hardy, insidious bacterium. There is hardly any tissue that Pseudomonas cannot infect if the tissue defenses are compromised in some manner, and Mr. Jerry has some seriously compromised immune issues so he was a perfect target.

The doctor put my friend on a severe antibiotic regimen that involved receiving drip treatments three to four times a day for six to seven weeks. Each day Mr. Jerry was hooked up to a machine for five hours. Each day the wound that had provided the entry point for the infection had to be cleaned and bandaged. Several days each week, he had to go to the hospital where his liver and blood levels were monitored to track how they were handling the medicine. Whenever he met with the Sri Lankan doctor, the doctor would give him a cookie and tell him, "We will beat this infection."

When Jakelyn's mother and I visited Mr. Jerry last January, he was in the fifth week of treatment and was starting to rally. In fact, he had improved enough that we were able to celebrate his birthday at Galatoire's. It was the first time he had been out in months. He walked slowly and had to use a cane, but he made it to the dinner.

Last week, when we returned to New Orleans, Mr. Jerry was much improved. Walking without a cane and freed from the restrictive drip regimen of antibiotics, he was returning to his funny, sarcastic self. We went out to Mr. B's for dinner and then made our way to the Bombay Club to hear Luther Kent.

The walk from Mr. B's to the Bombay Club was four or five blocks. A light rain was falling, but all of a sudden my detective instincts kicked in and I noticed that the French Quarter was hopping. Mr. B's had been packed. There were lines out the door of Acme, Felix's and Deanie's. Bourbon St. was mobbed. Even the Bombay Club was crowded until the last set at midnight. Walking back to our cars at 1 a.m., music blared from the open doors, revelers danced in the streets and traffic was bumper to bumper. Jake Lorenzo hadn't seen the French Quarter like this since Hurricane Katrina.

People tend to forget that, for the most part, New Orleans survived Hurricane Katrina in good shape. It was the failure of the levees and the subsequent flooding that caused the major damage. The ruptures of the levees compromised the city's defenses and the toxic floodwaters spread throughout the city like a virulent Pseudomonas bacteria. It has been a long, hard road to recovery and there have been setbacks like Hurricanes Rita and Gustav, but from where Jake Lorenzo is sitting, it appears that the medicines are starting to have an effect. New Orleans may be weakened, but it is definitely coming back.

Because Mr. Jerry was feeling better, we slipped back into our normal day-to-day activity, which centered around eating in great restaurants. There are more restaurants open and operating in New Orleans now than before Katrina, and this is in a city that lost 20 to 25 percent of its population. The food is as good as ever. From grand classics like Galatoire's to Commander's Palace and favorite neighborhood places like Clancy's and Pascal's Manale to new favorites like Coquette and Lillette, the food of New Orleans is fantastic.

It's the wine prices that are stupid.

In most places a glass of wine starts at $8 per glass and quickly escalates to $14, and that's for a four-ounce pour. You never find wine on a list below $30 per bottle and there is very little worth drinking below $40. Faced with these exorbitant, inflated wine prices this detective opts for cold, frosty pints of local brew or one of the delicious cocktails served at any establishment in the city.

Even banking executives partying in the Crescent City and trying to spend their bailout money bonus checks pause when presented a wine list in New Orleans. Look around the tables in the restaurants and you see everyone is still drinking, but precious few are drinking wine. There are fewer containers waiting to be unloaded at the city's distributors, and that means less truckers are hauling those containers, which means less wine is being ordered.

All those winery accountants with their noses pressed up against the bottom line are pushing alarm buttons. They are shouting, "The sky is falling. The sky is falling." Winery owners are listening, evidenced by a look at the Wine Business Monthly listing for grapes and bulk wine, which is beginning to take on encyclopedic volume. Turrentine, Ciatti and the other bulk sales entities have so much available bulk wine that they could flood New Orleans anew if they let it slip through the levees of commerce.

This whole wine pricing thing has gotten out of hand. Like a rampaging Pseudomonas infection it is raging through the land and threatening to take out wine life as we know it. Well, Jake Lorenzo is no doctor and I'm certainly not from Sri Lanka, but I think we can beat this infection and I'll give you a cookie.

We don't need any more mediocre $40 bottles of Merlot and Cabernet. $150 bottles of wine smack of greed and snobbism and just don't fly in an Obama world. The poor American wine consumer has been beaten and battered by ridiculous wine pricing for years now. We need to get them on a strict daily regimen of decent wine at fair prices. What if all of those famous winemakers making their expensive bottles of wine took this time to challenge themselves? Get out there on the bulk wine market, find all those hidden treasures and use your gifted talents to create some truly exciting blends.

Find some new, unique, light-bodied, "green" packaging and get those wines out into the market at prices the public can afford. Load up all those empty containers with low-priced, delicious wines and ship them to our financially strapped friends in places like Fargo, Seattle and Florida. Make the prices so attractive that restaurants can afford to sell a glass for $4. Put them on the wine shelves at $5.99.

We have plenty of winemakers with the ability to make this happen. It's been fun working with the finest grapes and the best equipment to create some of the best wine in the world. Now it's time to roll up your sleeves and get back into the muck. Do some heavy lifting, challenge those old palate muscles and make something special. The bulk wine is out there. The pricing is attractive. The time is now.

Every economic crisis provides an economic opportunity. Jake Lorenzo says that the wine industry should take advantage of this one. Think of it as our industry's private stimulus package. John Q. Public could use a drink, and in these economic hard times old John Q. should have one that he can enjoy.

Really good wine, at a really fair price. Now that would be a miracle, a flat out miracle. wbm