Down home Inc.Most everyone has seen those homey cans and jars of Muir Glen Organic tomato products at their market; and darn good products they are, too. But we were a little puzzled the other day to receive a press release for Muir Glen Organic Hot Salsa datelined Sedro-Woolley, Wash. Tomatoes? Our chilly little Sedro-Woolley, 35 miles from the Canadian border?! Surely not. But we decided to call to make sure. Funny: The area code on the contact phone number was an unfamiliar one: 847. And no wonder, since 847 is the area code for Lake Zurich, Ill., where Muir Glen’s public-relations lady informed us that although Muir Glen’s postal address is 719 Metcalf St. in Sedro-Woolley, the tomatoes in Muir Glen products are grown, canned, and bottled in California, and although Muir Glen is a subdivision of Small Planet Foods, Small Planet Foods is a subdivision of General Mills, with head offices in Minneapolis (area code 612). Then why send out press releases “from” Sedro-Woolley? “Well, we do have offices there.” Or at least did: Another down-home General Mills megabrand is Cascadian Farms, which in its days of organic independence was headquartered in Sedro-Woolley. And it seems General Mills wouldn’t mind if you thought it was still headquartered there. Their on-line PR for the brand contains stuff like “From our pristine home farm in Washington state, we’ve extended our line of great-tasting, high-quality organic products . . . “: products like peas from Eastern Washington, peaches from California, breakfast cereals from the Midwest, etc., produced by myriad anonymous contractors and packaged under the Cascadian Farms label. But just in case anybody ever decided to check up, the multinational company maintains a fetching little roadside stand up Sedro-Woolley way on the berry ranch where the brand was born, where you can “stop in for a dish of fresh, seasonal berries or homemade organic ice cream (trust us, the scenery is beautiful!), . . . luscious shortcakes, preserves and delicious organic snacks, too. You’ll be glad you made the trip.” And so will General Mills, we bet.Screwing upEverybody in the wine business realizes that cork closures are expensive, inconvenient, and prone to leakage and spoilage. But cork is such a traditional part of the wine experience that everybody’s been waiting for everybody else to take the big—and totally sensible—step of going to screw caps. Well, somebody finally has: R.H. Phillips, the California company that owns Washington’s Hogue Cellars, is planning to put screw tops on all 3.6 million bottles they produce this year under their own label. And while they’re at it, they’ve decided to go the whole hog and change the bottle shape as well, to “resemble high-end spirit bottles”, which “have a shorter neck and higher shoulders” than traditional long-necked, slope-shouldered wine bottles. (If you’re a gin drinker, you know what they mean.) Now maybe some of the other big guys, who admit that up to 4 percent of the wine they ship is cork-tainted, may get with the program.Wet and WildFor those restaurateurs and retailers seeking wild seafood products from environmentally aware fishermen, the Wild Seafood Exchange get-together at Bell Harbor Conference Center on Friday, April 23, is a must. The one-day conference hosted by Fisherman’s News will give consumers a chance to converse with commercial fishermen and sample new wild-seafood products that could reel anyone in. Remember: Food tastes even better when Mother Nature dishes it up.Puck offThe restaurant we called “our city’s most garishly American tourist-trap chain restaurant” is no more. Last week, the Wolfgang Puck Cafe at First Avenue and University Street closed, leaving tourists hungry for overpriced, designer-label junk food bereft. Seattle staffers putting up the shutters declined to answer our questions about the reason for the demise. The press contact for Wolfgang Puck Worldwide headquarters in Santa Monica was “out of town and not picking up messages,” according to her phone machine; the live lady at Puck’s PR firm said her boss was out of town, too. We were reduced to asking the hunky security guard patrolling the building for help. “What I hear is, they went back to California,” he said. And what more can we ask, really?Food and/or beverage news? E-mail Hot Dish atfood@seattleweekly.com