Mar 27, 2007
Mike Dunne of the Sacramento Bee has written a wonderful article on the Authentication Controversy swirling about the world of rare wine. The controversy came to the surface when a gentleman who paid $500,000 for wine thought to once to have been in the collection of Thomas Jefferson claims the wines are fake. He filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in New York claiming fraud. It’s a pretty fascinating and complex story which can be found at Bloomberg HERE, while…
Mar 23, 2007
Honesty. It’s perhaps the most important virtue any person can possess. I’ve argued for some time that while American Viticultural Areas can have meaning related to the character of the wine inside them, their primary value is as a marketing tool. The Paso Robles wine folk have seen fit to be quite honest about this assessment in looking to pass a new labeling law. American Viticultural Areas are lines on a map that are approved in Washington,D.C. The area inside…
Mar 22, 2007
Here’s an interesting question:When you buy a case of wine over the Internet from a winery website and when you buy a case of wine over the Internet from a wine shop website, are the two transactions different in any substantial way? We are finding that both wine distributors and state alcohol regulators are attempting to make the case that they are substantially different transactions. In fact, according to these two groups, these two transaction are so different that the…
Mar 19, 2007
I’ve reported before how the mainstream (not blogs, not wine media) media tends to cover wine almost only when there is a prurient angle. Here’s another example. Yesterday ABC Radio News was reporting that a citizen of Utah who’s license plate read "Merlot" will have it revoked because "intoxicant words" are banned from vanity plates in that part of the United States. The owner of the plate has had it for ten years now, but recently someone anonymously informed the…
Mar 13, 2007
I wanted to bring this issue out of the comments section because I think it is an interesting issue. A reader commented earlier that this statement on the back of a bottle of California Malbec is probably done to try to piggyback on the Bordeaux’s well deserved quality reputation: :"Malbec is one of the five red varieties traditionally used in Bordeaux wines." In fact the commenter said this: "So, why then does the producer want to put it on the…