Jan 16, 2008
"While wandering the aisles of a Lithuanian supermarket recently…" If you aren’t willing to at least investigate a wine blog that begins a post like this then you really shouldn’t be in the business of open minded wine inquiry. It has been a while since I recommended a new wine blog. But Reign of Terroir, written by three highly educated wine lovers and educators, is well worth a recommendation if only for the intellectually rigor and thoughtfulness they put into…
Jan 2, 2008
I love reading predictions, particularly those that come at the beginning of the year. They usually are very good recaps of those trends that flew just below the radar the year before. Laurie Daniel of the San Jose Mercury news has a nice set of predictions for the wine industry in 2008. They amount to higher prices on imports due to the weak dollar, the "greening" of the wine industry and more transparency in wine packaging and the emergence of…
Dec 31, 2007
The Art of Drinking on New Years Eve First let’s begin from the premise that New Year’s Eve is, or at least has become, an accepted excuse to indulge. Now, let’s change the traditional understanding of the idea of "indulging" from meaning excessive consumption of drink and make it mean excessive consumption of good drink. This change is meaning is important because it’s necessary to justify opening absurd amounts of very good wines and spirits and also assumes a certain…
Dec 7, 2007
The 2007 calendar year is coming to an end an that prompts me to think harder about the past two months, to make assessments and to try to learn some lessons before we move on the perfectly lovely arbitrary notion of a "new year". The wine new of 2007 when looked at retrospectively turns out to be truly educational as well as a signal of what to anticipate in the coming year and years. Here are my most interesting news…
Nov 30, 2007
Louisa Hufstader, writing for the Napa Valley Register, gets the prize for Best Line of the Week: "Men are from Parker, women are from Robinson?" Hufstader is writing in the context of a story on women in the wine business, which was the topic as a recent event at Copia. In the course of writing her story on this topic, Hufstader brings us around to a salient point made by Elizabeth Thach, Ph.D., a professor of wine business and management…