Dec 4, 2019
It’s always interesting to go back and take a look at those posts here at FERMENTATION that attracted the most readers over the past year. It tells me not only what kind of topics my readers enjoy reading, but it also gives me a sense of which topics resonate most within the industry (My readership is primarily made up of industry members). With that in mind, here are the top 10 most read posts here at FERMENTATION over the past…
Dec 3, 2019
The wine industry in America is a trailing indicator of the culture and economy. It always has been. The top stories in wine in 2019 reflect this truism. Politics, powerful social movements, the economy, evolving modes of consumerism and natural disasters all came together to give us the industry’s biggest stories in 2019. These are those stories. Supreme Court Pushes Back on Protectionism Fourteen years ago the U.S. Supreme Court rendered an opinion in Granholm v Heald that created the…
Nov 25, 2019
Just the other day while scrolling through my Facebook feed I came across a very simple post by a wine person. It asked the following question: “ARE WINE BLOGS DEAD?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Nor was it facetious? Instead, I think the question was ill-formed. I think what they were asking (or should have been asking) is, “DO WINE BLOGS STILL MATTER?” I contemplate this question on the 15th anniversary of FERMENTATION: The Dailly Wine Blog’s founding back in…
Jul 29, 2019
I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to mock the American president. One can disagree with a president. One can support an American president’s electoral defeat. One can urge others to oppose a president’s policies and initiatives. But mocking a president almost always seems imprudent and juvenile and destructive of democracy. Or not. I’m a chauvinist. Why I’m a chauvinist I can’t say. Nevertheless, I’m almost always going to be inclined to come to the defense of the…
May 21, 2019
Tuesday, May 21, 2019, is “Chardonnay Day. It is also my son’s birthday. The two are not connected in any way. However, I do know why May 21 is Henry George’s birthday. I just don’t know why it’s also “Chardonnay Day. Chardonnay is America’s favorite varietal wine. Annually it sells more than 30 million cases, according to Nielsen. (There is, however, only one Henry George, making him a far more valuable commodity on a bottle v. baby basis) On the…