Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

May 24, 2013

WINE IDEAS—What if, Imagine, If Only

• What if restaurants provided their customers with $0.10, one-ounce pours of wine immediately upon seating and changed up the wine every evening? • Imagine if there were an annual, televised, celebrated national wine competition. • If only the states put consumers first before satisfying the interests of the largest campaign competitors when it came to alcohol laws and regulations. • What if winery tasting rooms took photos of all their patrons in a “CHEERS!” pose and provided them with…

Jan 4, 2013

Pinot, Pork Loin and Consumers: The Grocery Store and Wine Debate

Seventeen states ban the sale of wine in grocery stores. Seventeen. The question this brings to mind is this: Is this policy of prohibiting consumers from purchasing a Pinot when they purchase their pork loin justifiable? I’ve been pondering this as at least four states gear up to look at their wine-in-grocery store policy in 2013: Kansas, Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee. What’s fascinating is that this debate never happens over the issue of “is the current policy justifiable”. Do…

Dec 18, 2012

The Top Wine Stories Coming in 2013

What issues will the wine trade and the more active wine consumers be talking about, be concerned with and be reading about in 2013? Predicting what is to come is not really that difficult if you read the tea leaves without splashing them around too much and stick with a concentration on the past. What follows, in no particular order, are my top ten issues that will rise to the top in 2013 by virtue of what has come before…

Nov 26, 2012

Wine Industry Kerfuffle Masks Mighty Political Failure

Press releases are interesting tools. They are, even within the wine industry, almost in every case a matter self-aggrandizement. One rarely sees a company issue a release informing the media that “XYZ Winery Sales Suck” or “Administrative Chaos Reigns at XYZ Wine Company”. Rather, press releases are almost always issued to point the media and readers to a virtual smiley face the company issuing the press release has drawn. What follows is a tale of one such smiley face and…

Nov 7, 2012

Napa vs Sonoma: Politics, Not Wine

Napa vs. Sonoma. It’s a theme I’ve enjoyed exploring over the years on FERMENTATION. Mostly I’ve compared the two counties for the benefit of travelers and in the context of wine production. However, yesterday’s election and all the talk of where a state’s Democratic and Republican votes come from, ethnic breakdowns, etc, provided an interesting backdrop for looking further at these two wine country counties. For the record, I’ve lived in both and currently reside in Napa. The first thing…