Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category
In designing a wine label it always rule #1 and sits atop The Guidelines: Don't Offend. The rule is there because no matter what else the wine is, it is a consumer product meant to be sold and marketed. It turns out that it's pretty easy to adhere to this first rule and still take your label design project in any number of directions that satisfy one's brand development, one's sense of aesthetics and one's ego. In addition, this rule…
The finalists in the 2010 American Wine Blog Awards were announced today and they include a variety of nominees who are new to the finalist round. Having been involved in these awards for quite some time and having watched the world of wine blogs for longer, I've now come around to the position that wine blogs are indeed members of the "traditional" or mainstream media. For many, including myself, wine blogs have seemed to live outside this idea of the…
Napa Valley dodged a bullet this week. Were it not for the brave representatives of the people on the Board of Supervisors who resisted the call to allow dirty commercialism to infest this bucolic agricultural paradise, it's quite likely the beautiful grapes you see carpeting the Valley would soon be replaced by wedding chapels and limos filled with with off-the-rack tuxedo-wearing marauders. Worse yet, had the board of supervisors not voted to keep weddings out of Napa Valley wineries, this…
The saying goes, "You dance with the one that brung ya." Applied to politics, this generally means an elected official supports the causes of those that supported him. These days, "support" means campaign contributions. But I'm not convinced that the specter of an elected official doing the bidding of his contributors is the most insidious thing about the the ethical moshpit that is the current system of campaign finance, nor do I think campaign contributions equate to support for the…
If putting the words "Sonoma County" on a wine label would help their wine sell faster or for higher prices, don't you think wineries would have already done so? I do. In fact, I know they would. But clearly many wineries that produce wines from grapes grown in the Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Valley, Alexander Valley, Sonoma Coast and elsewhere inside Sonoma County don't feel a need to place these fairly meaningless words on their labels. Yet…
