Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category
M. Shanken's IMPACT Magazine reports today that the six distributors of wine & spirits in the United States control more than 50% of all sales of wine and spirits in this country. By this time next year you can almost be sure that it will be five, maybe even just four, distributors that control that much of the wine and spirits sales in the United States. Southern Wine &I Spirits controls 20% of the entire distribution market for wine &…
An Open Letter To the Wine Trade If you think American alcohol distributors and wholesalers are your friends then you are begging for disappointment. All you have to do to understand the nefarious intent of wine and spirit distributors is take a look at their most recent statement by one of their most important leaders. According to reports coming out of the recently ended Wine & Spirit Wholesales Association Annual Convention in Las Vegas, Craig Wolf, the Association's CEO, declared…
Based on reports from Las Vegas this morning, (and here) Sarah Palin gave a keynote address to the attendees of the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers Association's (WSWA) Annual Convention. And as suspected, she had nothing to say about the issue of wine and spirits. Again, this is not a surprise. No one expected Palin to be educated on issues of the three tier system, the history of wine and spirits in America, the constitutional and legal issues that surround directs…
It's remarkable!! An initiative that is currently gathering signatures for California's November ballot would, if approved by the voters, increase the tax on a bottle of wine by 12,675% TWELVE THOUSAND SIX-HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT!!! How could this possibly be justified? The initiative's sponsors, Josephine and Kent M. Whitney, provide the following reasoning: (a) Alcohol-related problems cost Californians an estimated $38.4 billion annually, including the costs of illness and injury, the criminal justice system, lost productivity, impacts on the welfare…
There are treats to be had by working in the wine industry and I'm not talking the food and wine that does indeed flow so copiously. Rather, I'm talking about the opportunities I'm fortunate enough to have to share ideas with colleagues and learn from the best. I had such an opportunity last week when I spent time in Seattle at TASTE Washington. I was invited to sit on a couple seminar panels at the annual celebration of Washington wines….
