Mar 27, 2007
Mike Dunne of the Sacramento Bee has written a wonderful article on the Authentication Controversy swirling about the world of rare wine. The controversy came to the surface when a gentleman who paid $500,000 for wine thought to once to have been in the collection of Thomas Jefferson claims the wines are fake. He filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in New York claiming fraud. It’s a pretty fascinating and complex story which can be found at Bloomberg HERE, while…
Mar 26, 2007
One of the requirements of my particular job is to consume media…lots of it, hourly, seven days a week. The requirement is dictated by the necessity I feel to have a grip on the general cultural and social atmosphere Wark Communication’s clients are working within. There is an ever-changing context of ideas and trends that affects the way most people perceive ideas, products and activities. I feel like a good PR dude needs to have a grasp on this context…
Mar 23, 2007
Honesty. It’s perhaps the most important virtue any person can possess. I’ve argued for some time that while American Viticultural Areas can have meaning related to the character of the wine inside them, their primary value is as a marketing tool. The Paso Robles wine folk have seen fit to be quite honest about this assessment in looking to pass a new labeling law. American Viticultural Areas are lines on a map that are approved in Washington,D.C. The area inside…
Mar 13, 2007
I wanted to bring this issue out of the comments section because I think it is an interesting issue. A reader commented earlier that this statement on the back of a bottle of California Malbec is probably done to try to piggyback on the Bordeaux’s well deserved quality reputation: :"Malbec is one of the five red varieties traditionally used in Bordeaux wines." In fact the commenter said this: "So, why then does the producer want to put it on the…
Mar 7, 2007
The measure of a person’s commitment to an idea must surely be the length to which they are willing to go to make their point. When a person is willing to go the distance, and do so with the kind of delicious satire that Darryl Roberts of Wine X Magazine does, you really have to step back and marvel at the brilliance. As we recently heard, Roberts shut down his subversive Wine X Magazine after years of publishing. In doing…