Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category
The announcement yesterday that Amazon was shutting down its Amazon Wine marketplace on December 31 was no surprise. With its purchase of hundreds of retailer licenses via its Whole Foods purchase it would out of compliance with tied house laws of numerous states, including California. A retailer, according to CA alcohol beverage law, may not accept payment from producers for advertising and this is exactly what Amazon was doing with its Amazon Wine site. The question is will Wine Woot…
There are certain things that, when they inadvertently catch my attention, waylay me and what I had planned on accomplishing doesn’t get done. An episode of The West Wing appears out of nowhere. A call comes in and the conversation turns to baseball history. My son insists I engage him in a somersault session or discussion on the merits of red versus black M & M’s. (I insist they are identical, but HG assures me they taste different since one…
Here in Napa wine country, I spent most of last week keeping an eye on the danger, checking in with vulnerable friends and clients and reading the Twitter feed of Sarah Stierch. But I was also exposed to various news articles predicting doom for the Napa, Sonoma and California wine industries. There was a slew of shoddy articles that together gave the impression that either Napa was wiped off the map or that there will be no drinkable wine for…
The cannabis industry is coming after wine and alcohol. The Cannabis message du jour (and it’s likely to become the message du always) is that cannabis is better for you than alcohol. The claim is often being used as an argument for legalization. But it’s equally as common to find messaging in cannabis marketing and promoting cannabis by its advocates. I could have posted 100 examples of this kind of cannabis marketing. But what’s the point? A quick Google search…
A little bit of hell broke loose in Napa Valley recently. And the devil still seems to be on the loose. In 2016 a group of “environmentalists” who seem to be bent on rolling back the wine industry in the Valley gathered enough signatures to put an “Oak Woodlands Preservation” initiative on the local ballot. It was an onerous piece of legislation that would have essentially removed property owners’ rights to plant new vineyards in the Valley because five-inch wide…
