Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category
Yesterday the National Transportation Safety Board recommended lowering the legal blood alcohol level for drivers from .08 to .05, which would put the U.S. (or any states that adopted the new, lower level) in line with the standard for much of the rest of the world. The question is what impact would this change have on wine drinkers? What impact would it have on the level of fatalities caused by drunk drivers? HOW MUCH COULD YOU DRINK?Look at any of…
I believe the Annual Wine Bloggers Conference provides a large measure of inspiration, education and insight for those writers that attend. It’s for this reason that the Wine Bloggers Conference Scholarship Fund, which helps bring a number of bloggers to the conference who may not be able to afford it otherwise, is a very good thing and kudos to Thea Dwelle for administering the scholarship fund. But this is also why I will offer this challenge to the wine industry,…
In the realm of economic theory there is a concept known as “Rent Seeking”. Unlike much of economic theory, its meaning isn’t very complicated. In fact, Wikipedia has boiled it down quite nicely: “spending resources in order to gain by increasing one’s share of existing wealth, instead of trying to create wealth….Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity.” The most common form of “rent seeking” occurs when a business or association of businesses…
Leave it to the University of California at Davis and to the school’s Dr. Linda Bisson and Dr. Lucy Joseph to give the dreaded Brettanomyces yeast a new lease on life in an era where clean and wholesome winemaking seems to be the desired norm. Brettanomyces (“Brett”) is commonly understood to be a defect when detectable in a wine. It is known as the organism that provides a wine a “barnyardy” (poop) aroma or, in what some would call its…
During the most recent election cycle (2011-2012) money in campaigns was the single issue that got more attention than the presidential election. The Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision allowed near unfettered amounts of money to come streaming into campaigns. In this milieu, how did the alcohol industry perform? The numbers are in on this score and the answer is that the alcohol industry most certainly pulls its weight. Money in politics and particularly campaign contributions are most often looked at…
