Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category
We all know how to make reservations. And most all of us know how to make them on-line at this point. We reserve hotel rooms, tables, seats at shows, transportation options and much more. The reason we reserve anything is because there is only a limited number of the things we need and the reservation guarantees us a place or a thing? Are visits to winery tasting rooms somethng to be reserved? Increasingly, in Napa Valley and other wine country…
The morning routine at the Wark-Berez house is fairly regimented: Tom, Cats, Dog, Read. My morning coffee is the first priority, for without it little else carries much import…or gets done. The cats then get their food. The dog is next as I need a little time to recover from the fog of sleep to deal with Louie, who is demanding, quick and unpredictable, while the Cats are merely predictably demanding. The caffeine helps. But then it's time to consume…
Recently, an administrative bureaucrat went well beyond his role as the enforcer of laws that others passed, and became the protector, champion and cheerleader of those folks whose actions they are charged with monitoring for the state. If not a culture of corruption that lets this happen, it is certainly an attitude of disregard that supports this kind of improper dismissal of fairness, perspective and self control. Yesterday in a press release issued by the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission, the…
If by this point wine producers, beer producers, spirit producers and alcohol retailers haven't learned that their "wholesale partners" disrespect them and think them incapable of grasping what is at stake with the politics of wine, then they just aren't listening. Consider the following from the latest issue of Beverage Media, an alcohol beverage trade publication: "The most consistent thing about this business has been the wholesalers. The suppliers have had an enormous rate of turnover over the years and…
Thinking About… THE REVELATIONUpon reading Anthony Lane's remarkably thoughtful analysis of Terrence Malik's new film, The Tree of Life, in The New Yorker, it finally hit me why wine critics likely won't rise to the quality challenge laid down by critics surveying other pursuits such as film, literature, dance and music: As an object of analysis and thoughtful critique, a wine provides no interpretation of the human condition, giving its critics little to grasp on to in order to engage…
