Jun 6, 2016
It appears that one day, probably in my lifetime, people in labs will have the capability of replicating perfectly any bottle of wine made anywhere on the planet. That is to say, science is moving us closer to the day when a bottle of DRC, Petrus, Screaming Eagle or any other wine can be perfectly duplicated in a lab—all the way down to the texture, aroma and taste. When this happens it will not be the first time that ingenuity…
May 26, 2016
The burning question of our day appears to have been answered: “Does drinking make people happier, or does being happier make people drink?” This is the question that scientists in the UK wanted to answer and developed an app to help them gather the data to come up with an answer you will surely find hard to believe: “After controlling for prior happiness, the researchers found that the drinking had a slightly smaller boost on overall happiness, but the effect…
May 24, 2016
This is a tale of incompetence, crookery, fraud and good old fashioned comedy: 1978 Romanee Conti “I immediately knew that the 1978 Romanée Conti was counterfeit and that there were four significant things wrong with it…First, and most obviously, the Romanee Conti wine had a plain red capsule. Second, the bottle itself has embossed glass – it says “Domaine de la Romanée Conti” at the bottom of the glass. That immediately told me this bottle is fake because none of…
Feb 9, 2016
“The question for the wine industry is whether marijuana consumption could replace any portion of wine (alcohol) consumption. This isn’t the right question. The right question is: what portion of wine consumption will marijuana consumption replace? The first question was apparently the topic of conversation at a session during the recent Unified Symposium that dwelt on “historic and emerging disruptions to the wine industry.” I’m absolutely convinced that the coming state-by-state legalization of marijuana will replace some wine consumption. How…
Jan 13, 2016
Blake Gray looks at the Federal Trade Commissions recently approved merger of Southern Wine & Spirits and Glazers and is exactly correct in his conclusions: The merger this week of Southern Wine & Spirits and Glazer has created a 41-state behemoth with exclusive rights to many essential brands and the market power to muscle out smaller competitors. This is normally the type of company that the U.S. tries to break up to protect consumers, but alcohol is a special case,…