Archive for the ‘Wine Consumers’ Category

Aug 12, 2020

The Problem of Wine’s Diminishing “Aspiration Gap”

Wine selling venues shuttered due to COVID. Neo-Prohibitionism on the rise. A continuing invasion of new and high-quality imports. Dietary guidelines recommending 1 drink a day instead of 2 for men. Tariffs on EU Wines. New and different drinks like cider and hard seltzer competing for palates. It’s not as though wine doesn’t face enough headwinds. So, of course, I’m here to note one more breeze that wine faces—and has faced for some time, despite it not being discussed much:…

Aug 4, 2020

The Top Ten Important Wine Questions

There are a variety of interesting and even significant questions staring the wine industry in the face right this minutes. They are the kind of questions that have answers that will significantly impact the wine industry and they are the kind of questions I like to ponder and often write about. These are ten of those questions and they are questions I don’t have answers to and in some cases, don’t even know how to evaluate. Do you? ONE Fifteen…

Aug 3, 2020

Imagine if Selling Shoes Was as Absurd as Selling Wine

I recently had the opportunity to provide one half of dueling opinion pieces in the Columbus Dispatch. The issue was, “Should Ohio Restrict Online Sales of Spirits and Wine”. The reason for the dueling op-eds was as a response to the Ohio Attorney General’s claim that out-of-state wine retailers illegally shipped into the state and his filing for an injunction against those retailers in Federal Court. My Op-Ed is here. The gentlemen providing all the reasons why Ohio consumers should…

Jul 15, 2020

In Praise of Wine Snobs and Classists

And now let us praise the wealthy, wealthy-adjacent, privileged, conspicuously consuming wine consumers who, with their showy and snooty displays and consumption of expensive, rare, hard-to-find, wines from Old World and New World wine regions with particular emphasis on wines of high ratings, have created the modern wine industry and made way for the diversity of wine now seen across America. Hazzah! Now imagine a world in which California wines named “Burgundy, Barbaresco, and White Chablis” all made from some…

Jun 16, 2020

What Wine Do You Pair With Word Salad?

I assume everyone has read the important new “Essay” produced by the Center for Alcohol Policy entitled “Crisis De-regulations: Should They Stay or Should They Go?” .…LOL….Sorry. That was a joke. Of course you haven’t read it. No one reads the reports produced by this wholesaler funded organization. Why? Because they are a collection of amateurishly researched and written word salads meant to sound authoritative but are really produced to exclusively benefit the bottom line of wholesalers at the expense…