Archive for the ‘Wine Legal Battles’ Category
The modern American alcohol regulatory system was dreamed up and implemented in the early 1930s by a group of men whose most recent experience with alcohol was thirteen years of national Prohibition, violent bootleggers and the pre-Prohibition moral squalor of the “Tavern”. Eighty-five years later the system that was created when school segregation was the law of the land, when child labor was largely unregulated and when there was no constitutional right to a minimum wage. remains mainly unchanged. The…
It’s hard to argue with James Conaway, the writer and essayist who recently savaged the culture of Napa Valley and many of its inhabitants in a piece he penned for The Atlantic. It’s hard to do this because I like James so much, respect him tremendously and marvel at his writing skills. But it’s because he does know that I respect him that I’m sure he’ll take the following critique of his hyperbolic, unfair and somewhat sloppy Atlantic article in…
“The multitude of violations found during the course of these investigations is truly staggering” This is the description of the corruption exhibited by Southern-Glazer’s, uncovered by the New York State Liquor Authority and that led it to issue a $3.5 million fine on the largest wine wholesalers in the United States. Incidentally, this fine levied upon Southern-Glazers for violating a host of NY laws comes in the wake of Southern-Glazer’s being fined $5 million earlier in 2017 by the state…
Wine News in 2017 was big and varied. Lots of big changes and big events. Some of it was predictable. Other news, well not so predictable. Here are my Top 10 Wine News Stories of 2017. They are not presented in any order of importance and they tend to focus in part on California’s wine industry. WINE COUNTRY FIRES DEVASTATE The fires scarred everyone in Napa and Sonoma. The land will recover, but the personal, economic, and psychological toll will…
In an earlier post concerning an effort here in Napa Valley to prevent any more plantings of vineyards anywhere but on the Valley floor, I claimed that the proponents of the Oak Woodlands initiative had a hidden agenda they were not talking about. I was right. In a recent letter to the Napa Valley Register, the author of the Oak Woodland Initiative, Mike Hackett, noted that the Initiative “represents a step in the right direction.” Not the solution to a…
