Jun 20, 2011
I'm a fairly busy guy. However, I'm never too busy to help out the good folks at the different state legislatures. So, allow me to take some time out from this fairly busy schedule of mine to put the New Jersey Legislature on the right course. Seems they have a conundrum on their hands. In the Garden State, local wineries are allowed to sell wine directly to wine stores and not go through a middleman wholesaler. In addition, New Jersey…
Jun 7, 2011
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…
Jun 2, 2011
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…
May 27, 2011
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…
May 26, 2011
SYNONYM OF THE DAY In·er·tia [in-ur-shuh]1. inertness, especially with regard to effort, motion, action, and like; inactivity; sluggishness. Three [three] - Tier [teer] - Sys·tem [sis-tuhm]1. inertness, especially with regard to effort, motion, action, and like; inactivity; sluggishness. Never has such a pure set of synonyms existed. Dramatic proof that the three tier system is really just an example of systematic inertia comes to us from Alabama, where local wineries that can't get distributors to sell their wine and hence…