I’m not a woman. So maybe I’m not physically equipped to understand the significance of the "First web community for women who love wine, travel and the best of everything." Nevertheless, I’m going to give it a shot. Karen MacNeil, one of America’s most important wine authorities explains the new website, womenwine.com, this way:"As they do with fashion, food and design, women have a special sensibility when it comes to wine. Part of learning about wine is experiencing it first…

I’ve never met a headline editor. But they do exist, particularly at the large media organizations. When you consider that headline scanning is the preferred method of consuming media it becomes clear just how important the message of a headline is. Below are headlines attached to the same Associated Press story that ran across the web and in numerous newspapers yesterday and today. Michelle Locke’s story concerns the wine trade pact that the EU and the US are trying to…

Wine Warehouse Fire: ARSON! Simply Ugly…and looking to get UGLIER

It appears that a massive fire at a 240,000 square foot warehouse that stores wine may have caused over $100,000,000 in damage to more than a half milliion cases of wine that were stored there. The warehouse is owned by Wines Central in Vallejo, California, just down the road from Napa Valley. According to a story by the San Francisco Chronicle, the warehouse was the resting place for winery-owned cases of wine, collectors’ wines and wines stored by marketing companies….

Blake Gray, the SF Chronicle’s ubiquitous wine writer, made note of the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s tasted "Pinot Noirs" with Syrah blended into them: "Blending up to 25 percent of a varietal different from the one on the label is already legal in the United States. I’ve never seen a Pinot Noir/Syrah combination listed on a front label, but I’m pretty sure I’ve tasted plenty of them, especially in the bargain price range." Blake, I think, is being…