Jun 23, 2006
The word on the street is that while the 2005 Bordeaux vintage is quite good, the pricing of the top wines is, well, quite ridiculous. Decanter has the story. But consider this: First tranche pricing of only a portion of Chateau Lafite’s 2005 bottling was announced at $375 per bottle for negociants. The negociants are selling a bottle of the wine to merchants for around $465. And we aren’t even at the marked up price for you….the consumer.If you are…
Jun 23, 2006
Is Wine.com necessary? I mean to ask, does the Internet really need Wine.com the wine store? Apparently someone thinks so. It appears that Wine.com will receive another $12 Million in venture funding, a seventh visit to that trough that has been filled with upwards of $200 Million over the past 8 years or so. In addition, it appears Wine.com is getting yet another CEO. And in all this time, after all this money, after all the fine leaders of the…
Jun 22, 2006
It is 5:45pm on June 22 as I write this and the temperature in the shade reads 103. This is down from an earlier temperature of 106. Earlier today I was with a client who was visiting with a wine writer. We walked out into the vineyard. Talked for about 10 minutes. Then we all sort of collectively, but silently, acknowledged that shade was needed…Now! We simply turned together, headed back to the cars and quickly found ourselves at the…
Jun 21, 2006
Just something to consider…. I was talking with a journalist in Colorado today who receives a lot of wine shipments to his home…every day. He disclosed to me that in a very consistent way wines delivered by UPS are about 15 degrees warmer than wines delivered by FED EX. How does he know this? He measures the temperatures of the outside of the boxes when they arrive at his home with a laser temperature guage. He says the difference in…
Jun 21, 2006
What a fascinating exercise the European wine producers and European Union is embarking upon. Europe appears to be in the early phases of a complete overhaul of their wine industry, from growing to producing to marketing. Yesterday the European Union’s European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development , Mariann Fischer Boel, made a statement that served as an introduction to the coming debate and staked out a rather progressive position on what needs to be done to make European wine…