Wine
• Oh dear. Another celeb wine. This time Eurythmics star.
Former Eurythmics star Dave Stewart has become the latest celebrity vintner after teaming up with McLaren Vale estate Mollydooker on a limited edition bottling. Ringmaster General Shiraz 2010, named after the title of Stewart’s upcoming album, is priced at £78 a bottle. The 15.5% abv wine is a repackaged version of the Australian estate’s Carnival [...]
• Dude, Leave it to California…Cannabis Cabernet. Double High!
Wines fermented with weed were a novelty in the early 1980s, but now quite a few California winemakers are producing cannabis cuvées on the sly—with cabernet the variety of choice. Last year, at a Burgundy dinner in New York, I was given a wine that smelled like no Burgundy I’d ever encountered. Instead, it had [...]
• Château Latour quits en primeur system
Château Latour has announced that 2011 will be the last year in which it takes part in the futures market. In a letter to its négociants and merchants the château said that from next year the first and second wines would be sold when the wines were considered “ready to drink”. The wines at this [...]
• Tempranillo is rising star in Southern Oregon wine
Sometimes I feel like we give so much attention to pinot noir that it’s like lavishing all your attention on one child in the family at the expense of other siblings. It’s even worse when you live in the Mid-Valley because there is so much pinot noir grown and produced in our area. According to [...]
• Champagne and Food Pairings
In the UK Champagne is often drunk on its own but for many this celebratory drink takes on an exciting fresh dimension when paired with food. One London restaurant is taking this theory to the limit by serving Champagne with hot dogs in a new London restaurant. You can also have a bath in it, in [...]
• Petits châteaux big winners of 2011 vintage
The high performing petits châteaux in Bordeaux could be the biggest winners of the 2011 en primeurs campaign, according to a leading Bordeaux négociant. “It’s a year to seek out the lesser-known properties – I’ll be looking out for the high scoring petits châteaux,” Jean-Christophe Mau of Yvon Mau told the drinks business. Mau believes [...]
• New York’s Finger Lakes: The Next Great Wine Region in America?
Prohibition pounded the region’s grapegrowers, but small and medium-sized producers are finally starting to mount a serious comeback. At a time when the local food movement has inspired many consumers across the nation to, for the first time, consider the wines being made in their own backyards, no up-and-coming domestic region has received as much [...]
• Craft Wine: What the Wine Industry Can Learn from Craft Beer
The wine market is crowded. There are thousands of wineries jumping up and down screaming, ‘ME, ME, ME!!!’, all trying to tell a story about what makes them different. It’s a story that wine buyers and potential customers are getting bored of. It is not the top tier of producers we are talking about – [...]
• Bordeaux 2011 “better than expected”
With en primeurs week looming, hopes are high for a quick campaign, reduced pricing and vintage that is “better than expected”. Speaking to the drinks business, Simon Davies, head of marketing at Fine+Rare said that after a recent trip to Bordeaux he had a “loose idea” of what the 2011s would be like and expected [...]
• Red and white wines for the Passover seder
Finding a good pinot noir for under $15 is always difficult, but it’s even more challenging when you’re looking for kosher wine. Pinot noir grapes are hard to grow and difficult to work with, and their thin skin makes them susceptible to disease. That’s why better pinot noir wines are expensive to produce, and the [...]
• Luxury Jewelry Bulgari Family Tries to Become a Name in Wine
The Bulgari name has long been associated with luxury jewelry worn by some of the most famous celebrities in the world, like Elizabeth Taylor and Julianne Moore. But will it mean anything in the world of fine wine? The Bulgari family does not know, but this week it will begin to find out. A new [...]
• Italian wine exports overtake automotive industry
Vinitaly began at the weekend as the latest figures show that Italian wine exports are worth more than the country’s automotive ones. The 46th edition of Vinitaly kicked off with a rousing speech from Ettore Riello, president of VeronaFiere, speaking about a number of economic issues relating to the Italian wine trade, which now represents [...]
• Alaska’s oldest winery celebrates. A winery in Alaska?!
Alaska’s oldest licensed winery isn’t old enough to drink, but it’s just the right age to serve. Alaskan Wilderness Wines, based on Shearwater Way in Kodiak, is turning 13 this year and proprietors Steve and Lisa Thomsen couldn’t be happier. “Wine, it gets better with age,” Steve said. Homemade fruit wine has a long tradition [...]
• Why Chinese Investors Buy Napa Wineries
Few topics are hotter in the industry than the Chinese market for U.S. wines, but less has been reported about a concurrent trend—Chinese nationals are avidly buying vineyards and wineries in Napa Valley. In a reversal of historic fortune, 19th century immigrants came to California in search of gold. Today, wealthy Chinese nationals have begun [...]
• Napa Valley’s weird and wonderful wines
We pick out the most unusual wines at the Premier Napa Valley event, from a recently disgorged vintage Californian sparkling to a “A PhenomeNon-Vintage” red blend. While the drinks business has already reported on the record-breaking fundraiser event, Premiere Napa Valley 2012, less was said about the actual wines that were presented. One of the [...]
