OK, a bit of a rhetorical question, since we all know that the simple answer is “not so good”. I will not rehash bad news for fear of scaring us even more and feeding the panic. Instead, I will say, it was nice to go out on Valentine’s Day with my wife and witness that things were packed- both what I saw peeking in windows, and what I witnessed on Opentable.com when booking. Admittedly a shot of euphoria in an otherwise deflating, depressing world, but it’s nice to know that people will still spend for romance! Continue reading »

As you may have surmised by now, I am a bit of an information pack rat. I cut and clip, copy and paste, and put aside interesting information that I believe will either be useful or informative at some point. Then, time goes by, and I (finally) remember to look in my files and le voila- cool stuff.

Two items caught my attention as of late, one low tech and one high tech, with both catering to your food (low tech) and wine (high tech) appetites. Continue reading »

During a regular Saturday morning news show appearance on San Francisco’s CBS affiliate KPIX recently, I was asked about the effect of the drought and unseasonably warm weather on the 2009 harvest. To paraphrase myself, while it is too early to say, we would need a very wet February and March to catch up with seasonal norms of water and help to replenish water tables which are dangerously low in our third consecutive dry year. The vines are not happy campers. But, according to several of my vintner buddies, these same unhappy vines are also confused. Continue reading »

Have you been suckered at some level by an offer that appeared to be too good to be true, and when you engaged, it indeed turned out that way? I am forever cynical, and have heard enough advice over the years from folks who always offer up that if it appears too good to be true then it is. And that’s in fact the case with everything from a myriad of infomercials peddling diet pills and real estate scams in the newspaper to “gotta have” wrinkle creams and of course those products that can age your wines in minutes so you don’t have to cellar them at all. And no, that’s not what this blog is all about.

I was chatting with a friend who was asking me about wines that were being closed out for very little, purported to be very good or once in a life time deals. Continue reading »

Over the past few weeks I have been asked a lot about what to expect this year in terms of countries and regions who are poised to capitalize, if at all, in the current economic environment. A great but loaded question.

There are many factors which contribute to what is selling and what isn’t. A country may be ‘up’ volumetrically but ‘down’ in value. For example, if people are buying more French wine at lower prices (Alsace, Loire Valley, Languedoc) but are eschewing their normal desire to drink classified Bordeaux or Cru Burgundy, well, the cases could, in theory, climb while the actual dollars sag. This has been a case in point of the Australian market in the USA and England over the past couple of years that the Australians are keenly aware of, and in the process of aggressively addressing. A recent conversation had over dinner with some key head honchos for ‘Brand Australia’ (Wines of Australia) clearly pointed out this dynamic and addressed a few of the table’s questions on how they plan to respond. But it’s unfair to pick on the Aussies as they are certainly not alone in such a conundrum. So who is benefiting?

Continue reading »