Ask a handful of involved wine folks about the status of the AVA system in the USA and you are likely to elicit as many guffaws as tears. Things are a mess. You have several folks in northern Napa (Calistoga to be exact) who had put things on relative ice while they sort out their ‘issues’. Curious? Read on: Evans, Wiggins stand up for Calistoga AVA. And the reality is it’s no closer to really being resolved. But, things have opened up again recently.

The legitimacy of an AVA is the topic of more than a single blog, but at the end of the day, the concept of standing for something more than geographical boundaries would make sense. Continue reading »

The current economy, radically different from the pre-October 2009 version, has had some dramatic effects on wine sales and wine in general out in the so-called real world and much of what you might well have intuited out there is likely to be true. Let’s explore.

According to an October positing on Decanter Online, “Napa Suffers at High End,” ultra premium wines, especially those higher end babies from Napa Valley, are taking a real hit out there. Continue reading »

Is good for your beer, but not for your white wine. I was reminded of this when dining out the other night and ordering a bottle of Torrontés to go with our dinner. The bottle was brought quickly to the table but it was sooooo cold (how cold was it?). It was so cold that as the wine was poured into the glass, it fogged up with condensation and actually bit my tongue with its frosty bite. Then there were the stalactites on the bottle that should have been a clue (just kidding). Continue reading »

In the wine business there’s an acronym called OPW (other people’s wine). It’s used when you work for a company that distributes and/or sells specific lines or brands and it’s how you reference bottles that aren’t yours. It can be used as a term under the auspices of discussing the competition or when you go out and need to either consume or show wines that aren’t yours under the guise of ‘research’ or ‘education’. Sometimes you will drink OPW when you are trying to impress someone and demonstrate how secure you are with your own wine in the presence of these alien OPW or simply because, god forbid, you are yearning to expand your own horizon by getting a sense of what others are doing. Continue reading »

At first I thought it was coincidence, then I thought it was a ground swell and now, well, I think it’s a bondafide reality. That is- newspapers selling wine…thru wine clubs.

I don’t recall exactly when they started (and if indeed they were the earliest entry) but I remember chatting with my friend Connie in early 2007. At the time she was working with the team at the San Francisco Chronicle on their ‘new’ wine club and she was quite pumped. Facilitated by the same company, Signature Wines, that oversees the wine club for Sunset magazine, widely considered one of the most successful monthly wine clubs out there, this program was novel and she was very excited about this new move. I take it that it has done pretty well, as it’s been in place for awhile. Now, in all honesty, the idea of wine clubs is not new but via a newspaper struck me (at the time) as fresh. Continue reading »