I recall vividly my initial visit to Amsterdam when I was finally of LDA, legal drinking age. With a list of things in mind that I wanted to do now that I was old enough, Heineken Brewery topped my list. I was living in Europe at the time, specifically in Paris, so anytime I was within the vicinity of a beer ‘hot spot’—Strasbourg (Kronenbourg), Munich (Hacker-Pschorr), or Brussels (OK, Leuven to be precise and Stella Artois), I would visit them. This had become a de rigeur activity for me. And you thought all wine folks just loved vino! I digress… Continue reading »

In a recent blog I ranted (albeit for just a couple of lines) about my frustration regarding exorbitant wine mark-ups in restaurants. I understand all of the reasons why, have partaken in numerous dialogues on the subject and have debated the pros and cons of how lists can/should be marked up in a number of trade gatherings. There are no simple answers, but what most of us do know is that when prices do get too high, the people vote to opt out and do so in one of two ways. Continue reading »

The wine industry has been going back and forth on this for years. The beverage category that pioneered its life with Orson Welles claiming that we ‘serve no wine before its time’ has gone back and forth as to whether their market base is older (baby boomers and empty nesters) or younger (millennials or those Gen Xer’s), aficionados (those who read the Wine Spectator) or ‘every person’ (those who read Redbook or Family Circle) or… men or women. And it seemingly changes like the weather in Baltimore (if you wait for five minutes…)! Continue reading »

Like when I read that… Beer is the new wine. Really. In black and white.

In a recent meeting of the NABCA (National Alcohol Beverage Control Association) at a panel on which he was member, Jim Koch of the very successful Boston Beer Company (of Sam Adam’s fame) made that comment. Seated alongside two colleagues, he made that statement, as reported by the chronicler extraordinaire Megan Haverkorn of Wine & Spirits Daily, and went on to say “Brewers have been a little late to that level of appreciation and respect and dignity around their beverage… both these industries [wine and spirits] are good at trading people up and developing the high end. Beer didn’t follow that until recently, maybe 5 years ago. Beer ads on TV were wrestling women, crotch biting dogs and twins. I was watching beer get dumbed down and consequently beer lost share of alcohol. With the emergence of the new mentality about beer driven by small craft brewers, America is starting to create a beer culture in the same way America has created a wine culture.” Continue reading »

We all know that imitation is said to be the most sincere form of flattery. If that’s the case, then the wine industry’s practice of linking wines with place is the source of a lot of blushing… for the wine folks.

From the time that I began working in wine decades ago, this linkage has always been clear. The same grape producing wines in different parts of the world lead to different results, much like two chefs working with the same ingredients and recipes and coming up with two different tasting interpretations of a dish. Winemakers using the same varietal(s), equipment, barrel sources (and coopers), yeast strains and any other replicable variables can still make very different wines. Winemakers who create wines from the same varietal AND vineyard will, despite making different wines from their interpretive styles, will still have a thread of continuity.

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