OK, bad pun (sorry Robin Leach) but being in (if you’re Jewish) or going into (if you’re celebrating Christmas or Kwanzaa) the holidays, it’s important to have a few wishes to go into the New Year and I have a few that bridge the personal and professional twain. So, in no particular order… I wish in 2010 that…

The reality TV thing for chefs dies down. Iron Chef, Chopped, Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef… enough already. Cooking should be about sharing, nurturing, and giving and not about all things smackdown. Let’s get back to showing people the pleasure in food and how to go about creating it themselves and not cooking competitively against a clock, our peers, or both. 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 »

When I was a kid and something went wrong, like most of you, I sought out the unconditional loving support of my parents. A major “owee” was always soothed with a band aid and kiss from my Mom, a poor test score always found patient empathy from a compassionate Dad. Extracted tonsils required vanilla ice cream and a flu bug always managed to find me slurping on Chinese hot and sour soup to expedite the wellness factor. All are different actions and reactions, but all share the equation that something that caused pain was salved over by something that gave comfort.

Today’s tough economy (and tough would be a generous way to describe it) is seeing the need for major comforting all around. It’s said that insecurity supports comfort brands- whether they are Kleenex instead of the generic tissues, Oreos versus your generic cookie, or Tide as opposed to a supermarket detergent. Whether the hard dollars actually back this up is for the economists to say, not wine guys like me. That said, I can tell you that for food… and wine, tough economic times are fertile breeding grounds for comfort. From grocery store prepared meals to American restaurants, there are anecdotally tangible surges in classic comfort foods- meatloaf, burgers, pot roast and fried chicken. I find that you see bumps in these types of food when people are stressed.

Continue reading »

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 »

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 »

I knew that it was true, but had been waiting for the proof. If I had a dollar for each and every question pertaining to wine sales and the economy that I have been asked over the recent months, I may well have been immune to the economic downturn! Of course I have my own opinions which are both personal (asking close friends, industry colleagues, and consumers at events in which I participate) and anecdotal, through the proverbial grapevine. That said, I was heartened to find my visceral impressions validated by none other than the venerable New York Times on January 1 in an article written by Catherine Rampell.

Continue reading »