Thu, 04 Dec 2003

US: Family Friendly Wineries
If recent trends are any indication, Virginia may find itself revising its well-known slogan, "Virginia is for Wine Lovers" to "Virginia is for Wine Lovers-and their Families."

True To Our Roots: Fermenting A Business Revolution
Fetzer Vineyards President Paul Dolan combines a deeply felt memoir of perfecting the winemaker's craft, of the life-changing moment when "your world looks a certain way and the next it looks different," and of becoming a business leader calling for action and a move towards sustainable business models.

France provides examples of how growing conditions affect wine
Visiting wineries throughout the Rhone Valley, from Tavel and Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the south to Cornas and Hermitage in the middle and Condrieu and Cote-Rotie in the north, illustrates the incredible diversity and variety of wine styles offered in this bountiful region of France.

Ten Gifts For Wine Lovers
Few presents make us happier during the holidays than something we can drink, unless it's something that can help us drink. It's not that we find a few stiff belts the only way to make it through this time of year but it does help put us in the, pun intended, holiday spirit.

AUS: Research efforts stepped up against grapevine leaf rust
More than 400 varieties of grapevine have been sent to Darwin as part of efforts to find a resistant variety to the devastating grapevine leaf rust. The rust was found in Darwin more than two years ago, and efforts are well underway to eradicate it and prevent its spread to southern wine production areas.

Examining Closures From All Angles
The coordinator for the conference theme, subtitled "Put a cork in it?" was Roland Riesen, enologist at Youngstown State University in Ohio and a Director of ASEV/ES. He explained that the overwhelming range of types of closures and variations within each type required a thorough scientific overview.

US: Vineyard firm sues pesticide manufacturer
Smarting from a $40,000 court loss to Sutter Home Winery in 2002, a Napa-based vineyard management company is slapping a lawsuit on a pesticide manufacturer to try to recover its losses.

Wine company joins up with global giant
Marlborough's Whitehaven Wine Company has joined forces with global wine giant E & J Gallo, for the distribution of its wine in the United States and Canada.

CHILE: Wine exports on the rise
Wine exports from Chile have risen to US$660m in January to October this year. The increase, announced by wine industry association Chilevid, represents an increase of 10%.

AUS: Wine industry sobers up
Australia's wine industry was sobering up, with price wars and a grape glut leading to a sustained drop in profit, the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation said.
Wed, 03 Dec 2003
US: Unique Red Sparkling Wine Makes the Perfect Holiday Gift
Perfect for both holiday gifts and celebrations, sparkling wine is always a popular choice. This year, stand out from the crowd and add some color with Ballatore Rosso Red Spumante, a red sparkling wine, recognizable by its exceptional ruby color and delicious berry flavor.

Bottle reviewing: why you never hear the bad things
Restaurant and film reviewers say nasty things about restaurants and films. Indeed, some reviewers make a living out of it. So why can't wine writers let the odd googly slip and say something along the lines of: "These six currently available wines are rubbish - avoid them"?

Patagonia, Argentina's new wine frontier
Patagonia has become the new frontier for the Argentine wine industry, with plucky entrepreneurs setting up shop in the semiarid plateaux at the southern tip of the Americas.

SA: Sparkling wine without sparkle
Sparkling wine that failed to sparkle has moved a winemaker to take a bottle manufacturer to court.

US: What's on the wine bottle counts
Sometimes it's not what's inside that counts. As Hogue Cellars of Prosser has shown, a change in name and label color can make a big difference. Since making those changes, the winery has sold about 2,000 more cases in one-third of the time.

Think in the box for shiraz in bag
First it was riesling in blue bottles. Then sauvignon blanc with screw-off caps. What's next? Decent shiraz in a box? Sure looks like it...

AUS: Lifetime achievement award for wine visionary
Brown Brothers Milawa vineyard's John Charles Brown is to be honored with a Restaurant & Catering Australia Lifetime Achievement Award at an Awards dinner at Parliament House in Canberra.

US: Marketing Showing Dramatic Changes in World of Wine
Wine is undergoing marked changes in its relationship with the American consumer. A sudden flood of quality, moderately priced imported premium wines has moved wine buyers from traditionalism to experimentation.

SA: Born to Greatness?
Notwithstanding the on-going frustrations of virused vine material, lack of some important varieties and a strengthening Rand, the confidence pervading the Cape winelands remains buoyant. Such positive mood is aided by the knowledge that South African wines continue to delight British palates, with sales and even price points moving up. - www.wine.co.za

Ahlstrom's innovative filtration media eliminates cork taste in wine
Ahlstrom Corporation, a leader in high performance fiber-based materials, has developed a filtration media that effectively prevents the cork taste in wines developing during the pre-bottling phase.

Tue, 02 Dec 2003

Italian wines no underdog, says expert
Australian wine lovers were denying themselves the pleasure of a good Italian drop by giving in to tastes unduly influenced by the nation's British beginnings, an Australian wine expert lamented on Monday.

AUS: Pay more to avoid a fizzer
CHEAP romantics beware when it comes to bubbly, a bigger price tag has officially been declared better. Choice magazine has ensured consumers do not pick a fizzer this Christmas by testing 81 of the most popular sparkling wines in Australia.

US: Wine Flow may be Corked
You'd better enjoy your French champagne on New Year's Eve - a looming trade war could stop the flow of high-class bubbly and other European wines after Jan. 1.

US: Bioterrorism law threatens to bottle up wine industry
New bioterrorism rules that kick in this month have many in the wine industry wondering if they will be snarled in bureaucratic red tape that could stall their wine shipments at the border.

Rating of SA wines by French Wine Magazine
La Revue de Vin de France, the most influential French wine magazine, has published a rating of South African wines. It is almost the first time that stars are given to non-French wines, as they are usually only allow comments, and are refused comparisons.

'Gentleman burglar' held over theft of vintage wine
French police have arrested a thief with 1,000 bottles of the finest wines, which he stole from private cellars.

Italy's wine makers break the rules to create 'super-Tuscan' wines
Italy has had a good run of vintages in the past several years, and a category known as 'super-Tuscan' has been a small but fast-growing segment.

OSIsoft enhances wine making
Wine making is considered an art as much as an agricultural process. The degree of unpredictability about the end product is very high. So much depends on the skill of the wine maker, and the rest is up to nature.

ACI Glass Packaging continues its major winemaker sponsorship support for Wine Australia
ACI Glass Packaging is continuing its commitment to the ongoing support of the Australian Wine Industry through its major winemaker sponsorship package for Wine Australia 2004.

US Study: Fewer grape growers are using pesticides
Figures from UC Davis researchers show the use of pesticides in Napa County vineyards has actually decreased over the past decade, even with increases in the number of vines.

Wine.com gets funds: $5 million
San Francisco online wine retailer Wine.com has received $5 million in venture capital, allowing it to buy A.K.A. Gourmet, an Oakland provider of gift baskets to corporations and individuals, the company said.

World's Best Portable Wine Guide Just Got Better
A happy holiday is in store for wine lovers worldwide as PDA Sommelier, the world's most comprehensive PDA-based wine guide, announces the addition of some 20,000 new wines, bringing its total to 53,000.

Wine matriarch Sebastiani dies at 87
Sylvia Sebastiani, the small-town girl from Sonoma who married the boy next door and became the matriarch of one of America's most prominent wine families -- and, for many years, the iron-fisted chairwoman of Sebastiani Vineyards -- died Sunday at a hospital in Sonoma. She was 87.

Mon, 01 Dec 2003

Celebrating a Feast of Pinot at Pinot
Ask anyone the red wine variety that New Zealand does best and there should be no hesitation in answering 'Pinot Noir'. It's our most planted red grape variety and, with the plantings currently in the ground, is expected to provide over half the red grape harvest by 2005.

History of Glass Wine Bottles
When did the wine industry start using glass bottles, and how did they settle on their current size of 750ml? For the answer to these questions, you have to go back in time - back thousands of years to when wine was first cultivated and enjoyed.

Wine for women by Leslie Sbrocco wins 2003 Book of the Year Award
Leslie Sbrocco's Wine for Women: A Guide to Buying, Pairing and Sharing Wine (William Morrow, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers $24.95/$38.95) received the Georges Duboeuf Book of the Year Award at the annual Beaujolais Nouveau luncheon held at Mix in New York.

MALAY: Wine woman's song
Wines in recent times have become so popular with the lifestyle-conscious set in Malaysia that reputable wine-makers like Alessia Antinori are taking note. The oenologist tells Veronica Shunmugam about her family's impressive wine-making history and the joys of being a child of the vineyards.

Cork Is Best - Say Consumers
Despite the much-heralded gains made by the pro-screwcap lobby in the past two years, a recent survey of more than 1,000 UK wine drinkers has shown 'cork is still king' when it comes to perceptions of quality.

UK: Branding the Beast
You've slaved over the vines, sweated in the winery, argued over the label and persuaded your UK agent to take 10,000 cases. All great, but meaningless if the notoriously fickle UK consumer walks on by in the supermarket or off-licence. How do they know that your wine is the one they want to drink with their dinner tonight?

AUS: Sipping, but we're slipping
Australia appears to be losing its reputation as a nation of drinkers, slipping out of the top 20 big boozing nations. New Zealand, Italy, Cyprus and Latvia have all overtaken Australia, according to new figures, pushing Australia from its 19th ranking last year to 23rd today.

UK: Sulphur's no problem
Media reportage of the recent withdrawal of an Aussie wine from Lidl UK supermarket shelves was predictably distorted, and sometimes downright inaccurate.

More Wine Than Mistletoe for Christmas
More than four in five Britons will be spending £100 on drink this Christmas, according to a survey. Red wine is likely to be the favourite festive tipple, followed by white wine and lager, according to the survey by Dover-Calais ferry company SeaFrance.

Sun, 30 Nov 2003

Wine: Bargain hunt
With a bewildering number of good New Zealand wines on the market, the challenge for wine lovers is to find the wines that also offer great value. Whether it's a bronze medal winner for under $10, or a five-star wine at a four-star price, we all love a bargain.

US: Wine industry professionals compare French Champagnes with local sparkling wines
California sparkling wines have come of age. In past years, consumers have had a perception that French Champagnes were, for the most part, superior to California sparkling wines. Perhaps it was because of the long French history of making Champagne and the relatively short time Californians have produced the bubbly.

Taming of the rascal
Once considered a grape too tricky to handle, Arneis is now made into some of Italy's most fashionable whites

CANADA: Wine Picks
Wine picks from the Edmonton Journal

From the Weird Wine Gadget Files, An Invention That Sucks
Every once in a while a wine-tasting gadget comes along that is unlike anything anyone has thought of before.

US: 2001 proves a very good year for California zinfandel
The 2001 zinfandels produced in California represent the best vintage since 1997. The first ones released have proven to be fruity, jammy and peppery. Those are the typical characteristics of zinfandel.

Beaujolais 'creating more polluted water than wine'
French producers of Beaujolais Nouveau have come under fire from green groups that say they are threatening the environment by polluting rivers with vast quantities of pesticides.

What's in a name? A lot, Europe says
Wine industry folks love to talk about "terroir" -- the sense of the soil that is imparted in a wine. It's supposedly what makes a wine unique. It's why we have the American Viticultural Area system to identify unique climate, soil and history for growing grapes.

TAIWAN: Wine enthusiasts are warned of 'fake icewines'
The Canadian Trade Office in Taipei and the Canadian Vintners Association yesterday reminded wine enthusiasts to purchase only icewines bearing the black and gold seal of the Vintners Quality Alliance on their bottles. If the bottle you are about to buy does not bear the VQA seal, it means the wine did not pass the VQA's strict rules on icewine production in Canada, they said.

SA: Wine industry will prevail
The reputation South African wines have build up the last few years overseas will ensure the industry will weather the rumours that some wines contain illegal flavourants.