posted August 02, 2009 03:50 PM            

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The thieves are caught on surveillance video snatching the pricey vintage wine.

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The 1945 Mouton Rothschild wine had recently been tasted by experts who gave it a perfect rating. They said it probably has another 50 years of life left in it.

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A 64-year-old bottle of wine valued at $20,000 was stolen Wednesday from a Hopkinton wine and liquor store.

Hopkinton police officials say the vintage bottle was taken along with three other bottles from the Hopkinton Wine and Spirits on West Main Street.

Police say two men and a woman worked together to steal the rare bottles. They say while the woman distracted the store clerk, the two men each grabbed two bottles from a cooler labeled "Rare Wines."

In addition to the 1945 Mouton Rothschild, the trio stole a 1992 bottle valued at $300 and two 2000 bottles valued at $875 each.

Surveillance video captured the thieves in action.

The men are described as white, about 20 to 25 years old and weighing about 170 to 190 pounds.

The woman is described as white, 23 to 28 years old and weighing about 120 to 140 pounds.

Police say the thieves may be looking to resell the bottles.

The Mouton Rothschild wine had recently been tasted by experts who gave it a perfect rating. They said it probably has another 50 years of life left in it.

posted September 01, 2009 01:52 PM            

* Story Highlights
* There are more than 100 wineries in Washington's Walla Walla Valley
* Navarro Vineyards in Anderson Valley, California, offers daily tours and tastings
* Virginia's premier wine country spreads out around the city of Charlottesville

By Thomas Berger, Beth Collins and Alison Rohrs

(Budget Travel) -- Perhaps they're not the first place you think of when it comes to wineries, but these four regions offer character and great wine, without the hoopla.

Walla Walla Valley, Washington

In the mid-90s when oenophiles started to buzz about the region's Bordeaux-style wines, there were 10 wineries in Walla Walla. Today, there are more than 100, mostly accessible from Highway 12.

With wine comes food, and gourmands like Alexa Palmer and Charles Maddrey have been pouring into town in the past decade. Two years ago, Palmer and Maddrey left their jobs as owner and chef, respectively, of an Italian restaurant in Renton, Washington, to open the Fat Duck Inn in the heart of Walla Walla.

Each of the four guest rooms at their renovated Craftsman-style bungalow has a fireplace and a large tiled bathroom, and Maddrey can pack box lunches of gourmet charcuterie and cheeses, sandwiches, fruit, and dessert for picnics (fatduckinn.com, rooms from $125, lunch $13).

Palmer recommends enjoying them on the outdoor patio near the bocce ball courts at Cougar Crest Estate Winery, west of town on Highway 12 (cougarcrestwinery.com, tasting $5, refundable with wine bottle purchase). Budget Travel: See the four unexpected wine trails

The highway takes you back toward downtown Walla Walla, a preserved 19th-century Western town, where food options range from a burrito stuffed with beef, cheese, and local sweet onions at the Tacos La Monarca truck (509/522-2866, $5), to Turkish flatbread wrapped around spiced lamb and topped with yogurt sauce at Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen, whose chef was recently a semifinalist for a James Beard Award (saffronmediterraneankitchen.com, $13).

Highway 12 continues east toward K Vintners, a converted farm shed with a capital K painted on its front and a 12-foot cement statue of the letter by the entrance. Here, former band manager Charles Smith blasts music by the Raveonettes and the Ramones -- both personal friends -- and serves his signature K Syrah in honor of his favorite toast: Que sera (kvintners.com, tastings free, by appointment). -- Alison Rohrs

Anderson Valley, California

Twisting from Cloverdale, California, to the Pacific Ocean, a 16-mile portion of Highway 128 passes through the organic apple orchards, olive groves, and redwood forests of Anderson Valley. Some of the more than 20 vineyards along the way supply pinot noir grapes for famous wineries in Napa and Sonoma, but you can taste similar vintages at the farm-style Anderson wineries -- minus the popped-collar crowds.

Navarro Vineyards lets babydoll sheep (too petite to reach the fruit) graze under the vines, and free-range chickens wander the vineyards to help keep pests under control. Daily tours of the grounds and tastings of the star wines -- pinot noir and dry Alsatian-style whites -- are both free (navarrovineyards.com).

About 10 miles northwest along the highway, gewürztraminer grapes thrive in the rich soil and foggy mornings at Lazy Creek Vineyards. Longtime owners of Sonoma's Ferrari-Carano Vineyards and Winery, Don and Rhonda Carano, acquired the rural estate last year (lazycreekvineyards.com, tastings free).

Nearby, Husch Vineyards -- the oldest in the valley, and owned by the Oswald family -- has 10 picnic tables: some in the sun, some sheltered under vine-covered pergolas. Past an arch of roses, the family pours complimentary samples of sauvignon blanc and pinot noir in a century-old redwood tasting room (huschvineyards.com).

Like their neighbors to the north, Bob and Linda Klein also run a vineyard and farm at LindaVista Bed & Breakfast in Yorkville (a separate wine region in the Anderson Valley). Each of the two huge suites in their 6,000-square-foot French Victorian-style inn comes with a queen-size bed, a separate sitting room with a daybed and trundle, a full bath, and mountain views (lindavista.com, $150).

Along the route, you can stop for one of 60 varieties of apples at Gowan's Oak Tree, on an orchard just north of Philo (707/895-3353). -- Alison Rohrs

Between Hermann and New Haven, Missouri

What the Hermann Wine Trail (hermannwinetrail.com) lacks in size -- there are only six wineries along the 20-mile stretch -- it makes up for in experience. The region has been producing vintages since the 1840s, before Napa had produced a single bottle.

The Captain Wohlt Inn makes an ideal home base -- and not just because it's in the center of Hermann's adorable historic district. The breakfasts of upside-down apple French toast, three-cheese quiche, or baked eggs with turkey bacon and herbs are exactly what you need to prepare you for a day of sampling wines (captainwohltinn.com, from $75).

Less than a mile away, the family-run Adam Puchta Winery gives free tastings in the estate's original stone house with wood-beamed ceilings. For many of the 16-18 wines, you'll get a bite of something to help you identify the flavors. A Key-lime shortbread cookie brings out the fruit flavors in the vignoles, a sweet white wine, and a piece of chocolate softens the tannins in the dry red Norton (adampuchtawine.com).

The picnic tables on the grounds make the perfect lunch spot, so on the way to the winery, stop at husband-and-wife-owned Time for Pie to pick up some bratwurst sandwiches and one of the 15 kinds of homemade pie (time4pie.com, pie $3 per slice).

Two and a half miles down the road, Stone Hill Winery is set high on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River -- one can imagine that the terrain reminded German settlers of their native Rhine River valley. Tours of the 162-year-old arched cellars, where wine is still stored, end in the tasting room, where you can try the chardonel, a dry, buttery white that's similar to a chardonnay, and the limited-edition vintage port.

Next to the tasting room, Stone Hill's original stable is now Vintage Restaurant, where the menu ranges from hearty German specialties like schnitzel to more refined entrées like filet mignon (stonehillwinery.com, tours $2.50, tastings free).  Beth Collins

Charlottesville, Virginia

Virginia's premier wine country, dotted with working farms and over 1,000 acres of grape vines, spreads out around the city of Charlottesville in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The free tour at 20-acre Jefferson Vineyards both explores the winery and recounts the history of Virginia wine making (jeffersonvineyards.com, tasting $5). The viognier, with aromas of honeysuckle and apricot, is an ideal refresher, and from the deck at the tasting room, visitors have a view of Carters Mountain and Jefferson's home, Monticello, a mile and a half north, where a recently opened visitors center introduces guests to the founding father's life and ideas (monticello.org, from $15).

Jefferson's master builder also built Dinsmore House, a B&B just a block from the University of Virginia. The decor deliberately recalls the colonial era, but the amenities -- Wi-Fi and flat-screen TVs -- are right up-to-date (dinsmorehouse.com, from $109).

South of Monticello is Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard, whose 2005 blanc de blanc has hints of candied apple and lemon custard (klugeestateonline.com, tasting $10).

About 18 miles west of Charlottesville, in Crozet, King Family Vineyards occupies 15 acres on a farm where polo ponies are raised; visitors can watch polo matches for free on Sundays from Memorial Day through the end of September (kingfamilyvineyards.com, tasting $5).

posted September 30, 2009 08:59 AM            

The law of supply and demand has reached the world's vineyards, tipping wine prices in consumers' favor.

Pali Wine Co., a small California Pinot Noir producer which started out selling wines for $40, $50 and $60 a bottle in 2005, found itself with cases left from its 2006 crush even as it was bottling its 2007 production.

Most of its Pinot Noirs will now be sold for $19 a bottle.

"We had to do something. We had to bring our costs down. And everyone in the business was seeing the same thing," Tim Perr, Pali's founder said during a visit to New York.

Pali does not have its own vineyards, but sources its grapes from growers in Sonoma and Napa California, as well as Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Pinot Noir grapes that once fetched $5,000 a ton now sell for $2,500.

"You could now make deals with the vineyards," said Perr, 47, who started out as an actuary before taking up winemaking four years ago.

He and his partner, Scott Knight, had built a successful business and were looking for a new challenge.

"We both liked wine and we missed the challenge of building a business. So this time around, we thought we'd build something we both were passionate about."

Selling out their first vintage of 1,300 cases in 2005, when the U.S. economy was booming lulled them into believing that there would always be a market for $50 Pinot Noir.

But that market has shrunk substantially, according to Robert Smiley, director of wine industry studies at the University of California, Davis School of Management.

Smiley's annual survey of winemakers, presented earlier this month in California, found industry professionals acknowledging that decline.

"The spot market (for wine grapes) is basically dead," he said. "The wineries will be cutting back their production. And it's not just in the U.S. I just returned from Munich and there is a worldwide wine glut," he said.

Top wineries are offering discounts to their distributors in an effort to move their wares, he said.

"Winemakers don't actually set the prices that (U.S.) consumers pay. That's done by distributors and retailers for the most part. But they are lowering their prices to the distributors and offering promotions," Smiley said.

"There are generally no more waiting lists for the (California) cult wines. And some of the cult wines will even make deals with you."

Danny Brager, vice president of beverage alcohol at The Nielsen Company, said, "When we last looked at wine at price points north of $20, we saw declines at each of them. It would seem quite logical to us that consumers are stepping down from what they used to spend per bottle, to a lower outlay."

He also found consumers were quite happy with the quality of wines they were buying for less than $20.

Marcelo Papa echoed that sentiment. Papa is one of the four chief winemakers for Chile's Concha y Toro, which unlike its competitors has seen sales of most of its brands rise 30 percent this year.

posted October 13, 2009 12:51 PM            

Gary Vaynerchuk is an Internet phenomenon. Trusty New York Jets spit bucket by his side, he's helped grow his family's liquor store into a $70 million online wine retailer and made his daily wine-tasting videos — at Winelibrary.tv — a staple for thousands of viewers. Gary himself boasts more than 850,000 followers on Twitter. Now, he's sharing the secrets of his success with the masses in his new book, Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. Vaynerchuk talked to TIME about the book, the growth of his online brand and his game plan for world domination — or at least eventual ownership of his beloved Jets. (See pictures of harvest season at the White House garden.)

Let's start with your book. You mention that all along you were never selling wine as much as you were selling yourself on the show you created.
Sure. Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead. It was just about building personal brand equity, realizing that the platforms of getting to the consumer had changed, and wanting to be an early adopter of that opportunity. (Watch Gary Vaynerchuk and Joel Stein taste wines from 50 U.S. states.)

At what point did you make that realization? Was there a moment when you said, "The Internet is going to be huge and I want to be a part of it"?
It was in 2005. I was walking by and my two lead developers were sitting in their office laughing their butts off at Ze Frank. And I was like, "What is this? Video shows on the Internet?" I was like, This is it. This is going to replace television.

You didn't do any sort of formal training in wine appreciation. Did you sort of teach yourself?
I had a big advantage. I grew up in it. The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It's in the blood. No. 2, as people have gotten to know me and my intensity and my hustle, it's become very obvious why I was successful. Because this was the only thing I focused on. Every day, 18 hours a day.

You went on Conan O'Brien's show and you had him tasting asparagus and sweaty socks to demonstrate the different tastes of wine; you went on Ellen and you were licking rocks. Was this actually stuff you did yourself?
Yeah. When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn't let me drink. So I was devastated. All I could do was read, and I read and I read. And I'd read something like, you know, "Subtle hints of cassis." And I'd be like, "What the f--- is cassis?" And so I went to Kings Super Market in Short Hills, and I was like oh, cassis. And so I started tasting those things. I'd go everywhere up to about cat pee, which is a tasting note that a lot of the sauvignon blancs have. I didn't really want to go there. But I was pretty much everywhere else.

If someone came to you and said, "How do I develop my wine palate?" Do you say, "Here's a sock?"
I'd say, go to Whole Foods and Wegmans and taste every fruit you've never had before. How are you going to pick up the nuances of pomegranate if you've never had it? The other thing is, try a different varietal of wine every day for 365 days. Never order chardonnay from California twice.

Do you think Americans are getting more diversity of tastes when it comes to wine?
Yes. I hope at some level it's a little bit of my show, but mainly I think it's the Internet itself. Wine critics like Robert Parker say, "Drink big cabernets!" But they are not the only voices. People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, Soave, and say, "Oh, O.K., cool."

Let's talk about your online popularity. You have, like, 850,000 followers on Twitter.
This always makes me laugh. When I meet real celebrities who kind of know me, they can't wrap their heads around that.

How do you get to that?
I care more than they do.

About everything? Or about Twitter?
About people. I'm sure plenty of them care too, but I just really care, which has always made me insanely good at customer service. I was that guy. In social media, there's no filter. When you say, "Hey, Newt Gingrich!" and he doesn't answer, you know that it's him not answering. I answer every e-mail. I'm probably about 2,800 behind right now, but that's not that bad considering I get over 1,000 a day.

Your book is very optimistic — you talk a lot in the book about how if you want it hard enough and if you work hard enough, the tools now exist for you to be able to build your own brand.
I don't sell you the 40-hour workweek. It's going to be a lot of work. But do what you love. So if you love the Dallas Cowboys or you love gardening or you love tae kwon do, all I'm asking you to do is allocate [the time spent] consuming that content to providing it. For $200 for a Flipcam or an iPhone, you are on television. You don't have to go to L.A. and wait tables and hope somebody from CAA discovers you.

Is your last book going to be How I Bought the New York Jets?
Yes.

posted October 14, 2009 10:30 AM            

By DOROTHY J. GAITER AND JOHN BRECHER

What's the best glass for wine? The one you're holding.
video
Glasses, The Background Music of Wine
4:07

Like a great movie score, a fine glass enhances the experience. WSJ's Tastings columnists Dottie Gaiter and John Brecher look for the best, everyday wine glass and come up with five recommendations.

We're only half joking. Wine in a plastic cup on vacation always tastes delicious, and the tumblers at our favorite Italian place are just fine with that big carafe of rustic red wine. It's also true, though, that an elegant, comfortable and well-designed glass can make the experience of wine that much more pleasant. And there's good news here: There has never been a wider selection of good stemware available at affordable prices.

For almost a decade now, our everyday glass has been Spiegelau "Vino Grande" Burgundy, which is so comfortable to us that it seems like an old shoe. Everybody needs new shoes from time to time, though, so we decided it was time to conduct a broad search to find a new everyday glass. We shopped in person and online.
[glasses] Dylan Cross for the Wall Street Journal
Wine Notes

* To Decant Or Not

Hoe-To Guide: Wine

* Tips about wine from The Wall Street Journal's reporters and columnists.

While there are many different kinds of glasses for many different kinds of wine—flutes for sparklers, small glasses for dessert wine and some boast that they deliver specific wines best to specific taste buds and so on—everyone needs a good, solid, everyday glass to use for both reds and whites without thinking about it. You know: the kind of stemware you just reflexively pick up when you come home after a long day. That's what we were looking for in this tasting. Here were our parameters as we searched:

•Twenty ounces or more. We like large bowls in which our small pour of wine, whether red or white, has plenty of room to breathe and we can swish and swirl to our hearts' content. We eliminated any glass that was less than 20 ounces or, online, didn't reveal the size.

•Clear glass. We want to see our wine. In addition, thin glass is better than thick glass because we like to taste wine instead of glass and thick stemware can get heavy.

•Long stem so we can hold it comfortably. Those stemless tumblers we see at restaurants sometimes are fun as a change of pace, but we wouldn't use them as everyday glasses.

•Slight inward curve at the top. This focuses the aromas.

•$15 or less. In fact, almost all of the glasses we liked were $12.50 or less, and many were less than $10. We don't want to spend too much on our everyday glasses because then we don't have to worry about breaking them; the angst would make using them less pleasurable.
The Dow Jones Everyday Wine Glass Index

In a test of everyday wine glasses that cost $15 or less and would be good for both reds and whites, these were our favorites. We have listed the price we paid and where we got them. Some of the glasses might be available at other places, and prices vary. We did not include Spiegelau "Vino Grande" Burgundy glasses (six for $52.95 at wineenthusiast.com) on this list because it has been our everyday glass for almost a decade and we were looking for something new. It's still an outstanding glass and we'd certainly recommend it. For the same reason, we also didn't include the very similar Spiegelau "Vinovino" Pinot Noir glass (four for $37.95 at wineenthusiast.com). The Riedel company owns Spiegelau. We bought all of these online except the Target glasses, which we bought at a store.

Schott Zwiesel 'Tritan Cru Classic' Bordeaux.

Set of six. $72. 9 3/8". 28 oz. Sur la Table (surlatable.com). Best of tasting. Somewhat unusual shape, something like an egg, means that everything tasted a little bit new and different to us. "This feels great, comfortable in my hand," Dottie said. It's deceptive: It's big yet it doesn't feel too big. Great balance. All wines seemed a little bit more special in this glass. Great for swirling and sniffing.

Crate & Barrel 'Elite' Chardonnay.

$5.95. 8¾". 22 oz. Crate & Barrel (crateandbarrel.com). Best value. Not quite as thin and elegant as the others, but generous, well-designed and clearly durable. The shape and feel reminded Dottie of restaurants in Italy, which is certainly a good thing. Terrific price. It's also the only glass on this list that we could buy by the individual stem instead of a set.

Robert Mondavi by Waterford Bordeaux.

Set of two. $24.99. 10". 25 oz. Bed, Bath & Beyond (bedbathandbeyond.com). Looks very much like the Tritan above, but a little taller and, to us, just a tad too heavy compared to it, but, still, a real winner. "Wow, this is such an interesting glass," John said, and Dottie said, "This looks like it's built for anything you could pour into it." Wine swirls beautifully in it and opens up so nicely. (We no longer can find this on the Bed, Bath & Beyond site, but we see that it is available elsewhere, such as Waterford.com, at a much higher price.)

Riedel 'Vivant' Bordeaux.

Set of two. $29.99. 10". 25 oz. Target (target.com). Envision a classic wine glass and this looks like it—elegant, symmetrical and tall. All-purpose shape. Lovely glass that doesn't call attention to itself and lets wine show well. "So comfortable and easy," Dottie said. "It's sort of second nature—like home." After our tasting, as we were researching the "Vivant" glass, we discovered the identical "Vivendi" Bordeaux glass made by Nachtmann, another division of Riedel. A set of six sells for $35.98 at nachtmann-online.com. (A spokeswoman for Riedel confirmed it is the same glass.)

Riedel 'Wine Collection' Pinot-Nebbiolo.

Set of four. $49.95. 8¾". 25 oz. Beverage Factory.com (beveragefactory.com). Pretty, beveled stem, which often we don't like—too fussy—but this one is understated. Nicely big at the bottom, with a good curve at the top that helps aromas concentrate well.

With those fences around our choices, we ended up with 25 different glasses. We bought them at places as disparate as Wal-Mart, Target and Sur la Table. In the past, we have bought some lovely stemware at Costco, but we haven't seen special glasses there in some time and didn't see any when we were searching this time. We found the widest selection, of course, at wine-specific Web sites such as wineenthusiast.com. A number of glasses we picked up are from the various Riedel lines. Riedel is the big name in fine glasses and now it has all sorts of different, well-crafted lines at various price points.

A fine everyday glass, to us, is like great movie music. It doesn't demand attention on its own but enhances the mood and action at every moment. It's a very personal issue of how it feels in our hands and how it delivers the smells and tastes of the wine. We want a glass to be both sensual and unfussy, which can be a difficult trick.

We placed all 25 glasses on the table and studied them. It's amazing how different yet similar they were, truly an outstanding cornucopia of wine glasses. We quickly eliminated 14 from our competition. There wasn't anything dramatically wrong with any of them, but we found some too heavy and thick; some too narrow (so tastes and smells got trapped); some too wide (so tastes and smells got away from us) and some simply boring. Some teetered on stems so thin and tall that they frightened us. We also eliminated a glass from Schott Zwiesel called "Tritan Diva Burgundy," even though we both liked it. We thought with its particularly long stem that it felt simply too big and grand for everyday use, not to mention that six of them would pretty much fill our entire kitchen. Still, we thought they'd be fun glasses to use when we have company and they'd be great with very big, young reds that needed plenty of air. They simply seemed a bit overwhelming for everyday use.

We then spent several days using the remaining 11 glasses with a variety of red and white wines. We wanted something that felt comfortable to us, with nice balance, some elegance and which added to our enjoyment of the wine. All of that is highly personal—as personal as wine itself—so others might have chosen differently.

We're happy to say that our five favorites came from four different producers and five different stores. Our favorites, and the reasons we liked them, are listed in the attached index. Having used all of them now for a few weeks, we can tell you we're quite fond of all of them and happy to have them as part of our household.

A nice set of stemware is always a good gift—for novices or experts, for people who have few glasses in the house or many. As wine lovers, we can assure you that we can never have enough everyday glasses. But don't wait for someone to give you glassware. Our guess is that most wine lovers out there—like us—use their everyday glasses for years, until they break them. We'd urge you to spend some time this weekend buying a new set of everyday glasses for yourself. Just because they are a little bit different, they will make your wine-drinking experience a little bit fresher, a little bit more pleasurable, a little bit more fun. And all that for the price of one good bottle of wine.

posted February 18, 2010 10:11 AM            

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Associated Press

A French court convicted a dozen wine producers and traders of fraud in a scheme that exported fake Pinot Noir from Southwest France to the U.S., duping American giant E. & J. Gallo Winery among others.

The decision comes amid a tough time for the French wine industry as a whole. Economic hardship has pushed its main export markets of the U.S. and U.K. to drink less and favor cheaper wines. Its exports of high-end Champagne and cognacs suffered a record drop in 2009, according to figures released Thursday.

A French merchant with a key role in the fake-Pinot affair said Thursday that he may appeal, claiming that his wine is "irreproachable."

Claude Courset of the Ducasse company received the harshest sentence from the court in the city of Carcassonne: A six-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of €45,000, or about $61,000. The company that sold Ducasse wine in the U.S., Sieur d'Argues, was convicted of fraud and handed a €180,000 fine.

Eight vintners and wine cooperatives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, charged with deception and forgery, were given sentences ranging from a month suspended prison to fines of €40,000.

The southern Languedoc-Roussillon isn't known for its production of Pinot Noir, a thin-skinned grape mainly associated with the Burgundy region. The Carcassonne court described the fraud as "organized and structured." Prosecutor Francis Battut said that Merlot and Syrah grapes were passed off as Pinot Noir in a scheme dating from January 2006 to March 2008.

A spokeswoman for Modesto, Calif.-based Gallo said the company is "deeply disappointed" that Sieur d'Arques was found guilty, adding that it is no longer selling that wine to customers. Gallo officials said Wednesday that the only French Pinot Noir that was potentially misrepresented to Gallo was the 2006 vintage.

Mr. Courset, whose company dealt with Sieur d'Arques for the export of the wine, said he "reserves the right to appeal" the court's decision. "We scrupulously respected the contract terms of our client," he said. "Our wines are irreproachable."

He has contended that the investigation went off course, concentrating on the wine growing situation in general amid the global economic crisis "but also with obscure regulations that fluctuate from country to country."

Mr. Battut said wine cooperatives sold "local wine to Ducasse labeled Pinot at his request and modifying accompanying documents and bills." He labeled the case a "very important fraud."

France's exports of wine and spirits fell 17% to €7.74 billion ($10.5 billion) last year, according to figures released Thursday by the Federation of French Wine and Spirits Exporters.

It marked the largest ever one-year drop in French wine and spirits exports and was the first annual decline since 2004, said Renaud Gaillard, a spokesman for the industry group.

The biggest drops were in pricey bottles of Champagne and cognac. Exports of Champagne fell 28% to €1.6 billion last year, the federation said. That represented a drop in volume of nearly 22%, to 8.87 million 12-bottle cases.

Cognac sales also suffered from the economic malaise, sliding 16% to €1.4 billion last year.

U.S. imports of French wine and sprits tumbled 22.7% last year to €1.34 billion, while sales fell 20% in Britain, France's second-largest market for its wines and spirits.

"Falling global demand and consumers' switching to entry-level brands weighed on our results last year," said Claude de Jouvencel, the federation's president.

Mr. de Jouvencel was slightly more optimistic for this year, saying that "2010 will not be as bad as 2009 and could return to slight growth, 5% at best."

Vodka, not a drink typically associated with France, was the single bright spot in the national drinks industry last year. Sales of French vodka, accounted for almost exclusively by the Bacardi-owned Grey Goose vodka brand, rose 14% to €238 million last year.

posted March 08, 2010 05:55 PM            

* Moderate female drinkers tend to gain less weight over time than teetotalers, study finds
* Risk of overweight, obese falls even when other health factors are taken into account
* Expert: Strongest evidence to date that calories from food and booze are not created equal

RELATED TOPICS

* Alcohol Consumption
* Women's Health

(Health.com) -- Some women avoid drinking calorie-filled cocktails, wine, and beer because they're worried about packing on the pounds. Now, a new study suggests that women who are moderate drinkers actually tend to gain less weight over time than teetotalers.

The risk of becoming overweight or obese falls as alcohol consumption rises, even when factors such as smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption, and physical activity are taken into account, the study found.

Women who consumed between 1.5 and 3 drinks daily had a 27 percent and 61 percent lower risk of becoming overweight or obese, respectively, than women who didn't drink at all, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

However, the researchers did not look at how the participants' drinking may have affected their lives besides weight gain. Alcohol use can lead to health problems and "psychosocial problems," they point out, and they caution that appropriate alcohol intake differs for each individual and depends on a range of factors.

In addition to potentially causing problems at work and with relationships, daily alcohol consumption has a number of health risks, including a small increase in the risk of breast cancer.

Experts recommend that women drink no more than one alcoholic beverage a day, and that men limit themselves to two.

And if you don't drink, experts say, these findings shouldn't inspire you to start hitting the bottle.

"It won't change recommendations for my patients, I can say that for certain," says Scott Kahan, M.D., the co-director of the George Washington University Weight Management Program, in Washington, D.C. "If you don't drink, there's no reason to start."

But, he adds, "I think [the study] suggests that there's no need to quit or avoid alcohol if it's something you enjoy."

Health.com: Eat this and burn more fat

In the study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts, surveyed 19,220 healthy, normal-weight women about their diet and drinking habits. Nearly 40 percent of the women didn't drink at all, and a very small number -- just 3 percent -- consumed more than about 2.5 drinks a day. Over the 13-year study period, 4 out of 10 women became overweight or obese.

The women who drank cut down on their calorie intake from food, especially carbohydrates, the study showed. However, total calorie intake did inch up as alcohol consumption increased; women who drank at least 2.5 drinks a day averaged about 1,800 calories a day, compared with 1,670 for teetotalers.

R. Curtis Ellison, M.D., the director of the Institute on Lifestyle and Health at the Boston University School of Medicine, says this study is the strongest evidence to date that calories from food and booze are not created equal.

"Many other studies that are not nearly as well done or as large as this suggest that calories from alcohol are metabolized differently," Ellison says. "The alcohol calories probably don't count as much as calories from a Hershey's bar."

Health.com: Cocktails under 220 calories

Kahan says that the findings challenge the conventional wisdom about calories from alcohol. "The way that the body handles those calories very possibly might be very different from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins," he says. "It makes you wonder if we've been thinking about alcohol as a nutrient a little bit incorrectly."

One drawback of the study, Kahan adds, is that the researchers did not examine how alcohol consumption might influence weight gain in women who are already overweight or obese.

Another limitation, according to Ellison, is that the study contains no information on the role a woman's drinking patterns might have played -- whether, for instance, a glass of wine each day had a different effect than downing several drinks once or twice a week.

Although recovering alcoholics and people with uncontrolled epilepsy shouldn't drink, Ellison says, moderate alcohol consumption can have health benefits for people middle-aged and older, especially when it comes to heart health and stroke risk.

posted March 29, 2010 09:29 PM            

Our reference has been The International Menu Speller, by Kenneth N. and Lois E. Anderson (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), unless we disagreed, and then we provided our own pronunciation. Some of these you may disagree with -- feel free to rat us out!

posted April 20, 2010 01:02 PM            

Getty Images

What does it take to be a sommelier? I posed the question to two of the top scouts in this country: Daniel Johnnes, wine director of the Dinex Group (a.k.a. the house that Daniel Boulud built), and Bernie Sun, wine director of the Jean Georges restaurant group. Here’s what Daniel and Bernie look for:

* A professional presentation. “Smartly dressed and no typos on the resume,” said Bernie. “And a good smile. If you’re grumpy in an interview, most likely you will be grumpy with the guests.”
* A good track record. Both men agreed that a series of short stints on a resume wasn’t good. “Six months doesn’t bode well,” according to Daniel.
* Passion and knowledge of wine. This may seem obvious, but Daniel said he’s interviewed working sommeliers who didn’t know the basics of wine. So has Bernie, who reported: “I’ve interviewed food and beverage managers who have had many years in the business and who still can’t tell me that Chardonnay is the primary white grape of Burgundy.”
* A follow-up note. And make sure it’s polite. This second point may seem obvious, but according to Daniel, one candidate sent him an email that contained a wish to give Daniel a “wine hug” then requested that Daniel send him a bottle of Burgundy, saying, “I mean cough up at least one bottle, you a—.” The email ended with the suggestion that Daniel might find him drinking alone at 3 a.m. somewhere in Central Park. And yes, this particular individual is a sommelier actually working in New York…

posted June 04, 2010 02:20 PM            

In an earlier post, I noted that beer consumption outside the craft sector was down significantly. It's a point worth elaborating on, because there is solid evidence that a big change is afoot in American alcohol consumption.

According to a recent article in Ad Age, sales of Bud Light are down 5.3 percent in 2010, while Miller Lite is down 7.5 percent. In fact, only four of the top 30 brands saw sales increase. These are not slight changes. For an industry that relies on slow and steady annual growth, they represent a full-blown crisis.

Ad Age, and the brewing industry, pin the blame on the economy—the target audience, 21- to 35-year-olds, are being hit hardest by unemployment, they say, so they have less to spend on booze. To back that up, Ad Age points to increased sales of the cheap stuff, like PBR and Yuengling, and it explains away the craft numbers by arguing that buyers are "saving their consumption for a special occasion by splurging on craft-style beers."

Maybe. But there's a larger story here. Follow any dude in oversized glasses into a bar, and you'll see why PBR and Yuengling are doing alright—they've spent serious time and money positioning themselves as the hipster drink of choice. Yes, they're cheaper than Bud Light, but by the slightest of margins. Hardly enough to explain the difference in sales.

Instead, consider the longer term: according to the Distilled Spirits Council's Industry Review Tables for 2010, for the last decade beer revenues and market share have declined steadily when compared to spirits and wine. By volume, Americans drank 4.5 percent less beer in 2009 than they did in 2000, but they drank 1.7 percent more spirits and 2.8 percent more wine. And that's for beer overall—including the explosion in demand for craft brews.

Why? One obvious guess is that America is becoming a more bourgeois place. Even as income inequality grows, fewer people work traditional working-class jobs or identify themselves as blue-collar, the typical base community for the beer industry. Simply put, fewer Americans think of themselves as the sort of folks who drink beer.

Moreover, consumers crave innovation, whether it's the newest club or the newest fashion trend. The same goes for alcohol. And where has the innovation been? In wine, where American vintners have secured a reputation among the best in the world. In spirits—pick your story: cocktail culture, the return of whiskey, or the explosion in vodka consumption. And in niche beer sales: craft on the one hand, hipster-oriented marketing by certain brands on the other. But for the big, traditional American brewers, the most innovation we've seen has been in the stale reshuffling of the same tired ad campaigns. (Drinkability, anyone?)

posted June 16, 2010 03:24 PM            

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iStockphoto/Salon

If Chardonnay is the vanilla of the commercial wine world, then Cabernet Sauvignon is its chocolate. These two grapes dominate both the marketplace and our collective palate. When you consider that most Merlot-based wines (with a few exceptional exceptions) taste, basically, like Cabernet Sauvignon on Prozac, the fact that nearly half of all wine sold in the United States is made from one these grapes tells us that our collective palate is quite specifically tuned.

Still, as Americans are becoming ever more wine-savvy, other varietals get to play -- Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling for whites, for instance, and Pinot Noir and Syrah / Shiraz for reds -- and the wine world lies in constant wait for the Next Big Grape. I'm a wine lover, not a psychic, but I wouldn't be shocked if Cabernet Franc emerges from the shadows to wear that title soon.

It's a grape that's hiding in plain sight. In much of the modern wine world, Cabernet Franc is considered a humble blender to augment wines that more prominently feature its relatives Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, but its charms as the featured grape in a wine -- balance between fruitiness and austerity, approachability and complexity -- are finding more and more adherents. As a blending grape, though, you may have sipped its nectar but never knew what you were tasting because the wine label did not mention the varietal. As is traditional (and, in many cases, the law) in France, the bottle probably instead boasted the name of a village in the Loire Valley or the proprietary name of a Bordeaux château.