Charles Shaw: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been

Date: Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

This week stories about the 10 year anniversary of Charles Shaw wines began to hit the news. If there is a single wine brand I get asked about by people not into wine, it’s this Trader Joe’s success story. The funny thing is the story of Charles Shaw started over 35 years ago but few [...]

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Kendall-Jackson Humanizes Their Brand

Date: Tue, Jan 31, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

It’s rare when network TV and wine come together but when it does I take a look. I’m not a regular viewer of Undercover Boss but might be after this episode at Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates. New President Rick Tigner works at the bottom of this organization and learns a lot. And he does the right [...]

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iTunes Now Includes All Podcast Episodes

Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

This podcast predates iTunes so when it started only a portion of my shows appeared on the feed. After I posted my latest podcast I decided it made sense to consolidate all the shows into the iTunes feed with all future podcasts published in mp3 format. Down the feed to Winecast 33 are enhanced AAC [...]

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TMiW 1 – Looking Back, Looking Forward

Date: Sun, Jan 29, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

This is the premier episode of This Month in Wine, a monthly discussion about what is going on within the wine world from a consumer and insider perspective. Hosts: Tim Elliott and Jeff Lefevere Topics What’s up with Good Grape? Is wine blogging on the decline? Wine Trends & Predictions for 2012 Value Replaces Cheap [...]

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Michael Mondavi really gets wine blogging

Date: Fri, Jan 27, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

While searching for something else this week I came across this random video of an Italian blogger who did a short video interview with Michael Mondavi. Mr. Mondavi’s answer to a simple question about wine bloggers shows he really gets how we fit into the wine conversation. The best part is the last 10 seconds [...]

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Announcing WBW 74: Value Sparkling Wine

Date: Mon, Jan 23, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

One of the wine trends from 2011 is the rise of Champagne with American consumers up over 20% from  2010. Another trend was Moscato coming out of nowhere to become nearly an overnight success. This could be in part due to the charms of the lightly sparkling frizzante made from this grape in Italy. Sparkling [...]

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The Rise of Muscat, a Sign of The Apocalypse?

Date: Sat, Jan 21, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

There was a good story in the Wall Street Journal recently about the rise of Muscat, the sweet white wine made all over the world but closely associated with Italy where it is called Moscato. Last year this grape took off growing nearly 80% in sales from the year before. Nobody in the wine business [...]

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WBW 73: My Wine Spark

Date: Wed, Jan 18, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

I first found out about Wine Blogging Wednesday in late February of 2005 when Andrew from Spittoon sent me an email inviting me to participate in WBW 7. Back then the wine blogging world was a small group of sites and we frequently commented on each others posts and traded emails. I was intrigued with [...]

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Just 2 Weeks Until WBW 73

Date: Wed, Jan 4, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

Just a friendly reminder that Wine Blogging Wednesday 73 is just two weeks away. Our host, The Corkdork, has asked us to revisit the wine that first got your attention to learn more about wine. This could be a carafe of rosé in Paris, Sassicaia 1988, a random bottle of Cahors or Inglenook Cask 1958. Or [...]

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“Why Are You So Into Pinot?”

Date: Sun, Jan 1, 2012 Wine Tasting Wine Business

Watch Paul Giamatti’s eyes while Virginia Madsen is speaking. Great acting in the best wine scene ever in film. You might need to click back for the video… Happy New Year! “Why Are You So Into Pinot?” originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

“Why Are You So Into Pinot?” originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Rex Pickett’s “Life on Spec”

Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 Wine Tasting Wine Business

I have written quite a bit here about Sideways, a rare film that somehow combines wine, humor and middle age crisis into an Academy Award winning package. But until recently I had no idea how close Sideways came from never being made. In a series of posts by author Rex Pickett over at the Stage [...]

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The Future of Wine Criticism Gets Clearer

Date: Mon, Jul 26, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

It’s been interesting watching the reaction to James Suckling’s retirement from the Wine Spectator announced a couple weeks ago (note: I wrote this post 11 days ago but only posting it now due to some issues with my blog software). I first found out about it on Twitter where the discussion was a mix of [...]

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When Should You Return Wine?

Date: Thu, Jul 15, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

From time to time everyone gets a bad bottle of wine. Most cases it’s due to faulty (natural) corks or high temperatures in shipping or storage. But there are also winemaking flaws that can make a wine undrinkable such as bacteria, wild yeast or reduction. Recently I came across a bottle that appeared to be suffering from [...]

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The Perils of Being “The Wine Guy”

Date: Sun, Jun 27, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

This week I attended a technology conference held by one of my clients. It has been a long time since I have attended such a gathering but the change of pace was welcome. Like in my past life as a tech marketer, I was “the wine guy” at a dinner. You know, the guy you [...]

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