Internet wine sales closer to becoming legal
State House approves bill allowing Georgians to order from farm wineries; Senate will get a shot
By JAMES SALZER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/28/08
The state House overwhelmingly approved legislation this afternoon that would let Georgians buy cases of wine over the Internet from farm wineries.
House members also passed legislation letting wineries in Georgia sell beer and liquor as well as wine in their tasting rooms.
The legislation to allow direct wine purchases from wineries has been held up in the past by Georgia’s liquor industry, which didn’t want the competition. However, liquor industry lobbyists worked with the measure’s sponsor, Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah), to limit the scope of the legislation.
Under Stephens’ direct shipping bill, which passed 126-8, Georgians would be allowed to order up to 12 cases of wine a year from farm wineries.
Read the entire article: http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/02/28/wine_0229.html
Sphere: Related ContentSearch for the perfect match
The dish seemed basic enough: thin fillets of petrale sole accompanied by a fennel, watercress and grapefruit salad.
The pairings, however, were all over the map - literally.
Joanna Breslin chose a Viognier from Eventide Cellar in South Africa. Philippe Gardelle chose an Alsatian Gewurztraminer. And Paul Einbund? He chose a Belgian beer.
The three were among six sommeliers and wine directors asked to participate in The Chronicle Wine department’s pairing challenge. Their task was simple - each was to take a recipe created by Chronicle Pairings columnist Lynne Char Bennett, and come up with what they believed to be the best matches for that dish. Three got the fish, and the second group of three got Pork & Mustard Stroganoff. The contestants were limited to two bottles each - one “safe bet” and a more unexpected choice - and each was to be under $40 retail. On a recent Tuesday, the six contestants came in two separate shifts to The Chronicle for a blind tasting, armed with wine totes, paper bags and chilled bottles.
Two dishes, six sommeliers and 12 wines. A panel of Chronicle judges - including Wine Editor Jon Bonné, Executive Food and Wine Editor Michael Bauer and Bennett - would determine the winners.
The stage was officially set.
The participants are among the Bay Area’s top sommeliers. On a daily basis, they change and develop wine lists based on their restaurants’ menus. With incredibly fine-tuned palates, they spend hours each day tasting wines against the dozens of dishes that emerge from their kitchens.
Read the entire article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/29/WIBTV6ICF.DTL
Sphere: Related Content30+ Resources For Enjoying And Learning About Wine
Originally posted on: http://mashable.com/2008/02/25/30-resources-wine/
by Sean P. Aune
General
BuyersVine.com - A tool to assist you in finding wineries and stores with good choice of wine.
Calwineries.com - A guide to the wineries of California, lessons about their terrain, history and more.
eBacchus.com - eBacchus has a little bit of everything from winery listings, reviews, educational resources, shopping links and more.
TV.WineLibrary.com - A series of video casts about every aspect of wine and numerous reviews.
WineMag.com - The online counterpart to Wine Enthusiast Magazine with numerous resources for expanding your wine knowledge.
WineLibrary.com Labels - Search this archive of wine labels, comment on them, even use their linking code to display the labels of your favorite wines on your blog.
WineLifeToday.com - A news site for all things related to wine by people who love wines.
WineSpectator.com - A leading resource for learning just about everything you ever wanted to know about wine.
Reviews
Nirvino.com - Nirvino brings together reviews from broadcast, print and online sources into one handy source. Offers an iPhone optimized version so you can check easily for reviews from restaurants and more.
NoseWine.com - Share your tasting notes on various wines and browse the archives by wine or by user.
SupermarketWine.com - A site based in the United Kingdom that rates and reviews the wines you find in grocery stores for every day use.
Search
AbleGrape.com - A wine specific search engine that allows you to do nifty little tricks of entering “Spanish” as a query as opposed to “Spanish Wines”, to hopefully bring you better wine-related results.
Snooth.com - Boasting a database of thousands of wines, and millions of reviews, Snooth aims to help you find new wines for you to try based on past favorites?
Vinquire.com - A search engine to assist you in finding reviews as well as places to buy. Also features forums for you to talk with other wine lovers.
WinesAndTimes.com - A Google Maps mashup allowing you to locate over 3,200 wineries in the United States, and find directions to them from your home or hotel.
Shopping
CrushPadWine.com - Ever thought you could make your own wine? CrushPad provides you with the grapes from some of California’s best vineyards and let’s you choose the level of involvement as they make a wine based on your choices and wishes.
KLWines.com - A leading online seller of wines featuring thousands of vintages.
VinoMatch.com - Offers wines from all over the world and an interesting slider-based meter system to dial in the taste you like, and then receive suggestions of the best vintage for you.
Wine.com - As the name would imply, they sell wine, and lots of it. Also offers resources for learning about the beverage and offers a nice selection for under $20 a bottle.
Wine-Searcher.com - Search nearly 9,000 stores price lists for that certain bottle of wine you want at a price you can afford.
WineQ.com - Load up your queue and build your own monthly wine club.
Wines.com - A Wine of the Month club mixed in with an encyclopedia of wine knowledge and part social network of over 11,000 wine lovers.
WineSocieties.com - A mixture of a site to buy & sell wines as well as interact with other members, read news, have a profile and more.
WineWeb.com - Search over 150,000 wines available from wineries and merchants alike.
Social Networks
Adegga.com - Besides the usual tagging and rating, you can also add a watchlist to see what other users and stores are up to. Search for the best places to buy your desired wines. You can read a bit more in Adegga to Launch Social Network For Wine Lovers by Kristen Nicole.
BottleTalk.com - Meet wine aficionados from all over the world, track your personal wine history, rate them, explore others choices.
Corkd.com - Make a list of wines you’ve tried, rate them, compare with your buddies and comment on each others reviews.
GuruDelVino.com - A place for wine enthusiasts to get together and share their knowledge while learning new things also.
OpenBottles.com - Keep track of your collection, rate ones you’ve tried, start a wishlist, meet and chat with others who share your favorites and more.
Vinorati.com - Start a tasting journal, tag your sampled wines, get new recommendations and share & compare with other users. You can also form groups or join them.
WineLog.net - A mixture of recommendation engine and a social network, you tag and rate the wines you’ve tried, and their engine will recommend new ones for you to try. You can also browse others lists and talk with them about your favorite beverage.
Sphere: Related ContentChef Values Wine as Best Dish Companion
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
A two-star Michelin chef spoke highly of wine, citing it as one of the best companions for a delicious meal.
“The combination of wine and food is like a marriage,” chef Gaeteno Trovato said during an interview with The Korea Times. “A glass of wine can make a dish taste better. But it can also ruin everything if it’s terrible.”
He said he always encourages guests to drink a glass of wine when they enjoy his creations.
Introducing himself as an “amateur sommelier,” the veteran Italian chef emphasized the role of wine while enjoying a meal, and advised selecting a wine well-matched to each dish.
Thanks to his passion for wine, he owns 600 different kinds totaling 8,000 bottles at his restaurant in Tuscany.
The chef came to Seoul to host a promotion in the Sky Lounge of the COEX InterContinental Seoul from Feb. 19 to 23. It was a short visit but Trovato said he wanted to introduce the variety and authentic cuisine of his country in his own way.
Like other famous chefs, he emphasized the importance of quality ingredients.
To offer the best dishes, he only uses fresh seasonal ingredients and opposes using artificially made products, such as vegetables from greenhouses.
Read the entire article: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2008/02/135_19785.html
Sphere: Related ContentSonoma Vintner’s Team Crafts Pricey Wines, Funds Wheelchairs
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) — Former Wall Street publisher turned vintner Gordon L. Holmes has a unique concept in philanthropy: For each bottle of wine you purchase as futures from his Lookout Ridge Winery, he donates a wheelchair in your name to one of the world’s 100 million needy people desperate for mobility.
These wines aren’t plonk for charity. Holmes, 57, has enlisted California winemaking stars to make small lots of cult- quality cabernet, pinot and syrah under his label. One of them, Andy Erickson, makes hard-to-obtain Screaming Eagle, the most expensive California cab around.
Curious how Holmes started the project, I drive up a winding road of hairpin curves to his Sonoma winery high in the Mayacamas Mountains. The panoramic views, hung with clouds, are splendid.
The bearded, fifth-generation Californian, wearing jeans, cowboy boots, checked shirt and striking tortoise-shell glasses, greets me at a cubelike concrete house that serves as an office. Holmes made his name in New York by publishing investment magazines, then sold them all in 1998 to follow his dream of making wine at this property.
“That same year, unfortunately, my wife, Kari, was diagnosed with a rare form of debilitating MS,” or multiple sclerosis, Holmes explains as he gives me a tour of his newly built wine cave. “I learned firsthand how important a wheelchair can be.”
Top Winemaker
By 2000, Holmes was planting vineyards and hired top winemaker Greg La Follette to help him make wine from purchased grapes. Four years later he met California real-estate developer and philanthropist Ken Behring, who started the Wheelchair Foundation. That chance encounter and his wife’s situation inspired his Wine for Wheels effort.
“The first time we distributed wheelchairs, in Mexico, I saw how one could instantly change someone’s life,” he says. “I picked up a little boy whose dad was wheeling him in a wheelbarrow and sat him in a wheelchair. The look on his face now that he could get around by himself — wow.”
Read the entire article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=aQQXYuCljYhI&refer=home
Sphere: Related ContentWine You Can Unpop From A Can
By J.M. HIRSCH
Associated Press
First there was the plastic stopper. Then the box. Then the screw cap. Now comes the soda can.
Efforts to find better ways to package wine generally have focused on eliminating the cork, a natural material that unfortunately can taint wine with a harmless but distasteful bacteria.
Now an Argentinean company is ditching the bottle, too. Based in Buenos Aires, Iron Wine ( www.ironwine.com) offers red (malbec-cabernet blend) and white (chenin blanc) wines in 8 1/2 - and 12-ounce cans (three of the former equal a standard bottle of wine).
Read the entire article: http://www.courant.com/entertainment/nightlife/hc-winecan.artfeb28,0,1710093.story
Sphere: Related ContentHong Kong to become global wine hub
HONG KONG (AFP) — Hong Kong stands to become an international wine hub and profit from rapidly growing demand in China after abolishing a 40-percent tax on the tipple, industry experts said Wednesday.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang on Wednesday scrapped all duty on wine and beer, saying he hoped to create a wine trading and distribution market in the booming southern Chinese territory.
Boris de Vroomen, chairman of the Wine and Spirits Industry Coalition, said the move would “send a strong message that Hong Kong is determined to become an international fine wine hub” alongside London and New York.
“Hong Kong has everything needed to create a fine wine hub and the only thing preventing that was the duty,” he said.
“As much as 40 percent of fine wines traded and sold in London are sold to consumers based in Hong Kong but stored in London, so Hong Kong does not benefit.”
Wine consumption in Asia has risen sharply in recent years and is forecast to increase further.
De Vroomen, who leads a joint venture between drink-maker Diageo and LVMH, owner of Moet champagne, forecast Chinese consumers would buy around 50 million cases of imported wine a year by 2017, up from just two million now.
Auction house Bonhams responded to the news by announcing it would hold what it said was Hong Kong’s first wine sale in a decade.
“Hong Kong has quickly established itself as a growing market leader in the trade and collecting of the finest and rarest wines on the planet,” said Frank Martell, Bonhams’ international wine director.
“The proposed exemption of wine from duty… has opened up a new dimension in the trade.”
Nicholas Pegna, Hong Kong managing director of wine merchants Berry Bros and Rudd, said the decision to scrap duty would make the city “very competitive.”
“A bottle of wine will now be cheaper in Hong Kong than anywhere else in Asia,” he said.
“It will make Hong Kong into a sensible hub for exporting, primarily into China.”
China will be one of the world’s top 10 wine consuming nations by 2010, according to a survey carried out for the global wine and spirits convention Vinexpo.
Tsang said scrapping taxes on all alcohol except spirits would cost the government about 560 million dollars (72 million US) a year.
But he said revenues from trading in and storing wine could increase by as much as four billion dollars a year as a result of the move, adding it could also help develop tourism in the city.
Sphere: Related ContentVindu’s View: Crushpad lets beginners make wine worry-free
By Vindu Goel
Mercury News
When I look at the two cases of 2006 Juice Crew Red that now sit in my dining room, I still can’t believe it: I helped make that wine.
The delicious Rhone-style blend of grenache, syrah and petite syrah cost our band of amateur vintners less than $20 a bottle, start to finish. And the process was remarkably easy, thanks to an outfit called Crushpad.
Although the quirky San Francisco company is officially a winery, it doesn’t produce anything under its own name. Instead, it helps ordinary folks - like the 20 or so people in my group - fulfill their dreams of making a wine of their own.
Crushpad staffers handle the messy parts of winemaking: hauling fruit, crushing and pressing the juice, checking on the barrels of maturing wine, bottling.
Customers get to focus on the fun stuff, like choosing the grapes, tasting the wine at various stages and blending varietals and vintages to craft the perfect bottle. Crushpad’s experienced winemakers offer advice at every step.
“You get to make all the decisions, but you have the safety net of the experts,” said Julie Hanna, a San Francisco tech entrepreneur who is making a barrel of Mendocino syrah with a group of friends. “It’s like winemaking on training wheels.”
Read the entire article: http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8376246
Sphere: Related ContentA Rule Just Waiting to Be Broken
By ERIC ASIMOV
“RED wine with oysters? Are you mad?”
Quite possibly. And yet, the thought excited me. Why would I want to muck with such routinely thrilling combinations as oysters with muscadet, Chablis or Champagne, not to mention the old Irish standby, Guinness stout?
Well, why not?
Nobody loves the tried-and-true oyster-and-wine pairings more than I do. But doesn’t there come a time when the certainties are no longer enough?
In a favorite restaurant do you order the same dish each time? Do you read a favorite book over and over? So it goes with wine and food. You’ll always have Paris, but sometimes you want Pago Pago.
It began when I read a post on Dorie Greenspan’s blog at doriegreenspan.com. Dorie is a writer and cookbook author who lives part-time in Paris. Last month she reported that in two days, at two bistros, servers recommended red wine with her oysters.
Mind you, this was in Paris, temple of the gastronomic verities. Dorie also wrote of a friend whose server at a seafood restaurant mentioned a preference for red wine with Belon oysters.
I know oysters and red wine sounds bizarre, but 20 years ago white wine with cheese sounded strange. Now, white wine is accepted as a delicious companion for many cheeses.
Of course, red wine with cheese can be a deadly match, while oysters go perfectly with a host of white wines. Still, I was intrigued. I had to try this.
Read the entire article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/dining/27pour.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Sphere: Related ContentFoxen Winery - New Releases
With spring right around the corner, we wanted to let you know of a couple of new releases, special shipping offer and a few events we have coming up. As always, springtime is a perfect time to visit the winery…. the hills are green and the weather is perfect. We hope to see you in the Tasting Room very soon!
2006 Chardonnay Bien Nacido Block UU
Price: $32
To purchase: http://www.foxenvineyard.com/store.html
Another knock-out wine from the famed Bien Nacido Vineyard just down the road from Foxen.
Winemaker’s Notes:
“Intense flavors of lemon drop greet the palate, followed by lush vanilla-accented smoky new oak and passionfruit, all ending with a chalky mineral finish.”
– Bill Wathen, winemaker
*92 Points-Wine Enthusiast–*Cellar Selection* This wine starts out so acidic, its almost sour. Then the intense lemondrop flavors kick in, followed by the lush vanilla-accented smoky new oak, and the chalky minerals on the finish, and suddenly, the acidity makes sense. It’s Chablisian, built for the cellar. By sometime in 2008, everything should start to meld together, and this block selection could do amazing things over the next four to six years- S.H (12/31/07)
2005 Merlot Vogelzang Vineyard
Price: $32
To purchase: http://www.foxenvineyard.com/store.html
This small production wine is available only in the tasting room. The perfect wine for your springtime Barbecues.
Winemaker’s Notes:
“Aromas of blackberry, minerals and ripe plums all greet the nose, while ripe cherry, tobacco and cigar box round out the finish” -Bill Wathen
