*Wine Spectator - http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Home/
*Wine Spectator Trade News - http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Trade_News/Home/0,3698,,00.html
*Wine Spectator Blogs - http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Free/WS_Blogs/0,4505,,00.html
Wines & Vines News - http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=news
Beverage Daily - http://www.beveragedaily.com/
Just Drinks - http://www.just-drinks.com/
Wine Marketer - http://www.winemarketer.com/
Drinks Media Wire - http://www.drinksmediawire.com/index.asp
Adams Beverage - http://www.adamsbevgroup.com/home.asp
The Drinks Business - http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/
Ship Compliant Blog - http://www.shipcompliantblog.com/
WineGuy.org - http://www.wineguy.org/
Google specialty tools
Google Alerts - http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en
Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader/view/
Graduating Class Wine MBA 2008- Mikaela Sullivan, Francesco Ferlaino, Adam Morris, Johan Gouws, Miranda Porterfield, Thomas Gallagher, Amy Mumma. Not Pictured: Edoardo Narduzzi
Awaiting the ceremonies at Chateau La Couspaude, St. Emilion
As I stated in my little speech at the ceremony, many thanks to all of my classmates, profs, visiting lecturers and staff.
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Philip McLaughlin (Dean of BEM), Thomas Gallagher, Michel Rolland
Michel Rolland was our class mentor and delivered the commencement address.
]]>Will this create a new powwer center in the world of fine wine?
]]> The Denver Post article is here.
http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_8255095?source=email
Someday the legislature will realize that the average citizen is being harmed by the current state of affairs.
As I have stated many times in the class I teach at Arapahoe Community College, there are too many Mom & Pops with too much inventory out there that is not being handled properly.
I am a firm believer in the power of small business, I am also a firm believer in the power of competition and true capitalism. The one person one license law in Colorado is damaging to the consumer, and damaging to the business that are actually running effecient healthy stores.
The law as it stands helps the little guy - fine. It also helps the distributors, by eliminateing true buying power.
It does not help the state as many state, the tax revenue gained with the addition of Sunday sales would more than make up for the lower prices.
See the Heartland Institute brief from August 2004
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15477
Will somebody let he consumer win, please.
]]>Finally, this should be good for the consumer. Liquor store owners would be able to have up to three licenses instead of the one today. This is certainly not perfect, but it should help.
Grocery stores will provde the consumer access to better prices on the big brands and small liquor stores should be incentivized to provide a better product overall.
Any thoughts?
PS - not sure what Shaffer means by removing all the arbitrary provisions, isn't three licenses arbitrary?
]]>So for everyone out there looking for an additional marketing idea for February 1st. Restaurants and Wineries.
A list of women owned wineries can be found here.
I did note that Rideau Vineyards was not on the list.
http://www.rideauvineyard.com
A very unexhaustuve list of wineries with female winemakers.
go high end with consulting winemakers -
Helen Turley, Mia Klein, Cathy Corison, and Heidi Barrett Peterson
or you go with this list
Jean Arnold (Hanzell Vineyards, Sonoma, CA)
Judy Beardsall (Ananda di Toscana,Tuscany, Italy)
Gay Callan (Chatom Vineyards, Murphys, CA)
Rhonda Carano (Ferrari-Carano, Healdsburg, CA)
Jane Delaney (The Ravensvale Group, Australia)
Elizabeth Grant Douglas (La Crema Winery, Windsor, CA)
Patti Hoffman (Spellbound Wines, Napa, CA)
Violet Grgich (Grgich Hills Cellar, Rutherford, CA)
Merry Edwards (Meredith Vineyard Estate, Russian River Valley, Windsor, CA)
Joan Flowers (Flowers Vineyard & Winery, Cazadero, CA)
Gina Gallo (Gallo of Sonoma Winery, Healdsburg, CA)
Jennifer Higgins (Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards & Winery, Healdsburg, CA)
Patricia Kluge (The Kluge Estate & Winery, Charlottesville, VA)
Anne Moses (Patz and Hall, Napa, CA)
Gabriela Negrete (Montes Winery, Apalta Valley, Chile)
Dr. Sua Newton (Newton Vineyards, St. Helena, CA)
Claude de Nicolay (Domaine Chandon de Brailles, Burgundy, France)
Susie Selby (Selby Winery, Healdsburg, CA)
Joy Sterling (Iron Horse Vineyards, Sebastopol, CA)
Margi Wierenga (Brogan Cellars, Healdsburg, CA)
Just an idea, what do you think?
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The problem is the first question posed:
I went to an estate sale where I purchased assorted bottles of wine, reds and whites from California from 1995 to 1998. They were $1 each. The person selling them said they were stored "correctly." Are they too old and should I just throw them in the waste can? Or is there a chance that they may still be all right to consume?
--Joyce Young, Jacksonville, Fla
I agree with their answer - I would certainly place a $1 bet on these wines. But, was it actually legal for these wines to be sold?
]]>In our session last March Australian producers that were hedging currency were looking at $0.85 US to the AUS$ it is now at $0.8801. When we started the program in January of 2007 the Euro was at around $1.30 and now it is $1.48.
What does this mean, it means that the quality wine at reasonable prices that the American consumer has relied upon will be harder to come by in 2008. Europe and Australia have relied on the US and the UK for increased consumption and the US for relative pricing stability for over a decade, and that could be coming to an end. Wild currency flucuations will not be helpful for the wine industry. It has become increasingly global industry and this unpredictable financial future could truly hurt an industry that is just getting over severe wine gluts in France and Australia.
My one hope is that the american wine industry will learn how to properly export their wine instead of the situation we currently where tip number one for Decanter magazine's August 2007 issue is "Don't bother trying to find good value Californian wines outside the US." We are doing nothing to improve the image american wine abroad.
It will be interesting to see what the shake out will be from all of this.
]]>Two of my favorite sites are Liv-Ex and Vinfolio's The Wine Collector blog.
Liv-Ex has a great page that links to the major wine investment articles, Liv-Ex is based in the UK so you have to get used to that slant and the papers they tend to link.
The Wine Collector blog is written by the founder of Vinfolio, Stephen Bachman, and covers wine collecting and investment, sometimes in depth and sometimes the surface.
What is interesting is that Stephen has written a couple of posts and written about recent articles on wine investing and everyone including myself seems to be coming to the same conclusion, fine wine prices will continue to rise due to a wid erange of reasons.
Here is a paper I wrote for the Wine MBA that I am in the process of completing that covers the topic of fine wine prices Wine Economics essay.
Here are the relevant Wine Collector blogs.
Why wine investing is a hot topic
Since most of these were written with the perspective of a relatively rosy and stable 2007, will the picture remain the same? I believe it will because the fundamentals of the fine wine market cannot change that much and the forces causing the increasing pressures on price and demand in the fine wine sector will only continue to grow as the global distribution of fine wine continues to expand. Will there be hiccups, yes, but I think the fundamentals are still strong.
The question for any wine investor is, what gets classified as fine wine. That is the part that will be left of to the market.
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The WSJ article (subscription required) goes into further detail and there is an array of other analysis out there in the wine blogosphere.
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