Profile: George Schwartz
GEORGE SCHWARTZ • 51 • Northeast Regional Sales Manager • VIAS Wines, New York City George Schwartz, a seasoned wine salesman and veteran of the Boston and New England marketplace, who looks at the wine world with a quizzical grin through Raybans perched on his DeNiro-like aquiline nose, is a... Read More
The Wines of Murcia
Murcia lies on the Mediterranean, in the Levante (east), where its still-active chief port, Cartagena, and the surrounding country were initially settled by Phoenicians (those great spreaders of viniculture) from Carthage around 225 BCE. Acquired by Rome (another vinous vector) in 2O9 BCE during the Punic Wars, the port was... Read More
LBV Ports
After explosive growth in the 199Os, Port sales in the US have been in the doldrums, flat to negative, this entire decade. The larger trend is that the entire fortified wine category has contracted. Despite periodic calls to “re-invent” itself and become more relevant to younger consumers, the major fortifieds... Read More
Wine and Global Warning
This February, in Barcelona, Spain, will be the Climate Change & Wine 2OO8 conference. Normally, I try to get people to join me for a conference, but this time I’m hoping someone else attends and reports back to me. Just to define it, “climate” is the average temperature over a... Read More
Beer: Why Not Women?
Suppose your store has two doors There isn’t really any difference between them, just that one is on the wine side of your store, and the other is on the beer side (we’ll assume you have your spirits in the middle). When someone comes in the beer door, you show... Read More
Clif Travers’ [SWEET] Stuff
Clif Travers is in the airy kitchen of his Dorchester home. Wielding a ridged muddler, he shows no mercy toward a lime wedge in a glass. An assortment of liquor bottles sits on the nearby table. A quartet of elegant, sleek square bottles stand out from the collection like stilettos... Read More
Chelminski and His Book
In his new book, I’ll Drink to That: Beaujolais and the French Peasant Who Made It the World’s Most Popular Wine, author Rudolph Chelminski charts the rise and fall and inevitable rise again (if he has anything to do with it) of the Beaujolais empire. The French peasant his too-long... Read More
Chianti Classico
For many years, Chianti Classico has wanted little to do with Chianti. From 1932 until 1996, Chianti Classico was legally a subzone of Chianti. Chianti Classico, however, felt and continues to feel that Chianti blemishes its image. The overall standard of quality of Chianti is lower than that of Chianti... Read More
Revisiting the French Paradox
Not quite the solution to the french paradox. Just before Christmas 2OO1, the research group led by Roger Corder, PhD, at the William Harvey Research Institute in London, stimulated a flurry of excitement by publishing a brief communication in nature. proposing an explanation of the French paradox and of the... Read More
Beer’s Future
THE HOP CRISIS The celebrations of craft beer producers have a darkening cloud hanging over them. The talk among brewers and distributors in recent months has turned from their recent successes to the possibility of a severe shortage of raw materials for use in the brewing process. While craft brewers... Read More