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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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

Americans not only consumed greater quantities of wine during the year (about 3 to 4% more, as has been the case for several years), they drank more red wine and on average they drank more expensive wine. Blush wine, primarily White Zinfandel, continued to decline as a percentage of the... Read More