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Last year saw total volume sales move above the 23 million 9-liter case-sale plateau in the American market for the first time ever. Looking down a category’s performance listing of the some 5O measurable volume brands, starting at the top with the #1 almighty 9-million-case category-colossus, Bacardi, you can find... Read More

I was recently out on the road visiting bars in, of all places, central New Jersey, for a drinking book I’m working on. I drive on these trips, but I drink a lot of water, and I usually only drink about a third of the lower alcohol session beers I... Read More

On a frigid night just before the new year, a group of men in button down shirts and ties sat around a long table in the recently opened dining room of J.J. Foley’s Café on East Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End. The men were from all lines of work... Read More

It was another banner year for the cordials category propelled by the perpetual momentum of cocktail mania and the creative ways that mixologists make merry behind the bar. And once again, Massachusetts grabbed the top spot for retail spending for cordials and liqueurs to the tune of 333 million dollars... Read More

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