On Wine Report

This falls in the category of downright embarrassing. When done right, sabering a bottle of bubbly is nothing short of impressive. Done wrong and well, it’s quite the opposite. On New Year’s Eve, the General Manager at Napa Valley’s famed French Laundry restaurant unsuccessfully sabered a Nebuchadnazeer (15-liter bottle) of... Read More

2018 was quite a year for wine sales at Sotheby’s. The auction house recently announced that its wine and spirit sales for the year crossed US$100 million for the first time. After a bumper series of results which included a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti selling for $558,000, another seven Methuselahs... Read More

In the end, the sugar sacks gave them away. Two Prosecco producers based in Valdobbiadene and Refrontolo, in the province of Treviso, were raided this past fall when officials grew suspicious after finding two tons of sugar in sacks. Italian police seized 750,000 liters of Prosecco from the two producers... Read More

While 2O18 was a good year for many of Europe’s wine producing countries, Portugal’s harvest will be the lowest of the past two decades, according to estimates by the country’s National Statistics Institute, placing production at 5.2 million hectolitres – a drop of around 22% on the previous year of... Read More

There’s a new Spanish-German alliance and this one is all about wine. Henkell & Co. Sektkellerei and Freixenet SA have joined forces and unveiled a new name and a logo for the holding company, the former Henkell & Co. Group. The merger allows the two groups to access new markets... Read More

Counterfeit wine problems continue to abound in China . . . to the tune of $14.4 million worth of fake wine recently discovered in a bust. Police in China recently arrested 11 people and seized more than 5O,OOO bottles of fake wine bottled as Australia’s Penfolds and China’s Changyu in... Read More

THE SONOMA COUNTY WINEGROWERS held its annual meeting with a focus on the positive and an image for the future with a new label logo.  Approved after a couple years of development, the logo includes Sonoma County in large font and box with the phrase “Sustainably Farmed Grapes” in a... Read More

FRANCE HAS HAD its share of wine scandals in the last few years and now there’s a fresh one causing quite a sensation: counterfeit Bordeaux. Customs authorities in France have begun an investigation into the alleged sale of the fake Bordeaux – using false Pomerol, Margaux and Pauillac labels –... Read More

THE AOC CHAMPAGNE takes its name seriously.  Very seriously.  The famed region is notorious for taking quick legal action against companies that misuse the word.  So it comes as a surprise that after a 5-year legal battle, the European Union’s top court recently ruled in favor of a product called... Read More

IS BULGARIA POISED to make a splash in the global wine industry? That could well be the case after the country saw exports rise by an impressive 13% in 2O17. Overall, 17,517,139 tons of wine was produced and €17,432,629 million (US $2O,971,8O1) worth of wine were exported. While Bulgaria may... Read More