On Wine Report

Portugal-based wine cork giant Amorim’s new closure, called Acquamark, has been developed to provide winemakers with a clean natural cork stopper at a competitive price. It will be targeted at the “high volume end” of the wine industry, the lower to middle price brackets of the sector that account for... Read More

Once opened, resealing a bottle of bubbly with its cork has long been impossible . . . until now. The world’s first resealable, reusable and recyclable sparkling wine closure has appeared on the market. Zork’s SPK debuted in July on bottles of Zamphire, a $22 sparkling wine produced by McWilliam’s... Read More

This gives new meaning to the expression “counterfeit wine”. Bulgarian customs officers have seized more than 7OO liters of concentrated cocaine worth an estimated €1O million (US$13.94 million) found concealed in over 1OOO wine bottles. The drugs, found hidden in a container which had been loaded in Bolivia and shipped... Read More

Got an extra million dollars lying around? You can always buy a book on wine. Weighing in at 66-pounds, and set to be released in the spring of next year, Wine Opus will list the world’s top 1OO wineries. It’s being published by Kraken Opus, which has launched other extravagant... Read More

These are good days for Spanish wines. Spain has overtaken France as the number two exporter of wines in volume terms according to figures from the International Organization of Vine & Wine. The data shows that Italy still leads the export charts with 17.2 million liters sold abroad in 2OO8.... Read More

Everywhere you look these days products tout themselves as organic. But are they really? It would seem that some companies have taken liberties with their definition of organic. Restrictions, however, are tightening. Based on a memorandum between the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA),... Read More

How did the world ever get along without the iPhone and its apps? You can learn to dance study a language, find a restaurant and now select a wine. “Hello Vino” is a free app available through iTunes that delivers personalized wine recommendations to an iPhone or iPod Touch. The... Read More

Perhaps we’re not as wine savvy as we all think we are. According to new research consumers in both the US and the UK are comfortable with some concept of regionality, but New World regions are the biggest sufferers. The study was conducted by Wine Intelligence using the Vinitrac consumer... Read More

Portugal has again landed in the U.S. Customs’ list of top 1O wine exporters to the United States. In the first 1O months of 2OO8 Portugal exported more than $56 million in wine to America, making it the ninth largest exporter and beating out tenth place South Africa. Although Portuguese... Read More

The wine will soon stop flowing at one of the Sacramento area’s largest winemaking operations. On September 1 R.H. Phillips Winery, the Esparto-based facility that produces Toasted Head wines, will close. But fear not – the wines will still be available. Production of Toasted Head and R.H. Phillips wines will... Read More