On Wine Report

Call it “bionic wine”. Wine made from genetically engineered grapes that are six times richer than normal in resveratrol could soon be available. Yuejin Wang and colleagues at the Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University in Yangling, Shaanxi province, China, made the supervine by equipping it with an extra gene from... Read More

Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines has entered into an agreement to acquire Rosenblum Cellars for $1O5 million. The proposed transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval in the US, is expected to complete in the first quarter of this calendar year. Rosenblum Cellars, founded in 1978 by Kent and Kathy... Read More

TO COMMEMORATE ANOTHER GREAT YEAR in American wine, Doug Wilder, Director of California Acquisitions & Sales at Vinfolio, a premier wine store and collector services company, released his annual top 25 wines of the year. Wilder, who writes a free weekly wineletter, The Wilder Side of California, with his reviews... Read More

WHEN THINKING OF FRENCH BORDEAUX, a tetra pack with a straw is not generally the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, the notion of Bordeaux being packaged in a mini tetra pack with a straw might sound downright gauche, but French wine merchant Cordier is currently selling 1OOO... Read More

THERE WILL BE NO Ratatouille Chardonnay after all. Walt Disney Co. has shelved its plan to offer a Chardonnay in honor of the star of its latest movie. Costco was originally set to carry bottles of French 2OO4 white Burgundy with labels featuring Remy, the haute-cuisine-loving rat in “Ratatouille”, but... Read More

TIMES HAVE BEEN TOUGH lately in the French wine business but things may be on the upturn. After years of watching foreign taste buds respond to innovative New World wines, French wine and spirit makers appear to be making their way back into the global market. Exports in the first... Read More

IT’S TRUE: we are a nation of label snobs. Changing the label on a wine changed diners’ opinions of their wine, opinions of their meal, and their decision to return to the restaurant, according to a recent Cornell University study. In the experiment, forty-one diners at the Spice Box restaurant... Read More

IT MAY SOUND HARMLESS enough but wine counterfeiting is no laughing matter. Over the last few years the business of faking wine bottles and labels has grown substantially and become a very lucrative industry. The problem is so serious that twenty-five members of the Italian military police recently became qualified... Read More

THIS GIVES NEW DEFINITION to the term “critter wines”. While rats and wine do not, as a rule, go together that may all change with the recent release of Ratatouille Chardonnay. A licensing tie-in with the Pixar Animation Studios and the Walt Disney hit movie, the wine hit Costco stores... Read More

AUSTRALIA MAY BE SUFFERING from a severe drought but that hasn’t stopped the country from being proactive with its environmentally friendly wine packaging. Wine bottles are being replaced by milk cartons, aluminum cans shaped as bottles, tetra packs and soft sports-like packs. Demand from the northern hemisphere’s private sector is... Read More