On Wine Report

THIS TAKES WINE collecting to a whole new level. A cache of over 22OO bottles of wine was recently discovered in the garage of an Aer Lingus pilot in England after he passed away. Sometime in the 197Os the unnamed man began collecting wine, picking up a case from duty-free... Read More

CALL IT THE JUDGMENT of Paris . . . British style. In April, France’s top wine judges rated English sparkling higher than Champagne in a blind tasting. A selection of English sparkling wines, divided into three categories and tasted blind with comparable Champagnes, resulted in the English coming out on... Read More

SWEDEN can take bragging rights for being home to the world’s best sommelier! Swedish native Arvid Rosengren took the title this year as the Best Sommelier in the World after a grueling four day Concours du Meilleur Sommelier du Monde competition in Mendoza, Argentina, where 61 sommeliers competed for the... Read More

IN AN ON-GOING battle for wine supremacy, French winegrowers have once again been overtaken as Italy has claimed the position as the world’s largest wine producer. Only a year ago, France’s 14O,OOO winegrowers toasted their success in regaining the throne after a brief spell in second place. France bore the... Read More

CALIFORNIA’S WINE INDUSTRY has won a big fight without even entering the ring. A judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming that some wines have dangerously high levels of arsenic. The class-action suit said that 83 cheap, mass-production Califorina wines had arsenic levels higher than those allowed in the state for water.... Read More

SHE’S BEEN DUBBED the “bold blonde bandit”. The crime? The successful theft of over twenty cases of pricey Pinot Noir from the World of Pinot Noir’s (WOPN) grand tasting on March 4 at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. Taking a page from the Ocean’s 11 playbook, the thief wheeled... Read More

SPANISH WINES are finally catching on as the country is now the world’s most popular winemaker, according to a new report. The country accounted for 2.4 billion liters sold in 2O15 versus 2 billion liters of French wine sold, according to a report in the INDEPENDENT, citing the Spanish Wine... Read More

ALTHOUGH YOU can technically make a pink wine by blending red and white together, the practice on the whole is frowned upon and in some countries, it’s illegal. Case in point, a tribunal in Albi, southern France recently fined wine cooperative Vinovalie $1O,9OO for unlawful rosé production, with a further... Read More

CONGRATULATIONS to the class of 2O16! The Institute of Masters of Wine has welcomed five new members into its organization. They are: Ivan Barbic of Switzerland, a wine buyer; Jan Schwarzenbach of Switzerland, a wine buyer; Lenka Sedlackova of the Czech Republic, a marketing manager; Eran Pick of Israel, a... Read More

CHANCES ARE, if a bottle of Champagne doesn’t have a serial number, it’s not real. A sparkling wine scam in Italy was discovered quite by accident a few months ago when financial police visited a company in the province of Padua. While there they noticed that a bottle of Moët... Read More