Vino 101

We revisit Soave!

The third largest winery in the U.S. ( Constellation Brands) has just sold a significant portion of its value-priced brands to The Wine Group, the second largest winery in the U.S. Wine industry sales and profitability have been under pressure recently so one could view this as a move by Constellation to get rid of some low performing assets. Brands being swapped from one giant wine group to anoth...

Bill and I are back. Pardon our absence as family needs took a higher priority for both of us lately. On this podcast we offer up a quick summary of what we have been doing during our hiatus. While we may have been busy handling family affairs we still found time to have an adult beverage every now and then. We’ll share some of those discoveries on this show. Also I continue to post regularly on T...

As we head into springtime this year more wine and food events are returning to the our calendars. On this podcast Bill and I discuss our recent experiences at the Gambero Rosso and Slow Wine events both held in San Francisco.

Bill and I recorded this podcast the morning of the Super Bowl so good eats and adult beverages were front and center of our discussion. We go on a jag about the lack of places to find good bread in Sonoma County and come up with a pretty good impromptu list of great places to eat in Sonoma County. So if you have any plans to come to wine county there are lots of good tips in this podcast. Thanks...

Esther Mobley of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on the sale of the Robert Sinskey Vineyard Winery, tasting room and vineyards. However billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick elected to not purchase the brand. For the moment the Sinskeys plan to lease back the facility and continue business as usual. Press Democrat writer Sarah Doyle pens a piece on how Sonoma County winemakers are “ passing t...

With Christmas around the corner we put together a list of some of our favorite wines for the holidays. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes hasn’t slowed the uptick in wine prices. It can be fairly easy to blow up your wine budget with just one or two bottles of splurge purchases. Most of the wines on our list can all be had for under $35. Searching for one wine that pleases every...

A recent article by Colman Andrews titled Paradise Lost: The Flame Out of Napa Valley’s Iconic Wine Country raised a number of eyebrows in Northern California. The article’s main themes being that the Valley’s growth has lessened its charm and that corporatization has made visits to Napa Wineries too expensive for most people. I just recently attended the 18th annual Wine & Spirits Top 100 tas...

Al and Bill - news of the wineworld

Bill and I get together for a new podcast after an extended absence. On this podcast you can find out where we’ve been, what’s new in wine country and what we’ve been drinking and eating. It’s summertime so we find ourselves drinking less red wine and more rosé and white wines. Our wine recommendation for this week is the Mönchhof Ürzig Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett. The Mönchhof is said to be one...

Consolidation in the U. S. wine industry continues at an unabated pace. Most of the mergers and acquisitions are followed weeks later by layoffs and closures of production facilities. Sebastiani , Coppola and Chateau Ste. Michelle are some of the most recent buyouts. Right now is one of the best times to be looking for a job in the California wine industry. A quick look on winejobs.com will yield...

Windsor Ca. Mayor, Freeze in Europe.

Imported wine prices could be headed lower? Ursula Von der Leyen President of the European Commission and President Biden have agreed to suspend all tariffs with regard to the Airbus-Boeing dispute for four months. President Von der Leyen, the first woman elected to head the European Commission is responsible for setting the Commission’s policy agenda and is just 15 months into a five year term th...

Constellation Brands executives must be elated to finally complete their sale of over 32 wine brands and five wineries to E. J. Gallo Winery. The $810 million deal was less than half of the $1.7 billion initially proposed in April of 2019, as the Federal Trade Commission insisted Constellations exclude their sparkling wine, brandy, dessert wine and concentrate business lines as a condition of appr...

Delivery startup Go Puff has just announced its acquisition of alcohol beverage retailer BevMo. While Bevmo already has an online presence and delivery service Go Puff’s network , which delivers convenience store items will make it even more opportune for people to channel their inner couch potato. Convicted wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan has finished serving his federal prison sentence and is...

Wild fires , power outages and uncertain times in Wine Country

Lately there hasn’t been much to celebrate about and as a result Champagne growers are facing challenges due to the pandemic and collapsing sales. So far the French government has not offered any actionable help. Can growers and winemakers work together to hold prices steady? Franzia is selling a backpack that holds an entire box of wine. As it turns out their apparel site has a bunch of other swa...

Burning Harvest!

We have a new wine bar in Sebastopol. Region wine bar will specialize in pouring small production wines using self-serve wine machines. Cameron Diaz and Katherine Power have entered the celebrity wine business . Their wine brand Avaline , is entering a crowded market place. Years of consolidation by alcohol producers and wholesalers, uncertainty due to an ongoing trade war and now a pandemic makes...

After three plus months of shelter in place mandates with a significant portion of the hospitality and restaurant business in California throttled to an idle, wineries, brew pubs and distillers have been given the green light to host patrons again. The old tasting room model has been discarded in favor of new sanitation and social distancing protocols. Are you ready to go visit tasting rooms ? If...

Bill and I have been on a brief hiatus. Let’s just say we have been adjusting to a new way of living our lives during the coronavirus pandemic. Walking into a wine retailer or visiting a winery tasting room has not been an option for us so in this podcast we spend some time talking about how and where we are buying our adult beverages. We both are certainly consuming more alcohol since the start o...

Here in Sonoma County California we are under a Governor Gavin Newsom mandated shelter in place directive aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. What does that mean? Check out this link to get the details. Cancelled events, business losses and layoffs are starting to impact the wine business as Bill Swindell points out in an article for the Press Democrat. There is nothing worse for...

Covid Corona Blues

Slow Wine Tour, Interview with Giancarlo Gariglio

Wine industry experts are calling for grape growers to reduce the number of vineyards in production because of declining wine sales. We have already noticed some vineyards being ripped out and allowed to go fallow (at least for now) here in Sonoma County. Unfortunately for growers the oversupply of grapes is not a regional problem, but a statewide one.  Sarah Klearman asks a number of industr...