May, 25, 2012 Virginia celebrates its wine history

(WashingtonPost) - Early explorers wrote about the masses of grapes weighing down vines along the Virginia shores. Captain John Smith wrote that early colonists in Jamestown made 20 gallons of wine from the grapes. In the early 1600s, winemaking was a requirement for the men of Williamsburg because ...

May, 25, 2012 Men Are From Cab, Women Are From Moscato?

(WSJ) - MANY YEARS AGO, when I first met the wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr., he told me something that I have never forgotten. "My wife, Pat, has a much better palate than I do," he said. (Was it really possible that the most influential wine critic of the modern age was a mere runner-up to a woma...

May, 25, 2012 WINE: In vino be civilisation and lubrication

(BusinessDay) - WINE is about a social situation; it’s a lubricant for cultural development, and a civilising force." Hearing wine described this way — by Tom Cannavan, Scotland’s only full-time wine writer and judge, at the Grande Roche in Paarl where he was one of the international judges fo...

May, 25, 2012 UK beer and wine sectors set for £1.4bn summer sales boost, reveals new research

(TalkingRetail) - British drinkers are set to knock back around 330 million more pints of beer and more than 67 million more litres of wine if the sun shines over the summer. New findings from Opinium Research show nearly three in 10 Brits (27%) drink more alcohol when the weather gets warmer and...

May, 25, 2012 Argentina's wine exports to UK rocket

(Harpers) - Argentinian wine exports to the UK have rocketed by 25% in value and 12% in volume in the first three months of the year. This put the UK back ahead of Brazil as Argentina’s third largest market worldwide, and the USA and Canada, and represents the largest gains for over four years. ...

May, 24, 2012 S. Korean agencies dispute over online shopping of wine

(TheJakartaPost) - Wine may soon be available online as Cheong Wa Dae, the name of the Presidential Office, hinted that it is in favor of such sales. High-level officials from the Presidential Office said that they tentatively agreed on allowing online sale of imported wines, according to reports...

May, 24, 2012 Chinese Wine Makes Strides

(WSJ) - Chinese vineyards are slowly gaining the respect of the wine world. Long written off as plonk, wines from China garnered 19 medals at the latest Decanter World Wine Awards in London, up from just 11 last year. Chateau Reifeng-Auzias, located in Shandong, was given a gold medal for its 201...

May, 24, 2012 Low alcohol wine essential to future of the trade

(TheDrinksBusiness) - Bernard Fontannaz of Origin Wines thinks that it is vital for the trade to bring in new, younger, consumers and thinks low alcohol wines may be the answer. He told the drinks business that the trade must look beyond its own rhetoric and see that low alcohol wines are not only h...