December, 14, 2011 US: Water Waivers for Napa/Sonoma Vineyards

(Wines&Vines) - If there’s one thing most growers don’t want, it’s more regulations and paperwork, but those in Napa and Sonoma valleys will have one more to deal with: A regulation requiring a discharge permit that is intended to limit sediment in Napa River and Sonoma Creek. The good news is...

December, 14, 2011 US: Wine: The Cases have big plans for Sweely — and Virginia

(WashingtonPost) - What happens when a conservative community, hesitant to change its ways and dependent for its livelihood on the slow cycle of the seasons, meets an innovator accustomed to rapid transformations in the way people live, work and communicate? Now that Steve and Jean Case of America ...

December, 14, 2011 China: Dalian invests 3 billion yuan to brew the world’s top-grade wine

(Chinadaily) - Three billion yuan will be invested in the establishment of the first wine industrial park in Dalian. The signing ceremony of the International Wine Industrial Park project was held at the city’s Shangri-la Hotel on December 6. The three parties involved, the Administrative Commi...

December, 14, 2011 Chinese wines beat Bordeaux in blind tasting

(AFP) - A remote region of northern China that began growing grapes for fine wine just a decade ago has beaten the centuries-old French wine-producing region of Bordeaux in a blind tasting held in Beijing. A group of wine experts -- five French and five Chinese -- ranked the bottles from the remo...

December, 13, 2011 Wine Books Worth Reading

(NYTimes) - ALONG with top 10 lists, columns on sparkling wines (next week’s treat) and gift roundups, the end of the year would not be complete without a torrent of new books on wine and spirits. Here are four of the most notable. The rise of natural wines over the last five years has provoked on...

December, 13, 2011 Downturn in Chinese Wine Collecting?

(WSJ) - Is it possible that the Chinese love affair with first growth Bordeaux and Chateau Lafite in particular, is on the rocks? Recent auction results suggest that this may be the case, and that the Lafite phenom was something of a speculative bubble. Not as extreme a bubble as, say Dublin real...

December, 13, 2011 Robert Parker distances himself from Campo as he announces investigation

(Decanter) - Robert Parker has called Pancho Campo a 'lightning rod' for controversy as he announced a 'totally transparent' legal investigation into the series of accusations of cash for tasting that have dominated the wine headlines for the past weeks. Parker, publisher of the Wine Advocate, said ...

December, 13, 2011 US: Napa Grapegrowers Make a Trade

(Wines&Vines) - Vineyard owner and manager Davie Piña admitted that persuading vineyard owners to sacrifice vines for the sake of juvenile salmon and river sediment it wasn’t an easy sell. “That was probably the hardest part,” said Piña, owner of Piña Vineyard Management LLC and leader of t...