April, 12, 2011 US: Coppola hires Margaux winemaker for Inglenook

Chateau Margaux winemaker Philippe Bascaules has left to join Francis Ford Coppola's newly-renamed Inglenook Winery in California. Coppola announced yesterday that he had acquired the Inglenook name from the Wine Group for an undisclosed sum, and that the Rubicon estate in Rutherford will now be re-...

April, 12, 2011 Making wine helps to heal scars of war in Bosnia

(Reuters Life!) - Alija Lizde spent five months in military prison camps in 1993. His only crime was being a Bosnian Muslim, but that was enough for the Bosnian Croat military police. Now Lizde heads a small wine-making cooperative in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina where he works with six Croats...

April, 12, 2011 AUS: Wine guru backs call to double price of casks

A LEADING wine industry figure has broken ranks, declaring it's time to adopt a Henry tax review recommendation that would double the price of cask wine and cut more than $100 off the price of a bottle of Grange. Treasurer Wayne Swan disowned the recommendation on the release of the review, sayin...

April, 11, 2011 California: CrushPad Will Move to Sonoma

Sonoma,CA — After exactly a year in Napa Valley, CrushPad is moving to Sonoma. The specialist in small-lot winemaking will move 18 miles west, into Sonoma’s 300,000-case Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery, now owned by investor Bill Foley’s Foley Family Wines. CrushPad founder and CEO Michael Br...

April, 11, 2011 Bordeaux 2010: frost threatens buds brought on by heatwave

Bordeaux vignerons are by turns delighted and worried by the extraordinary mini heatwave that sat over Bordeaux last week. As most of Western Europe basked in weather more common in June than April, Bordeaux sweltered in temperatures that regularly topped 30 degrees Centigrade.But winemakers now h...

April, 11, 2011 Moldova denies ban on wine imports to Belarus

There’s no ban on Moldovan wine supplies to Belarus, spokeswoman of Moldova’ government Tatiana Kazak was quoted as saying by the press. According to her, representatives of the Belarusian embassy in Moldova have contacted the Moldovan government and explained that there’s some misunderstan...

April, 11, 2011 US: A survey of wine industry M&A buyers

Anticipated rebound in wine consumer, acquisition spending could expand pool of M&A buyers in 2011 There are indicators that our economy is crawling out of its deep recession. Employment data is getting incrementally better, corporate profitability is on the rise, merger-and-acquisition activity ...

April, 11, 2011 Formula 1 Scot slows down to become winemaker

I am trying to picture what it is like to be in a pit stop during a Formula One race, but I can’t get Bernie Ecclestone out of my head. All I can see is the octogenarian F1 supremo drunk on the fumes of burnt rubber and gasoline, grinning at the ear-shattering roar. Try as I might, I cannot con...