November, 02, 2010 Catching All Bad Corks

Wineries use 'dry soak' screening for large format bottles. Few moments are more embarrassing than opening a bottle of wine for guests or customers and finding that it’s corked. The problem is only compounded when a winemaker is opening a 12-liter bottle in front of a large audience with glasses o...

November, 02, 2010 US: California wine harvest set to fall

California's wine grape harvest is set to be 12% lower this year, according to the California Wine Institute. The 2010 harvest is likely to be 3.3m tonnes, 6% lower than the forecast in August and 12% down on 2009, said the Institute, citing estimates from the California Department of Food and Agric...

November, 02, 2010 Portuguese wine family saves the grapes

(Reuters) - Climate change has a serious impact on all kinds of crops, including grapes, but one Portuguese wine family is trying to save some of the country's seldom-used varieties from global warming. Portugal has about 258 indigenous varieties of grapes but many are no longer used to make wine...

November, 02, 2010 Hangover from wine gaffe stops Philippine officials tweeting

(AFP) – Twitter jokes about bad wine and a lack of handsome men in Vietnam by one of Philippine president Benigno Aquino's speechwriters has left all government communication officials in the drink. The Philippines has ordered staff in its communications office to temporarily stop using the micro-...

November, 01, 2010 Russia rejects 655,000 liters of imported Moldovan wine in October

Russia's consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor rejected 655,000 liters of imported Moldovan wine in October due to safety reasons, the Russian chief sanitary doctor said, RIA Novosti reported. "We have allowed 6.08 liters [of wine] and rejected as defective 655,000 liters," Gennady Onishchenko...

November, 01, 2010 Wine Auction at Sotheby's Hong Kong Makes History as a Baron's Tipple Fetches $8.4 Million

Three bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild 1869 became the most expensive wine ever to be sold at auction when they fetched HK $1,815,000 ($232,692) per bottle in Hong Kong on Saturday night, three times the high presale estimate of HK $65,000. All three bottles were sold by phone to a single Asian...

November, 01, 2010 New Wineries Sprout Coast-to-Coast

Vines and berry bushes bear fruit from New York to Oregon. Nights are longer, days are darker, but hopeful vintners across the continent are pinning their hopes on brighter times to come, as tiny new wineries break ground, bottle wine and open for business this fall. Here are a few we’ve unearthed...

November, 01, 2010 Postmodern Winemaking: Speculations About Minerality

Some of you are already wincing. No topic has wrought more confusion and ruffled more feathers among dedicated enophiles than the incessant bandying about of the lofty sounding “M” word. For some (myself included), asking whether minerality exists is like asking whether the sky is blue. Yet for ...