January, 06, 2016 For $100, you can eat a doughnut covered in gold flake and icing made from Cristal Champagne

(Businessinsider) - A Filipino restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is selling a gold-coated champagne doughnut for $100. Manila Social Club is known for its ube doughnuts , which are purple and cost $40 per dozen. Ube jam, which comes from mashing purple yams, is used in Filipino desserts...

January, 06, 2016 How Syrah Became Shiraz: A Short History

(Vivino) - Where does Syrah originally come from? Are Syrah and Shiraz the same thing? Which countries produce what? Is there a link between Syrah and Petite Sirah? A brief look at the history of the grape variety and its name provides (almost) all the answers. Although most of us get the spelli...

January, 06, 2016 Go West, Eastern Winery, Go West!

(Wines&Vines) - What do you do when you’re a small (but rapidly growing) winery in Virginia and you need more grapes? After opening Paradise Springs Winery in Clifton in January 2010, owner Kirk Wiles had increased sales from 1,300 cases to more than 12,000 cases by 2013. Wiles wanted a s...

January, 06, 2016 UKRAINE ORDERS NAME CHANGE OF SOVIET ‘CHAMPAGNE’

(TDB) - The introduction of a decommunisation law in Ukraine has forced a sparkling wine producer known for its “Soviet Champagne” to change its name. First bottled in 1928, during Russian communist leader Joseph Stalin’s reign of power, Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, or So...

January, 06, 2016 Behind The Wheel In Wine Country: Five Drivers Of Napa's Traffic Problem

(Forbes) - One of the very first things you notice about the Napa Valley is how utterly, almost ethereally gorgeous the landscape is. Shortly afterward, you notice how very long it’s taking you to move through that landscape… because you’re sitting in traffic. Highway 29 an...

January, 05, 2016 A UK wine startup worth £70 million explains how it nearly ran out of wine — and what it did next

(BusinessInsider) - Naked Wines — a UK wine retailer that launched in Norwich in 2011 and was  acquired by Majestic Wine for £70 million  last April— told Business Insider that it grew so fast that it almost ran out of wine. Naked Wines operates a crowdfunded bus...

January, 05, 2016 CHAMPAGNE POISED FOR A RECORD YEAR

(TDB) - Sales of Champagne reached a record high last year, driven by strong demand from export markets, favourable exchange rates and steady sales in France. According to estimates from news service  Reuters , 312 million bottles of the French sparkler were sold last year, up 2-3% on ...

January, 05, 2016 The Labeling Lies of Expensive Wines

(Wine-Searcher) - The labels on more affordable wines can be more trustworthy than their pricy counterparts. The more you pay for wine, the less you know about how much alcohol is in it. This is one of the more interesting findings in a study published this week called "Splendide Mendax: Fals...