February, 18, 2013 US: After excellent harvest, improving sales, capital demand rises

(NBBJ) - Lenders to the North Bay wine industry are following demand for capital as it ripples outward from a record-breaking grape harvest in 2012, after a boost in cash flow allowed many vineyards to pay down working capital and other business debt. The impact of the North Bay harvest, which th...

February, 18, 2013 BBC employs shock tactics to warn teenagers of drinking dangers

(TheDrinksBusiness) - BBC2 is to highlight the devastating effects of excessive drinking on teenagers with a programme on Wednesday this week. Produced by Evans Woolfe Media with support from the The Alcohol Education Trust, the programme, called Just a Few Drinks, features four young people whose ...

February, 18, 2013 Diageo's Turkish Group Accused Of Breaking Competition Law

(Fool) - Turkey's Competition Board has announced that it has opened an investigation into Diageo's (LSE: DGE) (NYSE: DEO.US) Turkish spirits group Mey Icki on the grounds that it "breached competition rules by preventing the sale of competitors' products in stores". Diageo bought Mey Icki, the l...

February, 18, 2013 Sulphur not a dirty word for natural winemakers

(TheDrinksBusiness) - The quality of natural wines has improved significantly in the last five years, according to The Real Wine Fair organiser Doug Wregg. Speaking to the drinks business ahead of the mid-March event, Wregg admitted that as many as half the wines he tasted during the early days of t...

February, 18, 2013 What France is Reading: Wine, Women, Dogs at the Elysee

(Bloomberg) - French presidents prefer dogs to cats. The labradors of Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy were called Baltique, Maskou and Clara, respectively. That’s just one of the nuggets contained in “L’Elysee: Coulisses et Secrets d’un Palais” by Patrice Duhamel...

February, 18, 2013 Trends in Wine: Out-Innovated By Beer, Under-Indexing With Hispanics

(Adage) - Lately the category has been out-innovated by brewers, who have flooded the market with new beer flavors, brands and line extensions, fueling a resurgence that's coming at the expense of wine. Wine volume sales grew 1.5% in 2012, slowing from a 4% increase in 2011, according to Nielsen...

February, 17, 2013 Facebook steps into the wine business

(PressDemocrat) - It was only a few years ago that you actually had to check a calendar to remember the birthday of a distant friend or in-law. Then, Facebook came along and changed everything, jostling its 1 billion users to bestow birthday wishes on all of their Facebook friends, including near...

February, 16, 2013 US: NRA wine club presents ‘dicey’ situation for local wineries

(NapaValleyRegister) - How political is your wine palate? With debate raised this month concerning city and county investments into companies that profit from firearm and ammunition sales, is it worth asking how much wine connoisseurs care about the political stances behind their favorite labels?...