The holidays: the most won-der-ful time of the year, when delusional notions and cynical lies issue forth with every single "Season's Greetings" email individuals even tangentially involved in sales send out.

In luxury markets like wine, the creative duplicity reaches cartoonish levels. In a desperate bid to boost end-of-year sales numbers for under-performing producers, wine pros work feverishly, bombarding writers with dubious claims about obscure and unpopular grape varietals. They present various wild conclusions based on "facts," AKA posts from Instagram influencers and thinly supported data that, they say, point to the sudden wild popularity of said obscure and unpopular varietal with "the Millennials". (Some rather churlish writers and editors would even say marketers are likely funding many of these posts and studies).