Afternoon Brief, March 21
Distilled Spirits & Wine Demonstrate Strong Growth While Beer Continues Reinvention:
The distilled spirits, wine and beer industries continued to adapt to consumers' changing attitudes towards beverage alcohol. Industry-wide premiumization kept pace with consumer interest in high-quality products. And Millennials continued to drive expansion and migrate toward brands with heritage, authenticity and quality...
Afternoon Brief, March 20
Beyond the Barrel: Unique Ways to Ferment Wine: From amphorae to eggs and even glass, winemakers are experimenting with techniques and materials, some ancient, to push the boundaries of fermentation...
Afternoon Brief, March 17
Proposed Rule for Pesticide Spraying Near Schools Revised by California Agency: The state Department of Pesticide Regulation on Thursday issued a revised proposed regulation on spraying pesticides near schools, changing an earlier version to provide farmers more leeway in reporting the spraying to school officials...
Afternoon Brief, March 16
Is the US Wine Boom Over?: What if the 40-year-long US wine boom, which increased wine consumption threefold and turned that country into the world's biggest wine market, is over...
Afternoon Brief, March 15
French Wine Capitalizing on U.S. Drinking Trends: Major trends in the U.S. wine market including premiumization, sparkling wine, and rosé play to the strengths of French wine leading to a 14.2% value growth, surpassing runner-up New Zealand at 13.7%, to claim the highest import growth by nation over the past 52 weeks according to Nielsen data*...
Afternoon Brief, March 14
Jackson Building a New Winery in Oregon: Jackson Family Wines is building a new winery in Oregon from scratch to help cope with its substantially increased vineyard holdings in the state...
Afternoon Brief, March 13
Does Napa Have too Much Cab?: Does Napa Valley have too much Cabernet? And does it charge too much for it? These questions were not on the agenda, but unexpectedly popped up this week at a Napa Valley Grapegrowers' conference...
Afternoon Brief, March 10
Mercer Canyons Agrees to Pay $1.2 Million to Former Workers: A Klickitat County farm has agreed to pay up to $1.2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving more than 600 farmworkers.U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Bastian has given initial approval to the settlement, which will now be sent to former workers via mail and radio ads...
Afternoon Brief, March 9
Total Wine Shipments to the US Expanded 3% to 399 Million Cases in 2016: For 12-months ending December 2016, Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates reports that total wine shipments into the US market expanded by 3%, nearing 400 million cases. This growth is consistent with 10 year trends and is across both domestic and imported wines...
Afternoon Brief, March 8
California's Trailblazing Women Winemakers: The First 20 Years (1965 to 1984): Women and men alike have long been involved in the production of wine in California, but historically few women were known as winemakers. In 2012, when we began our project on California Women Winemakers, a key goal was to identify the state's women winemakers and illuminate their contributions to the wine industry...
Afternoon Brief, March 7
Wine Market Council and Nielsen Explore Industry Trends: A members-only meeting held Friday by the Wine Market Council and Nielsen at Napa's Culinary Institute of America at Copia provoked a lively discussion of consumer trends in the American wine industry...
Afternoon Brief, March 6
Wine Distribution Alternatives Won't Produce Tears for the Three Tier System: According to a Wines & Vines article, in 1995 the number of alcohol distributors in the U.S. was greater than the number of wineries: 3,000 to 1,800. That kind of competitive choice must have been really good for wineries, but a lot of wine must also have been imported...
Afternoon Brief, March 3
Wine and Marijuana Cause Problems for Beer Industry: Wine and marijuana are cutting into craft beer's buzz, as growth in each of those segments took some use occasions away from a craft category that slowed to single-digit growth in 2016...
Afternoon Brief, March 2
Winemaker Opens Up About Sexism: Judging by the volume of emails, Wine-Searcher's recent article on sexism in the wine industry definitely struck a chord, especially with a cross-section of female winemakers in Australia...
Afternoon Brief, March 1
Wine & Weed Symposium 2017: Strange Bedfellows or Opportunity Knocking?: Garnering attention from such disparate online news sources such as Forbes, The Emerald Report and Homeschooling Guys, Wine Industry Network's newest conference, the Wine and Weed Symposium, announced for August, 2017 in Sonoma County, CA, will be the first such pairing of these two industries...
