Tag Archives: Jon Bonne

Winebits 472: Wine apps, whiskey fund, hip wines

wine appsThis week’s wine news: A wine app shakeout, investing in whiskey, and tragically hip wines

• Shakeout in wine apps? Alder Yarrow writes about consolidation in wine apps, which allow those of us who are more phone-centric to track our drinking in the palm of our hands. He says Delectable, which has been battling Vivino to control the wine app market, has been sold to Vinuous, a multi-media wine company owned by U.S. wine critic Antonio Galloni. In this, Yarrow writes, “the sale of Delectable represented something of a tectonic shift. Does this mean that Delectable lost the wine app wars, and that Vivino has won?” Yarrow’s caveat, of course, is that it may not matter who wins, since there are no reliable numbers about who uses wine apps. Also intriguing: This is yet another purchase by Vinuous, which seems to be putting together a wine lifestyle publishing company to compete with the Wine Spectator.

• Investing in whiskey: Regular visitors here know that the Wine Curmudgeon is both baffled and amused by the wine stock exchange, Liv-Ex, where people buy expensive wine not to drink but to sell like stocks. Now, a group of Wall Streeters has come up with an investment fund, called an ETF, that invests in companies that make whiskey. Says the piece from CNN.com: “The WSKY ETF could be just another example of an industry run amok. There are tons of quirky ETFs out there catering to niche subsectors of the market as well as investing themes.” In other words, enjoy your whiskey, but think twice about investing in it.

• Tragically hip: The Punch website has 25 essential wines for 2016, chosen by top U.S. wine critic Jon Bonne. Needless to say, only three of the wines cost less than $20, there’s an orange wine on the list, and almost all of them are difficult to find if you don’t live in New York City. A cinsault from Chile, anyone? How can wine that most of us can’t buy be called essential?

High alcohol: The controversy continues

What kind of a stir would a food magazine cause if it said it was going to list the ingredients in its recipes? None at all.

But the wine business is not the food business. Only in wine would a controversy ensue when the San Francisco Chronicle and Decanter magazine, two of the leading members of the Winestream Media, announced each would start listing alcohol levels for the wines it reviewed. Said the Chronicle's Jon Bonne: ".. [W]e resisted printing them regularly because the act of bringing alcohol into the discussion of a wine is inherently political."

Which says a lot about how screwed up the wine business is. Bonne is right — unfortunately, reporting alcohol levels in an alcoholic beverage has become political, because much of the wine establishment has made high alcohol its cause. Winemakers have pushed alcohol levels to 15, 16 and even 17 percent, even in white wine, and have been rewarded with glowing reviews from Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator. Those of us who object, like the Wine Curmudgeon, are called philistines and told we don't understand the issue.

Most wine drinkers want to know alcohol levels. As one commenter noted in the Chronicle story, "If I wanted to get sh*tfaced, I could do it for a lot less than $50 a bottle." But that's of little concern to the people who make and write about these wines. They know best, and they're going to tell us what to think. More, after the jump.

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