Tag Archives: Mafia

Winebits 742: Grocery Outlet, lawsuit, non-alcoholic alcohol

grocery outletThis week’s wine news: Good news for Grocery Outlet and its cheap wine, plus another wine lawsuit and more buzz about non-alcoholic alcohol

• Grocery Outlet: High gas prices may be benefiting Grocery Outlet, the Wine Curmudgeon’s favorite supermarket that he hasn’t shopped in. Regular readers know about the chain’s heavily-discounted wine prices; Layla Kasha, senior vice president, chief marketing officer and chief new store growth officer for Grocery Outlet, told Supermarket News that hard times usually bring new customers to her company. The podcast doesn’t specifically mention wine; rather, it focuses on the company’s methods that allow it sell $15 and $20 wine for $8. Which it does a lot.

• Another lawsuit: The WC has long been fascinated by wine-related lawsuits, and this one is a doozy. The president of Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, whose brands include Josh Cellars, is being sued by its president, Tom Steffanci. The lawsuit claims that the company is withholding royalty payments from Steffanci. The lawsuit is quite complicated, including details about holding companies, tax consequences and — my favorite — the legal discovery process. It also raises an intriguing question: How can all these people work with each other if there is a lawsuit?

• No alcohol: How about fake booze where the key ingredient is apple cider vinegar? That’s the “secret” behind Jukes Cordialites, which offers red, white and rose versions of non-alcoholic wine. The product is made with a variety of herbs and spices, as well as the vinegar; the idea is that it’s concentrated, and can be diluted with water. The WC, always willing to take one for the team, wants to know: Should I ask for a sample and review it?

Winebits 741: Mafia, wine sales, Utah

hard seltzer
Hope they bought these hard seltzers at the state store; otherwise, the Utah liquor cops will be after them.

This week’s wine news: An Italian court absolves a Sicilian winery of Mafia ties, plus more bad news for wine sales and Utah clamps down on hard seltzers

• No Mafia: An Italian court has acquitted Mezzacorona of alleged money laundering in Sicily. The country’s tax police had said the company, whose holdings include Stemmari and Rotari, had used the Mafia to launder money at its Feudo Arancio winery. The company had always protested its innocence, dating to a 2020 raid where police seized more than €70m (US$76 million) in assets. The judge ruled last week that the claims had no validity. The story in the link seems to be some sort of news release from the winery, so it’s not quite clear what the judge said or did, or why the case was dismissed.

• More bad news: The latest set of sales figures offer more bad news for the wine business. SipSource (composed of wholesaler data) shows wine continued its slump in December 2021. Sales, by volume, declined 6.2 percent from 12 months earlier, the ninth consecutive month of declines. Pemiumization is working well, isn’t it?

• No hard seltzers: A new Utah law will force the removal of about half of the hard seltzers in supermarkets, and they will only be allowed to be  sold in state-owned liquor stores. The Salt Lake Tribune says the law prohibits the sale of beverages that contain even a trace amount of ethyl alcohol, a commonly used stabilizer for artificial flavorings that is used in such products as soda, mustard, and teriyaki sauce. Some 80 hard seltzers and kombuchas are approved for sale in Utah grocery and convenience stores; 39 of them have ethyl alcohol in their flavorings. Chalk this up as another victory for the neo-Prohibitionists, protecting us from food stabilizers.

Did the Mafia take over one of Italy’s best cheap wine producers?

mafiaItalian anti-Mafia police raid Sicily’s Feudo Arancio in corruption probe

Feudo Arancia, whose wines have appeared on the blog more than once, may have been taken over by the Mafia. So say Italian police officials, whose financial police seized more than €70m (US$76 million) in assets from the Sicilian winery last week.

Details are still unclear, and it has been difficult to get anyone to talk about what has happened. I’ll update the post if I find out more.

Here’s what we know: The financial police, acting on a request from an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Trentino, seized 900 hectares of vineyards (about 2,200 acres) and several buildings at Feudo Arancio. Police say a Mafia group in Sicily was using Arancio to launder money; four people are reportedly being investigated.

Feudo Arancio is owned Trentino’s Groupo Mezzacorona, one of Italy’s biggest producers and whose $8 pinot grigio is ubiquitous in the U.S.. Mezzacorona executives have “strongly rejected the allegations.”

Feudo Arancio’s wines aren’t as consistently good as Falesco, but they’re worth the $10 they cost more often than not. I’ve reviewed three of them over the years, and the whites seem to be more interesting.

This Italian news report (use Google translate to make sense of it) reads like a pulp novel, complete with references to “men of honor,” the Cosa Nostra, “fugitive bosses,” and “a classic of fixing.”

The charges, if true, seem quite odd. A winery doesn’t appear to be the best place to launder money. It’s not a cash business, like a casino; cash flow, again, is limited; and there are extensive legal reporting requirements because alcohol is involved. But, given the success Italian police have had over the past couple of decades in combating the Mafia, this might have been the best the Mafia could do (assuming the charges are true).