Tag Archives: wine names

Winebits 250: Wine names, wine prices, Buena Vista

? U.S.-based chateaus? The cyber-ether is abuzz because the French don ?t want to allow U.S. wines that say chateau on the label to be sold in Europe. The dispute is part of negotiations to revise a 2005 treaty between the European Union and the U.S. that defined wine and food terms, so that we can ?t call a hard cheese made in the U.S. Parmigiano Reggiano and the Europeans can't call ham produced in Italy Smithfield. As part of the 2005 treaty, some U.S. wineries that used terms like chateau and Champagne were grandfathered in for products sold in the U.S. We ?re asking the EU, as part of negotiations to revise the treaty, to end the foreign ban on the term chateau, so a winery like Chateau St. Jean won ?t have to change its name to be sold in Europe. I can ?t do justice to the topic here, save to say that it ?s a lot more complicated than many people are portraying it. This story, from Britan ?s Independent, clears things up a little.

? Wine price panic: The Europeans, facing several drought-stricken grape harvests, are in a tither about increasing wine prices, and wine in Britain is already up three percent from last year. The Wine Curmudgeon has some advice, based on our experience this year with the U.S. wine price panic. Take a deep breath. Take a sip of wine. Take another sip. Everything will be OK. Retailers always say stuff like that. Spain is in the middle of a massive recession, with almost 25 percent unemployment, and the jobless rate is almost 12 percent in Italy, which is also in recession. That means there is much less domestic demand for wine, which will undercut the supply shortage and mitigate price pressure. Really. Why else would I use economic-speak?

? Buena Vista changes: One of the oldest wineries in
California is updating its image and its brands, part of its acquisition
by wine tycoon Jean-Charles Boisset. The 155-year-old Buena Vista
has restored and updated its champagne cellar, which was damaged in a
1989 earthquake. Wine is being made on the property for the first time
in some 50 years, and it is carrying the Sonoma label. Even though Buena
Vista is located in the state ?s second-best known wine region, its
previous owners had stopped making wine with the Sonoma appellation.

Winebits 220: Wine names, McDonald’s wine, local wine

? What's in a wine name? A lot, apparently, according to a study conducted at Canada's Brock University. Consumers were given three wines, and asked to pick the most expensive. The winner was the wine with the name that was most difficult to pronounce. This should not be surprising, given the way the wine business educates consumers, cnfusing us at every opportunity. It may also be the reason, says Tom Johnson of the Louisville Juice blog, why more wine blogs aren't more successful — it's too easy to pronounce the names of the blogs and their proprietors.

? Now that's a value meal: McDonald's in Argentina's wine country are serving local wine with one of their value meals. South Africa's Winetimes reports that diners can order a Sabores Mendocinos — a double patty burger, two beef empanadas, and a 187-milliliter bottle (about 1 1/2 glasses) of Santa Julia malbec for $11. Two things are worth noting here — first, that the wine is not only local, but quite well made. Santa Julia has long been one of my favorites. Second, it doesn't appear that there's enough fat and cholesterol for this to be a U.S. quality value meal. Hopefully, this trend will not catch on in the states. What would we do if McDonald's served similar items here?

? Calling out local restaurants: Leslie Brenner, the restaurant critic at The Dallas Morning News, has done the unthinkable (behind a pay wall) – she criticized a Dallas-area restaurantthat serves local food for not sellng local wine — and that is owned by a celebrity chef, to boot. The News, before Brenner, was not known for making waves with its restaurant reviews, and it rarely criticizes someone as famous as Kent Rathbun, whose company owns the restaurant in question. Many of Dallas' best-known restaurants refuse to serve Texas wine, so it was heartening to see Brenner take a stand. And it seems to be doing some good. I've been told that a number of local restaurants, apparently fearful of being similarly criticized, are calling Texas wineries and distributors to see if they can add a local wine or two.

Barefoot, flipflop, and the wacky, wonderful world of wine trademarks

Barefoot, flipflopRegular visitors here know how the Wine Curmudgeon feels about wine companies that sue other wine companies over similar labels and similar names. Curmudgeonly, of course.

The most infamous lawsuit of recent years was the faceoff between the company that owns Cristal, the mega-pricey Champagne, and the $7 Spanish cava, Cristalino. But there have been a fair number of others, including Anheuser-Busch vs. an Argentine wine producer called Budini, and YellowTail vs. the Wine Group, who were fighting whether a kangaroo looked like a wallaby.

As much fun as these were, they pale in comparison to what could be the next big trademark and tradedress lawsuit in the wine business — if E&J Gallo and the Wine Group square off over two fabulously successful brands, Gallo’s Barefoot and Wine Group’s flipflop. More, after the jump:

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Winebits 207: Wine sales, Gruet, wine names

? What wine companies think: We spend a lot of time on the blog talking about why wine producers do what they do, but we rarely get an inside look as revealing as this, an interview with the man who runs the company that owns Seghesio and Pine Ridge, among others. Says Erle Martin of Crimson Wine Group: "The recession has given consumers an opportunity to explore outside their comfort zone. If they used to fill the cart with $50 Napa Cabernet, now Argentine Malbecs are looking good, or Garnacha from Spain, or other full-bodied alternatives retailing at $10 or lower." The business jargon might slow the piece down a bit, but if you stay with it, you'll get a good sense of how these guys think and why they make the decisions they do.

? Gruet off the hook: A judge has ruled that New Mexico's Gruet Winery can't be included in the lawsuit to recover money from the the 2010 Cap*Rock bankruptcy auction debacle. That's when Laurent Gruet, whose family owns the winery, bid money he didn't have and won the auction to buy Cap*Rock. Walt Nett in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that the judge said the winery didn't actually participate in the auction and didn't give Laurent permission to bid on its behalf. The trial for damages is supposed to start Dec. 21. Who knew bankruptcy could be this much fun?

? Wine names and labels: An odd story in the New York Times detailing the trend towards cute wine labels and names, including several wines called Bitch. Why odd? Because this has been a trend for at least a decade, and there's nothing in the Times story that is especially new. And it fails to mention Randall Grahm, who pretty much invented this sort of thing. It's one of those stories that one reads and wonders why it was written; nothing in it is especially new. The cranky ex-newspaperman in me wonders if someone from the Times was wandering through a liquor store, saw a wine labeled Bitch, and thought it would make a good story — not knowing that it has been a good story for a long time.

Winebits 193: Wine names, wine and alcohol, fake wine

? What's in a name? A lot, if you make Budweiser beer. Anheuser-Busch, the multi-national behind the brand, has threated a small Argentine winery called Budini. The latter's name is too similar to Bud, says Anheuser-Busch, and you'd better change your name or else. Which Budini has done; it's now Bodini in the U.S. The Wine Curmudgeon wonders if everyone who has a child named Clyde will now have to change it to Claude, given the Budweiser Clydesdales. I'm baffled as to why so many huge companies are so terrified of smaller companies with barely similar names. No doubt this is one of those things that, to paraphrase Mel Brooks, company bosses have to do to protect their phony baloney jobs.

? Getting drunk: An article by Michael Apstein in the San Francisco Chronicle notes that higher alcohol wines get people drunk more quickly. This doesn't get much attention in the discussion about high alcohol wines (even I don't talk about it much), but it should. Apstein says two glasses of 15 percent wine can get you more drunk than two glasses of 12 percent wine, taking into account weight, gender, and how often you drink. Even though the alcohol content of the wine increases only one-quarter (from 12 to 15 percent), the blood alcohol content goes up by 35 percent. For some people, that will put them over the legal limit.

? Fake Chinese wine: How about walking into a Beijing grocery store and finding counterfeit wine, including "bottles of Bordeaux wine that have been diluted with sugared water and had coloring agents and artificial flavorings added, before being sold for exorbitant prices." That's the situation in China, where more bottles of some high-end wines are for sale than were ever produced. I wonder: Would the Chinese have this problem if they weren't so obsessed with expensive wine. Who is going to counterfeit a bottle of $10 wine?