Winebits 485: Rose, Chinese wine, three-tier

This week’s wine news: Who knew? Millennials are the reason we’re drinking rose, plus Chinese wine in the U.S. and a Pennsylvania convenience store chain adds wine

• So cheap and good doesn’t matter? One of the first things the Wine Curmudgeon learned as a young reporter was not to write something unless there were facts to support it. So this piece, called “It Turns Out Millennials Were Right About Rosé The Whole Time,” made me want to exhume all the cranky, Front Page newspapermen who taught me the business and let them chew out the the writer in their pre-modern, cigar-chomping style. Nothing in the post supports the headline, and most of it is about why we should be drinking rose. Which, of course, is what many of us have been writing for a decade, without the help of Millennials, the Winestream Media, or anyone else. Apparently, the post is on some sort of food blog, so I’m probably expecting too much that it should write intelligently about wine.

• Welcome the Chinese: Winemakers in the Chinese province of Ningxia want to sell their product in the U.S., which includes sparkling, riesling, syrah, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. The article, which appears in the U.S. version of the state-run China Daily, is not so much about wine as economic development. And, because it’s about wine, it compares the Chinese vineyards favorably to the best regions in France and California. I’ve yet to see a story about an emerging wine region, even in non-state-owned media, that doesn’t do that.

• Rutter’s adds wine: Ordinarily, convenience stores selling wine isn’t news. But when it’s in Pennsylvania, it’s worth noting because the state has ended its monopoly on wine sales. That means that privately-owned retailers like the 47-store Rutter’s chain can, so it will “carry a large selection, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir and other varietals.” One can only hope that the wine will be of sufficient quality and not suffer too badly from convenience store markups. Otherwise, what was the point?