Winebits 704: Champagne glasses, consolidation, wine trends
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
This week’s wine news: Once again, Champagne flutes are passe, plus Big Wine gets bigger and the worst wine trends
• Bring on the glass – or not: The Wine Curmudgeon has watched the long history of the correct Champagne glass with much amusement. There have been at least three “proper” glasses for sparkling wine in the past 30 years, and that doesn’t include this one. The flute, the staple of the past 20 years or so, has fallen out of favor because it wasn’t up to the “nuanced vineyard expression, à la Burgundy,” of post-modern Champagne, reports PunchDrink.com. Who knew? Or even what that means? I can’t shake the feeling, though, that the change in glass type has as much to do with getting wine drinkers to buy more expensive glasses – call it premiumization for crockery – as anything else.
• Big Wine gets bigger: Delicato, the fifth-biggest winery in the country, has bought Coppola, the No. 17 producer. After the sale, Delicato will account for almost 18 million cases of wine a year, or about 7 ½ percent of the California wine sold in the U.S. annually, according to Wine Business Monthly. No price was disclosed, reports the Wine Spectator, and Coppola’s high-end Inglenook in Napa and Domaine de Broglie in Oregon were not included. Instead, Delicato – perhaps best known for its Bota Box wines – will get Coppola’s supermarket brands, including Diamond Collection, Director’s Cut, and Sofia.
• Say the experts: The Vinepair website asked “wine pros” to pick the worst trends in wine. Not surprisingly, two involved natural wine – wine’s most controversial topic – and one defended natural wine while one criticized it. Best yet, natural wine is almost unknown to people who aren’t wine professionals and irrelevant to almost everyone else who drinks wine. And people wonder why I worry about the future of the wine business. The other worst trends included healthy and diet wine, new-style red blends, and complicated corkscrews.
Photo:“Two champagne glasses” by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0