Winebits 741: Mafia, wine sales, Utah

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.