Winebits 819: Prohibition, ancient wine, wine marketing

This week’s wine news: A Canadian town goes wet after more than a century dry, plus the origins of wine and one of the “secrets” to wine marketing

• Wet, finally: Cardston, a town of 3,500 in the Canadian province of Alberta, will allow alcohol sales after 121 years dry. The town council has voted to allow restaurants and recreational facilities like golf courses to apply for liquor licenses. But don’t get too excited: the Mormon-majority town will still ban liquor stores and booze delivery service, so no Drizly while you’re binging Nextfix Canada. Most of the rest of Alberta went wet in 1923, but Cardston has remained dry, despite two previous attempts to allow liquor sales.

• The roots of wine: The history of wine – both wine making and grape growing – may be much older than previously thought. Scientific American reports that researchers have found that grape growing may have started 80 centuries before the first estimates. This likely happened in western Asia, where inhabitants domesticated table grapes some 11,000 years ago. In the Caucasus, domesticated wine grapes probably appeared around the same time, although the inhabitants probably didn’t master winemaking for another 2,000 or 3,000 years. The muscat grape, high in sugar, was likely the key to moving toward wine, since it can be used as a table grape and for making wine. One note: The story is not well written (even allowing for the horrible wine cliches and bad puns); I expect more clarity from this publication,

• Pricing and decoys: Yes, I really do worry about the future of the wine business. Consider this, from a prominent wine marketing agency: “A decoy is a pricing strategy that involves offering an option that is not meant to be chosen but influences customers’ perceptions of other options.” That nugget of wisdom comes from a story about pricing wine club tiers, and makes me wonder: What’s the use of all I’ve done over the years to try and get transparency in the wine business?