Winebits 822: Wine buying, legal weed, Michael Chiarello

This week’s wine news: Buying wine is — shocking news — stressful, plus the failure of legal weed and celebrity chef Michael Chiarello has died

• Not a surprise: A British survey has found that we’ll pay up to one-third more for wine to impress someone and that almost one-quarter of us find buying wine “stressful.” That comes from UK retailer Lidl, which positions its wine regime as less complicated than elsewhere. Still, I don’t think that skews the results much. Similar surveys from around the world always show the same thing. My favorite part of this survey? “Almost half – 46% – don’t know how to identify a good bottle from a bad one and a third are ‘simply bewildered by wine jargon.’ ” Which is not surprising and hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been doing this. How else do you sell a $15 bottle of wine for $30 without confusion?

• Hard times: Wine isn’t the only thing suffering these days. So is legal weed in Canada, which was supposed to set the stage for its growth in the U.S. Reports the CBC: “The biggest companies — Canopy Growth Corp., Aurora Cannabis Inc. and Tilray Brands Inc. — have shrunk their footprints, laid off thousands and grappled with balance sheets that reflect a turbulent market and a longer march to profitability than many once imagined. Others weren’t so lucky. They sold their business at bargain prices to a bigger rival, folded or declared bankruptcy.” The kicker, of course, is the cost. It’s still cheaper to meet someone in a parking lot, despite the seeds and stems, than to pay legal prices. Hope the wine business is paying attention.

• Michael Chiarello: Chiarello, who was a Napa celebrity chef during wine’s glory days — he even had his own computer software — has died. He was 61. Chiarello was part of the generation of chefs who made wine part of of what they did, including his PBS and Food Network cooking shows (which still show up on some streaming services). Eventually, he owned a vineyard and a line of cooking and houseware accessories, showing just how important this sort of thing was to the wine business back then.

Photo: “Wine Poured; Menu Perused” by mikecogh is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.