Something looked different at Costco during my last visit. Look closely at these photos. Notice anything? Aside from the fact that these are less than ideal photos taken from trusty Droid, you might notice the wine section at ...

Welcome to wine marketing, the most mysterious black box of them all. Recently I wrote about Harlan Estate and their minimalist, high quality parchment paper approach to traditional mailings. This week I received another mailing, this ...

Internationally known winemaker, Joel Aiken, has left the position of Vice President of Winemaking at the world-renowned Beaulieu Vineyard (BV) in Napa Valley to begin working as a consulting winemaker. Aiken is well known for producing award winning ...

Harlan Estate marketing sometimes reminds me of Porsche mailers. But without the fun gadgets; just a fancy envelope, slick fonts, and impressive card stock. This one arrived with an insert that reads:

The Culinary Institute of America (the other CIA) based in St. Helena, California today announced the Vintners Hall of Fame 2010 class. The five new members to be inducted are Randall Grahm, Andy Beckstoffer, Al ...

This morning I received the RRV state of the vineyards report. Harvest is over, October rain is here—or at least it was a few weeks ago. According to the report, “quality is over the top on everything that ...

The weekend is almost here, and that means more wine adventure and more theatrical spectacle. How appropriate. They go so well together.

Loni plans to keep the selection process going for the Loreto calendar too, so there should ...

According to the Champagne Bureau (Washington, DC), 2009 should be another “high quality season” for producers of the famous bubbly from Champagne, France. Although the weather was challenging earlier, it has been dry for at least a month ...

H A R V E S T      2009 !!!!

REPORTS FROM:

Mike Sullivan, Benovia Winery

Rod Berglund, Joseph Swan Vineyards

Ben Miller, Merry Edwards

The week of August 31st ...

Marc Lhormer spoke with Loni and I about the 2010 Napa Valley Film Festival. Planning is underway, and Marc talks about the vision for the festival, the timing, the organizational process, and also what you can do to ...

While at Costco today, I spotted these bottles of wine with the Zork plastic alternative wine closures. These alternative wine closures were introduced into the market to address the problem of “cork taint” which impacts about 5-15% (percentages ...

Version 2.0 of the Wine Bloggers’ Conference kicks-off on Friday in Sonoma. Over 200 wine bloggers from across the US (and world?) are flying in for 3-days of conference proceedings. Well, that may be a corporate descriptor for ...

Will Hardy Wallace go to Disney World now that he was selected out of 2,000 contestants for a “dream job” with Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma?

Announced just minutes ago, Hardy will make $10,000 per month on a six month ...