Guinness Theft

a lone man drove into the Dublin brewery, hitched his truck to a fully loaded trailer awaiting delivery to city pubs and left with 450 full kegs of beer - 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of U.S. lager Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish beer Carlsberg. Each keg holds about 88 British-sized pints, the most common serving size in Ireland equivalent to 20 ounces each. The total theft involves 39,600 pints with a retail value exceeding 160,000 euros ($235,000). But what could one do with 450 kegs of beer?

In the past, the outlawed Irish Republican Army and other gangs all have highjacked truck shipments of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes for resale in pubs run by sympathizers or friends. The Republic of Ireland, a country of 4.2 million, has more than 10,000 pubs and bars. The Guinness brewery in Dublin is the biggest supplier, producing more than 5 million kegs annually. Hopefully these missing kegs are found and returned to the brewery.

Put down the Bud and pick up the Puretini

This premium organic vodka comes from a company you wouldn't expect — Anheuser-Busch but is not directly targeted at Bud drinkers. Purus vodka, distilled in Italy's Piemonte region, is the first vodka created and marketed specifically by A-B's beverage development subsidiary, Long Tail Libations.

The high end Vodka ($35) is so green, I'm not sure how they make it into a clear liquid. Cultivated without pesticides or commercial fertilizers, Purus uses crystalline water from the Alps and is made with locally harvested 100% organic Italian wheat. Its 100% recyclable bottle is even Earth-friendly with a tree-free paper label, safe soy-based inks, water-based adhesives, and an environmentally sustainable cork closure.

With sales of premium vodkas more than doubled between 2003 and 2006, growing to $778 million from $320 million, Anheuser-Busch is entering a growth market at the time of small incremental growth in their traditional market space. And they have entered with a product that also is noteworthy being an environmentally sound product. Question is do we need another high-end Vodka and will Purus be successful? Since it is currently only available in the Northeast, I guess it is up to us yankees to decide.

Peppermint Twist

1 ounces Peppermint Schnapps
1 ounces Kahlua®
1 ounces Brown Creme de Cacao

Fill a shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake well. Strain drink into a cocktail glass and serve. Makes 1 drink.

Brit's go for the cap

With nearly 2,000 stores in the UK, Tesco is Britain's biggest supermarket chain. They are reporting that more than half of all wine sold in their stores now come in screw-top bottles. The store says that approximately 55 per cent to 65 per cent of wine in its stores had made the switch away from traditional corks.

The pro-capper would say that new-style bottletops do not allow oxygen to reach red wines as they age, but prevent contamination caused by chemicals in some corks which can make wine taste musty. Traditionalist would argue screw-tops are not how wine is sealed and they remove the magic and romanticism of the cork removal process.

All I can say for sure, Screw-tops are here and their growth can not be ignored.

NYC Vineyard?

At the Staten Island Botanical Garden, a 2-acre commercial wine grape vineyard dedicated to Tuscan varieties is being planned as well as a winery, which will be adjacent to the existing Tuscan Villa and called the Tuscan Gardens. The not-for-profit organization, Tuscan Gardens Vineyard Founders Group, envisions planting plant 2,000 grapes on the 2-acre plot with an expected yield of 2,000-3,000 bottles of wine. Since 38% of the residents of Staten Island are of Italian ancestry, more than any other U.S. county, then planting traditional Italian grapes there sounds perfect. I can't wait for their first vintage, due maybe sometime in 2012.

Happy Thanksgiving

So Snoothing

Launched in June 2007, Snooth.com offers it's user base the "world's most comprehensive wine database, featuring millions of reviews and hundreds of thousands of wines." In addition, the site offers wine recommendations, ratings & reviews. The real potential of the site is the ability to seamlessly connects users to the websites of top online merchants and wineries worldwide.

Even though the site is almost 6 months old, currently many of the user reviewed wines only have 1 review. When they can gain critical mass, their wine reviews will carry more weight as to the general public's actual take on all of these varied wines.

How many could you carry?

Bavarian-born restaurant manager Reinhard Wurtz broke the record for carrying one-litre steins of beer, when he carried 20 for 40 metres last night. The previous record of 16 steins was held by German barmaid Anita Schwartz. With each stein weighing at least 2.5 kilograms, Mr Wurtz carried 50 kilograms of beer and glass in the record-breaking effort. Note I am still waiting for my stein to arrive...

Beaujolais Nouveau Swimming Spa

The Beaujolais Nouveau spa, part of the Hakone Yunessun spa, opened this week in Hakone, Japan and this new spa offering allows customers to, with proper swimming attire, bathe and swim in the wine while drinking the wine. Not so sure about the spa benefits of Beaujolais Nouveau but as long as they are enjoying it, than I say drink up or maybe swim up. I'll continue to take mine from the bottle.

Wine that's electric

In an effort to remain green, even with red grapes, StormFisher Biogas and Inniskillin Wines hope to convert up to 2,000 tonnes of byproducts like grape skins and seeds that would otherwise end up in a landfill leaking methane gas into the atmosphere.

"This partnership is a win for residential power consumers, a win for Inniskillin, a win for StormFisher and a win for the environment," said Bruce Nicholson, senior winemaker at Inniskillin.

When StormFisher's opens their Port Colborne in 2009, the plant will produce about 2.5 megawatts of power which is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a year. StormFisher plans to open up two other facilities in Ontario that year, one in London and the other about a 20-minute drive northwest of Guelph. All will operate off byproducts from the wine and food industries.

Now there's something to drink to!

BUD.TV Give-Away

Bud.TV is giving away $40 worth of fine Anheuser-Busch products everyday to two lucky people until December 31, 2007. The catch? You can only enter once a day. But the good news is, you can win twice a month. So grab a good luck charm and logon to Bud.TV everyday to be entered. Because, today could be the day. And if not, there's always tomorrow.

Constellation continues to consolidate industry

Constellation Brands announced on yesterday that it plans to buy the American wine business of rival Fortune Brands for $885 million. Expected to close by the end of the year, the acquisition will bring Constellation annual sales of 2.6 million cases of wine under brands like Clos du Bois, Geyser Peak and Wild Horse, more than 1,500 acres of vineyards in Napa, Sonoma and Carneros, and five wineries.

This adds to their already impressive list of products they represent in the US like Blackstone Winery, Estancia, Franciscan Oakville Estate, Kelly's Revenge, Monkey Bay, Ravenswood, Rex Goliath, Robert Mondavi, Ruffino, Seventh Moon, Simi and Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi. With this latest acquisition, Constellation will control approximately 20 percent of the entire US market. The beer, wine and spirits major has been acquiring alcoholic-beverage businesses since the 1980s.

Online wine dating

A new website called Wine Lovers Meet is attempting to enter over crowded online dating community by focusing on a niche market, namely those who have a passion for wine. While their focus is the "wine dating scene", they also offer a variety of features such as instant message capability, blogs, guestbooks, photo rating, a glossary of wine terms, wine forums, information about wine events, wine etiquette, wine facts, quotes from famous people about wine, wine education, articles, and wine news.

Entering a niche market is an excellent way to remove the barriers to entry however you must also bring content and in this case that would be profiles. Currently they have a grand total of 5 [3 men and 2 women] listed within 100 miles of Boston, which is the second largest wine consuming metropolitan area in the US. In order for WLM to really take off, they will need many more listings with a real effort to entice new members.

Drink and Drive

This USB flash drive contains the wine cellar management software “Open Cellar” as well as a guide to the Grand Cru from the Bordeaux area and their classification, a screensaver and wallpaper dedicated to wine, exclusive ringtones on wine for your mobile phone, and privileged access to the BeWineConnected Club with links to partners and wine professionals.

I don't have a cellar that needs management but I do love the wine bottle shape of this USB drive. Using it solely as a USB, this would be a very expensive option but I do love how it would look with the bottom half of a wine bottle sticking out the side of my laptop. Maybe some clever US company will start mas producing simple USB drives in this shape. Then perhaps the term Drink and Drive wouldn't have such a negative connotation.

New Vineyard Communitee

As the growth of golf course communities begins to diminish, what is the next big thing? It could be "vineyard living", that is either building committees around existing [or in place of] vineyards or planing grapes during the construction of a new development. The growth of the us wine market is on pace to become the largest in the world by 2015 so why wouldn't that fascination include our housing habits. In the last three years, at least 10 of these developments have opened or broken ground in Arizona, California, Idaho, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington and many more or in the works. For a vineyard owner, this could be the best of all worlds - own a vineyard, have "tenants" to help offset the high cost of owning so much land and built in customers [or even workers in the case of smaller markets like Rhode Island]. I say let's plant some vines around all those golf courses and create some truly amazing and valuable properties.

Newmans own wine

Film legend and high-end food entrepreneur Paul Newman is planning to start selling two premium California wines, a chardonnay and a cabernet sauvignon, early next year under the brand name of his food company, Newman's Own. The new wines are slated for release next March and will be produced by St. Helena-based Rebel Wine Company. [Rebel Wine is a two-year-old joint venture between The Three Thieves and the Trinchero Family Estates]

Not only will the wine community gain a new premium wine label, but our community will gain another way to give back. In the past 25 years, the Newman's Own Foundation has been able to donate more than $200 million to thousands of charities and just like all Newman's Own products, all after-tax profits and royalties are donated to charity. So it gives to drink one of Newman's Own.

Headache detector

University of California, Berkeley chemists working with NASA-funded technology designed to find life on Mars have created a device they say can easily detect chemicals. One use of this technology is to measure a particular chemical, called biogenic amines, which occurs naturally in a wide variety of aged, pickled and fermented foods prized by gourmet palates, including wine, chocolate, cheese, olives, nuts and cured meats.

Researchers found the highest amine levels occur in red wine and sake and the lowest in beer. It has been suggested that this device could be used to put amine levels on wine labels. "We're aware of the consumer demand for information. But that has to be tempered by the manner in which wine is made," said Wendell Lee, general counsel for the Wine Institute, a California industry trade group.

Unwritten distributor law

Back in 2006. Michael-David Winery informed Frank-Lin Distiller, their instate distributor, that their open-ended agreement was being terminated upon reasonable notice. After withholding payments in excess of $350,000 for wine purchased, Frank-Lin sued Michael-David Winery for $8.9 million in damages from the termination. The distributor claimed it is standard practice that an oral distribution agreement with goals could be terminated only for cause, and then only after written warnings and an opportunity to cure were given. After a 5 week trial and less than 2 hours of deliberation, a Stockton California jury not only confirmed that vintners have the right to terminate open-ended agreements with wine distributors at any time upon reasonable notice and for any reason, that the wineries not have to share in the value of the growth of the brand they helped to build.

In an industry where small wineries and distributors in California generally operate under open-ended oral agreements, this ruling is important because it blocks the so called franchise law which would grant distributors excessive control of a brand regardless of channel performance. “Without this decision, California vintners would have found themselves at the mercy of distributors who would, in effect, become entitled to a significant portion of the winery’s brand value and the winery owner’s equity simply because the distributor had delivered the product,” said John Hinman of Hinman & Carmichael LLP, Counsel for Michael-David Winery. “This case was a backdoor attempt to create a wine “franchise” law in California—a legal system in place in 14 states that makes it nearly impossible for wineries in those states ever to change distributors and often forces wineries to buy their own brands back from underperforming distributors.”

Hopefully this will be a signal to those 14 states that currently have such a law in place to rethink ownership of brand. Without companies like Michael-David Winery and their Seven Deadly Zins, distributors like Frank-Lin would have no product to distribute.

Secert Office Facilities

Hidden in plain sight!

New direct shipment website

With the launch of a new website called Wine Without orders, The Specialty Wine Retailers Association aims to keep the wine trade and wine consumers informed and educated on efforts to restrict access to wine. The new SWRA website includes a storehouse of documents, news articles, legal briefs and press releases dedicated to the issue of the direct shipment of wine.

They have two "coming soon" features called Wall of Shame and Shipping Map which I am personally looking forward to. The Wall sounds like it might be a interesting list and the Map will be a very useful tool for shippers and consumers alike.