• Wine fraud: Four British wine dealers who scammed Americans by selling them wines for “investment purposes” that turned out to be quite ordinary have been sentenced to as much as four years in jail. One of the investors spent one-half million dollars, reports Decanter. How many times has the Wine Curmudgeon said this? Wine is made to drink, not to buy and sell like real estate.
• Australian wine woes: The continuing shakeout in the Aussie wine business continues, with too many grapes and not enough water. Says one official: The industry “is in a catastrophic state, partly because of the drought, but the real issue is the oversupply. And that is impacting on everybody in all regions." What does this mean for U.S, consumers? Less cheap Australian wine, as wine producers and grape growers go out of business.
• Another wine scam? An English inventor claims to have devised a machine that can make ordinary wine taste like it’s a fine French or California vintage. The “secret,” besides a cost of more than $600, is ultrasound technology, which supposedly ages the wine in a matter of minutes. Maybe he should call the fellow who paid 500 grand for the cheap wine noted in the first item. What the inventor doesn’t say is that 90 percent of the wine in the world isn’t made to age, so making it “older” isn’t going to make it better. What it looks like he’s doing is aerating the wine; you can accomplish the same thing in a $20 blender.
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