· Harvest of the century: One of the Wine Curmudgeon's favorite giggles is the annual appraisal of the Bordeaux harvest from the region's winemakers. So far, in the last 10 years, we have had four harvests described as vintages of the century -- 2000, 2003, 2005, and now 2009. Even the Wine Magazines have had enough of this foolishness: Gil Lempert-Schwarz, chairman of the Wine Institute of Las Vegas, said that the hype was “mainly a ploy” to offset falling sales amid the economic crisis. That's one reason why I don't do much in the way of harvest reports. Who is going to say the harvest is lousy?
· Parker, ex-aide drop lawsuits: Robert Parker and and his former translator Hanna Agostini have dropped their respective court actions against each other. It's incredibly complicated, but the cases revolve around a fraud that French authorities say Agostini perpetrated against a Dutch-Belgian wine company by pretending she was acting with the authority of Parker's Wine Advocate ratings empire.
· Is five-cent sale legitimate? A San Francisco man is suing Beverages & More, a West coast retail chain, claiming that its famous "five-cent" sales are deceptive advertising and should be stopped. BevMo, as the chain is known, will sell you a second bottle of wine for a nickel if you buy the first bottle for full price. The lawsuit alleges that BevMo inflates the price of the bottle so much that it's actually more expensive to use the nickel promotion than to buy two bottles at the normal price. This blogger discovered the same thing: Alamos malbec, mostly a $10 wine, being sold for $19.99 for the first bottle and five cents for the second.
That .05 cent sale just sounds too good to be true. And you know what that means. You can find this type of deceptive practice in just about every industry. Imagine how many sales are made before the deception is found and usually, a slap on the fingers and a cease and disist order is all they receive.
Posted by: Joeshico | November 15, 2009 at 06:45 PM
To be honest, anyone stupid enough to fall for the 5 cent sale should probably be ripped off.
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