• One-third less bottle: The world's lightest wine bottle is on supermarket shelves in Great Britain. It weights 300 grams (about 10 1/2 ounces), 30 percent less than the standard bottle. This is another initiative from European retailers to reduce bottle weight and thereby cut carbon emissions. I did a story for the trade magazine Vineyard & Winery Management about this last year (unfortunately, there is no link), and the Europeans are much more serious about this than most U.S. producers are.
• 2009 was "brutal": That's from no less an authority than wine business consultant Jon Frederickson. "Usually, we're raving about how great the year was," he told a group of winery professionals and grape growers. "But this was probably the worst year you ever had." Shipments of California wine were down 4 million cases, a drop of nearly 4 percent from 2008 -- the worst showing in 16 years.
• English wine smacks French: And we thought it couldn't get any worse for Champagne, which is enduring its worst sales slump in decades. But British producer Nyetimber recently won a blind tasting in Italy, besting some of the best Champagne houses, including Bollinger and Louis Roederer. (This reference has been struck out because the Wine Curmudgeon is boycotting Roederer products.) There were 52 entries in the category and Nyetimber was the only producer to have two wines make it into the top 17.
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