• A tiny percentage of expensive wine: That's the conclusion from a report that looked at direct shipping sales from March 2009 to March 2010. U.S wineries sold 2.6 million cases directly to consumers, which works out to 1 percent of all U.S. wine sales. About one-quarter of directly shipped wine came from the Napa Valley, and cost an average of $52.69. All of which is something to keep in mind the next time the wine blogosphere erupts in a panic over HR 5034, the evil anti-direct shipping bill.
• The end of Prohibition's legacy? USA Today has a fine story about the continuing erosion of one of the remnants of Prohibition -- the dry county: "Today, 1 in 9 counties is still dry. But drys are losing ground on all levels, from the state — since 2002, 14 states have ended bans on Sunday alcohol sales — to the very local." It looks like we're going to have a wet-dry election in Dallas in November to allow beer and wine sales in currently dry parts of the city. Though I'll vote to go wet, I'm not sure it will pass. The politics of wet-dry, as USA Today notes, are quite complicated and take into account local issues that often don't have all that much to do with the actual wet-dry question.
• Wine business confuses the consumer: "The industry fails hopelessly on accessibility. This is market that goes out of its way to confuse the consumer." That's a quote from a man whom Decanter describes as a "British advertising heavyweight," Sir John Hegarty, creative director of advertising agency Bartle Bootle Hegarty. Regardless, he sounds like the Wine Curmudgeon's kind of guy. Sir John, speaking to a masters of wine symposium, said: "You've seen it – the way people in restaurants nervously pass round a wine list. It's fear. You as an industry have encouraged that fear. The wine industry is the most fragmented market I've seen. Fragmented, confusing, impenetrable."
Comments