• What do diners deserve? Not all that much, writes Jeremy Parzen in the Houston Press. It just seems a lot, given the sad state of restaurant wine service. His 10-point diner’s Bill of Rights includes such basics as “The right to request that a wine server open a new bottle of a by-the-glass selection if the wine has been open since the day before.” Which we all know restaurants – even ones that know better – want to do about as much as the Wine Curmudgeon wants to run naked down the street.
• New owners for old favorite: Geyser Peak, about as dependable a $10 wine as there is, has been bought by Accolade Wines, an Australian group that has become the world’s fifth-largest wine company. The deal included two smaller labels, Atlas Peak and XYZin, and seems to be part of a continuing shakeout in the wine business caused by the recession, the slump in wine sales, and overextended wineries. The Australians said all the right things about Geyser Peak, but when anything like this happens, the fate of the acquired company is also a mystery.
• Winery boss rips retailers: Or, as the Aussies, put it, “launched a spray.” The occasion was an industry function Down Under where one of the country’s most influential producers criticized Australia’s leading retailers for “flooding their stores with private-label wines that he said were hollow, copycats and masquerading as real brands.” I mention this here because private labels and store brands have become increasingly important for retailers in the U.S. – the Total Wine that just opened in Dallas has so many private labels I had trouble finding the branded wine – and we may soon be seeing the same sort of reaction from U.S. producers.
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