Tag Archives: lawsuits

Winebits 748: Paper wine bottles, Champagne lawsuit, wine real estate

paper bottle
Yes. a paper bottle. Nuts to you, glass.

This week’s wine news: A paper wine bottle debuts at a British on-line grocer, while Champagne revs up another lawsuit and Napa prices don’t have anything on Texas

Paper wine bottle: What may be the first paper wine bottle in Britain is set to debut when a brand called When in Rome will sell a red, white and rose at on-line retailer Ocado. The bottle, a collaboration between the producer and Britain’s Frugalpac sustainable packaging company, is said to be made from 94 percent recycled paper and have a carbon footprint 84 percent less than a single-use glass bottle. Says When in Rome founder Rob Malin: “We believe great wine doesn’t have to come in glass bottles. We’re here to prove that whether you’re drinking from a glass bottle or a paper bottle, the quality of the wine is not impacted.”

One more lawsuit: The Champagne business, responsible for some of the great lawsuits in an industry that is renowned for them, has struck again. Cristal, which successfully sued Cristalino (and for which the WC got a cease and desist order), has lined up its lawyers for an action against a small Oregon winery that makes a sparkling wine called Crystal Visions. The producer, Landmass Wines, used the name Crystal Visions to honor Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac fame. The phrase “crystal visions” appears in the lyrics of the Fleetwood Mac song “Dreams.” But, of course, the Cristal lawyers were not satisfied, even though Landmass got a favorable ruling from the U.S. patent office. Ain’t it great to be a Big Wine company?

Have $16 million? That will get you a one-half acre compound near Austin in central Texas. The offer includes a main house, two guest houses, a party barn. and an office, totaling 10,000 square feet of living space as well as seven bedrooms and 9 ½ baths. Plus, of course, a tempranillo vineyard, with enough vines planted to make a couple of hundred bottles a year. Hmm. I wonder if I could use the guest house for an office for myself, and let Churro, the blog’s associate editor, have the other one?

Winebits 715: Lawsuit, expensive wine, direct shipping

lawsuitThis week’s wine news: Two of the world’s biggest booze companies are in yet another lawsuit. Plus, $128,000 might have bought you a bottle of wine and Nevada restricts direct shipping

Bring on the attorneys: How do you know when a business isn’t growing enough? When the word’s biggest companies start suing each other. That’s the case with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest brewer, which has filed a second lawsuit against rival Constellation Brands over Modelo beer. The drinksbusiness website reports that Busch is suing Constellation – which we know here as the home of Mondavi wines – as part of its long-standing dispute over who actually owns the name and rights to the Corona and Modelo beer brands. I won’t even pretend I can explain what’s going on; it’s one of those disputes that will cost each side millions in an attempt to stop the other from taking away tiny percentages of market share. Ain’t consolidation grand?

Yes, expensive: If you had HK$1,000,000 (about US$128,000), you might have been able to buy a 15-liter bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2000 at an auction in Hong Kong last week. It’s not enough that the 2000 was anointed the vintage of the century by Robert Parker and the Mouton is supposed to an exceptional wine. To quote: “The commemorative bottle alone is a collector’s item. … the glass was adorned with an ‘Augsburg Ram.’ paying tribute to a chased silver-gilt drinking vessel created around 1590 by Jakob Schenauer, a German master goldsmith.” Which, of course, means no one will ever drink it.

Nevada says no: Nevada, once one of the most liberal states for direct shipping, has changed its mind. Breweries, distilleries, and retailers can no longer ship directly to consumers in Nevada. The change seems to be part of the growing backlash against more open shipping regulations brought on by the pandemic. The new law is so restrictive that it’s illegal for a retailer in one part of the state to ship to a customer in another (though local delivery is still legal).

Winebits 699: Wild boars, pandemic drinking, liquor lawsuit

This week’s wine news: Wild boars attack supermarket wine shopper, plus a historical look at pandemic drinking and another liquor lawsuit

Attack of the wild boars: The U.S. has neo-Prohibitionists; Italy has wild boars. England’s Guardian newspaper reported that “a herd” of wild boars ambushed a woman who had just come out of a supermarket near Rome. The “four adults and two young boars” pursued the woman and stole her groceries (which I assume included wine, because it’s Italy and not the U.S.). The video at the top of the page shows what happened. Apparently, boar attacks like this are not uncommon in Italian cities; the country may have as many as 2 million wild boars.

Pandemic drinking: An otherwise interesting piece about alcohol drinking during the Black Death has one fatal flaw (and yes, pun fully intended). The author, in recounting how pre-Modern Europe drank its way through the bubonic plague, wants to wag a finger at us for drinking so much during the current pandemic. But he omits one important fact: It wasn’t safe to drink water in most cities before the Industrial Revolution gave us modern sewerage systems. If you did, you likely died from something like typhoid, cholera, or dysentery. So when James Brown quotes Daniel Defoe saying an English grocer going into quarantine with his family had “12 hogsheads of beer; casks and rundlets containing four varieties of wine (canary, malmsey, sack and tent; 16 gallons of brandy; and “many sorts of distill’d waters” (spirits)” that’s because he had nothing else to drink. One has to watch those neo-Prohibitionists – they can be tricky.

Peaky Blinders, indeed: The WC’s fascination with liquor trademark and intellectual property lawsuits dates to the blog’s early days and Cristal v. Cristalino. So I never pass up an opportunity to share another one. This time, the company that made the “Peaky Blinders” TV series is suing the company that makes “Peaky Blinder” liquor and beer. A U.S. federal court judge ruled for the liquor company, but not to worry – there will certainly lots of appeals and we can follow this story for much longer.

Winebits 395: Prosecco shortage, sweet wine, label fraud

Prosecco shortage ? Plenty of bubbly: The Wine Curmudgeon has not mentioned the news reports over the past several months heralding a Prosecco shortage, mostly because the “shortage” made my reporter’s stomach hurt. It’s the just the kind of “news” that offers an excuse for price increases — coincidentally, as the euro drops — and it turns out my hunch wasn’t far from the truth. The head of the Prosecco consortium, which oversees production of the Italian sparker, told Wine Business Monthly that supply increased almost 18 percent in 2014, and that there is no shortage. “We call on those who write, market and educate people about wine to do their part to inform the public about what Prosecco represents as a specific wine of place year,” he said.

? Deciding what is sweet: Sweet wine is making an impression in Canada as well as the U.S., as Bill Zacharkiw writes in the Montreal Gazette: “There still seems to be some confusion about the role of sugar in wine, as many of these emails ask what the relationship is between residual sugar and quality. But there are other interesting questions as well.” Which he answers quite intelligently, noting the same thing that I have found. It’s not sweetness itself that is the problem with sweet wine, but how badly made too many sweet wines are. Says Zacharkiw: “I cast no judgment here. In the end, you choose what you want to drink. I simply want people to know the facts, and believe you should have access to all the information in order to make an informed choice.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

? Fix the label: Remember how those “artisan” spirits were going to fight to the bitter end the lawsuits accusing them of not being especially artisan? Templeton, the Iowa producer using whiskey from Indiana, has settled, and I would expect more settlements to follow now that a precedent has been set. The Templeton co-founder said his whiskey’s marketing ?should have provided more clarity,” in one of those wonderful understatements that I so enjoy. Hopefully, the wine industry, with its artisan and hand-crafted claims for brands that make hundreds of thousands of cases, is paying attention.

Winebits 374: Wine snobs, wine grapes, lawsuits

wine snobs ? Because we’re better than you are: The Wine Spectator reports that the next big grape will be cabernet franc, mostly because of its “gossamer structure.” The Wine Curmudgeon has absolutely no idea what this means, because, as the article points out, I’m one of the many who aren’t hip enough to appreciate the grape. Plus, there are cabernet franc wines at trendy places in Manhattan. Plus, quotes from sommeliers. Need we say more? This is the kind of wine writing that makes me grit my teeth, knowing I still have so much work to do.

? Something besides the usual: The always erudite Andrew Meggitt writes that wine drinkers should not limit themselves to the usual, but should be willing to experiment with wine made with different grapes and from regions that aren’t California. And, somehow, he doesn’t use the word gossamer once. Meggitt, the winemaker at Missouri’s St. James, has been working wonders with norton for more than a decade, and also recommends vignoles, chambourcin, and riesling. Maybe I can introduce him to the writer at the Spectator.

? Bring on the attorneys: How else to explain this sentence? “Beam Suntory ?s lawyers have argued that a reasonable consumer would understand that having ‘handmade’ on a label does not infer that no machines were used throughout the entire production process.” No wonder my mother wanted me to go to law school — you can make words mean what they don’t, and get paid lots of money for it. This is from yet another deceptive label spirits lawsuit, arguing that it’s not possible for a multi-million case brand to be handmade or handcrafted or artisan. So far, the suits target spirits, but the Wine Curmudgeon’s advice makes sense: Don’t wait for a judge to tell you to change your labels.