Is it the person behind it – the winemaker or proprietor? Or is it the land and vineyards where the grapes are grown? Or is it something else, something more nebulous or intangible? For most of us, most of the time, these are almost philosophical questions, most likely to be discussed, perhaps, in the more thoughtful seminars of an MBA course. But there comes a…

It’s fair to say a significant majority of the drinks industry is more than a little concerned by what is arguably the single most significant piece of booze-related legislation since Gorbachev’s dry law campaign in the dying days of the Soviet Union and certainly since France’s Loi Évin was enacted in the early 1990s. But should it be? Who in the wine trade, where the…

Vintage variations are endlessly debated, celebrated or mourned. And, like some kind of organoleptic scientific instrument, the slightest fluctuations in rainfall and temperature can be detected in the apparatus of a glass of wine. Or, to be a little more poetic about it, in wine, you can taste the weather. Of course, that means you can also taste the rather strange or (and let’s call…

This is a few years back now – it was the only carrier that served Starbucks coffee (a title recently taken by Delta Airways). When I asked him how much of a hit he was prepared to take on the ticket price for this rather minor perk (to me at least), he said he had only that year paid an extra $100 to fly back…

And, given they are at least as good at storing wine for the first year of its life – and that most wine (between 70% and 90% depending on which study you read) is in any case opened within 24 hours of purchase – it really is baffling that the bag-in-box didn’t take over from the dear old glass bottle years ago. In fact, some…

Get it right and the rewards – in the shape of intense brand loyalty and word-of-mouth buzz (“this is the wine from that place I told you about, the one we went to when we were on holiday”) – are potentially enormous for wine producers. Get it wrong, however, and they run the risk of tumbling into the specific circle of hell known as the…

So, there won’t be any photos of the machine harvester on the company website, the winemaker won’t blog about her latest yeast catalogue, and visitors will be steered clear of the tubs of tartaric acid and powdered tannin on their way to take photos of the handsome barrel cellar or, better yet, the vineyards. A new Californian winery takes a radically different approach, however, one…

A brand, it turned out, that was just like the old one – so similar in fact, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that it didn’t want its customers to notice the change. Certainly, when I went into my local branch of Sainsbury’s, it took me a moment to realise that the retailer’s own-label Camino del Angel brand was not, in fact, Casillero del…

No, not that historic change. As far as I know, the new teetotal incumbent of the Oval Office has no plans to shake-up the three-tier distribution model and, as I write, he has not yet imposed 30% import tariffs on all French wine. The change I’m talking about concerns a vote that was, not surprisingly, overshadowed by other electoral events. At the same time as…

There’s a pervasive feeling, whether in the sales material of merchants or the existence of collaborative associations such as Australia’s First Families of Wine or the international fine wine club Primum Familiae Vini, that family is the best model of ownership for the best wines. Unlike supposedly more ruthless, faceless corporate brands, family wine firms are considered stewards of the land with a strong connection…