Talk-A-Vino

Meritage time!

Last weekend happened to be way too busy, so I had to skip the traditional wine quiz (no worries, it is coming up next Saturday). However, I have tons of interesting stuff around the vine and the web, so let’s get to it.

First and foremost – do you feel lucky? More precisely – do you feel wine-lucky? Then share your luck with the world – and you have only few days left to do it. Monthly Wine Writing Challenge #8 is almost over – the submission deadline is Sunday, March 23rd, thus you have only about 4 days left – start typing. So far 7 blog posts had been submitted – here is the post by the #MWWC8 host,  Kara The Sweet Sommelier, summarizing current status.

Remember I wrote recently about The Miracle Machine, the device which promised to almost magically create wine out of water and a few ingredients? Turns out, The Miracle Machine was simply a hoax – but it had its purpose. The goal of that “project” was to bring attention to the organization which actually has a very important mission – providing drinkable water to more than billion (!) people in the world, who have no access to the clean and drinkable water. The name of the organization is “Wine into Water”, so playing on the “water into wine” was almost warranted here. I think the “increased awareness” mission was successfully accomplished – here you can find more information about both the hoax and the Wine into Water project in itself.

To cork or to screw top? That is the question! The debate is still ongoing, and the jury is still out – aesthetics, spoiled wine, proper wine aging, consumer education – all is at play in the back and force dialog about corks versus screw tops. Here are few interesting links for you. Here you can find a short video of the winemaker explaining why they switched back from the screw top to the cork. On the same subject, here is the link to the blog post at The Wine-o-scope, which critically analyzes findings of the research on the corks versus screw tops. To rephrase, I would say that this blog post is attacking the research findings – and I actually have a lot of problems with the number of statements in the blog post, which I expressed in the designated comments section. Anyway, it is well worth your time, so go read it.

Two more interesting pieces are more or less related to the subject of wine in numbers. The first one is about wine in Big Numbers – here you can find the link to the post about who is who in the US wine market. If you like the numbers, this post is for you. You will find out that three leading companies in US produced more than half of all the wines in 2013, and you will also find out that company number 1, Gallo, makes more wine than bottom 26 producers. Is this very important information for the oenophiles? Probably not. Is it fascinating? I would say yes. Again, take a look for yourself.

The last one for today is the article in the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) wine blog about Tasting Room Survey conducted by the  SVB  jointly with Wine Business Monthly, on the subject of profitability of the tasting room operations of the wineries – full report will be published in May. According to the survey, it appears that on average, 35% of the tasting room visitors don’t buy anything. Those people are called “melon squeezers” (read the article for full explanation of the term – in the nutshell, these are the people who touch the fruit but don’t buy it), and the article provides suggestions as to how to get rid of these annoying “melon-squeezers”. Even more fascinating than the article itself are the comments (there are lots of them), some of them suggesting that people must buy something if they visit the winery and that visitors have to buy the wine even if they don’t like it. To make it clear and simple, I’m peeved by this article and especially taken in conjunction with the comments, but I don’t want to end up with the huge rant in this blog post, so I will leave it up to you to read and come up with your own opinion (the rant might still be forthcoming).

And we are done for today. The glass is empty – but the refill is on its way. Cheers!