SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 – WINE NEWS FETCH

TOP NEWS

• COVID boom is still boosting off-premise AlcBevs
• Sonoma County Wine Auction raises $1.2 million
• Backlogged smoke taint tests cause chaos for Calif Wineries (possible paywall)
• Black Instagram wine influencer says industry diversity support is only skin deep
• Ohio’s 21st Amendment Enforcement Action, is there more than meets the eye?
• Hard seltzer now accounts for 10% of all “beer” sales
• Power shut-offs are in your future. Keep crush moving. Click to reserve your generator NOW! (Sponsored)

ICYMI (IN CASE YOU MISSED IT)

• The Oregon Wine Industry Reports Record 2019 Results
• TerrAvion Chapt 11: up to $50 million in liabilities, less than $50K in assets
• How two winemakers organized four brands from grape to bottle at two facilities. (Sponsored)

WILDFIRES & WEATHER

• How will wildfire smoke impact Oregon’s wine industry?
• OR: Winery lost every drop to Almeda but this story has hints of a happy ending
• US wine industry calls for state aid as wildfires continue
• Agriculture and Wildfires (podcast)
• Green and Red & Nichelini Winery’s Close Call – The Hennessey Fires (podcast)

WINE SUPPLY & CONSUMPTION

• Napa Valley harvest report: Harvest enters its final weeks
• Champagne 2020 to make rare ‘trilogy’ of top vintages
• Surging Australian wine exports
• Pandemic parochialism
• UK Champagne sales rebound over summer
• Sommeliers Choice Awards Announces 2020 Winners (Sponsored link)

CALIFORNIA BRIEFS

• Napa Valley’s Opus One winery names Christopher Lynch CEO
• Nickel and Nickel winery will restore its farmstead history
• Wine industry exec joins Bank of Marin on California Central Coast
• Lodi growers and wineries asked to help researchers earn grant
• 2020 Bartender Spirits Awards Results Are Out (Sponsored link)

COVID-19

• How to open a wine shop during a pandemic. Video interview with James Oliver of Vesper Wine
• No COVID-19 test, no grape harvest in Spain’s Basque Country
• UKH: “Cumulative effect of new restrictions hugely damaging”

DIVERSITY

• Diversity In Wine Scholarship Program with Josh Hart
• South L.A. Wine Club’s Lindsay Williams Is Addressing Social Justice With Wine
• Rethinking the wine writing award

TAKING THE HIGH ROADS

• New appellations would celebrate individual terroir of cannabis strains (possible paywall)

CONSUMER SALES: DTC, ON- & OFF-PREMISE

• Grow Your Delivery and Curbside Pick Up Business*(Sponsored)

FINANCE, INVESTMENT, M&A

• OZ: Bekkers buys historic vineyard

BREXIT

• Brexit: The opera continues

INVESTING IN WINE, COLLECTING & AUCTIONS

• Zachys Auctions Rare Wines from Italy’s Enoteca Pinchiorri

WINE SELECTION AND RECOMMENDATION

• Attempts to grade wine miss the point

PACKAGING, LABELS & CORKS

• Growing opportunity for wine in cans across markets, with the exception of in Canada
• Australian wine drinkers yet to embrace wine in cans
• Seedlip innovates with mushroom-based packaging

MEDIA MATTERS

• Hey Wine Industry—Let’s Try to Dial It Back a Few Notches
• Drinks Industry Collectively Condemns Sexist Language in Jim Murray’s ‘Whisky Bible’

MATTERS OF TASTE

• Vermouth – alt wine for the young and hip
• Taste Is Knowing The Tissue Of Little Things
• The View from Abroad
• In praise of the blockbuster wine

WINE PEOPLE

• Katy Moses and the KAM Media team

NORTH AMERICAN REGIONAL WINE NEWS

• Despite Heat, Humidity and Skepticism, Wines From the American South Find Their Audience

AG, GROWER & CELLAR NEWS

• Impact of fermentation parameters on the kinetics of fermentative aromas synthesis (video)
• CIELab as a reference method for the analysis of wine color
• My harvest starts in X days and I’m getting cold feet

DOWN UNDER

• Australian alternative varieties: the ones to watch… three years on

BEER, CIDER, WINE & SPIRITS

• More than half a million jobs in US beer industry ‘will be lost’ by 2021