NEWS FETCH – February 18, 2014

TOP NEWS

• Feds Ignore Water Rights, Cut Central Valley East Side by 60%
• Jan. restaurant sales: trouble ahead
• Schumer urges speedy loans for vineyards hit by cold
• In Utah, many want to pull down ‘Zion Curtain’ drinking laws
• Politicians discover Central Valley

• Ten Proven Methods to Motivate Your Sales Team [Sponsored Link]

GLOBAL WINE SUPPLY

• French wine exports down in 2013
• Limited supply of French wines on bulk market
• EUR150m of Bordeaux returned to France in three years

CALIFORNIA BRIEFS

• California Seeing Brown Where Green Used to Be
• Saralee McClelland Kunde: A celebration for the Daffodil Queen
• Warehouser plans Healdsburg custom crush
• New generation at Russian River winery

• Introduction to Water in California [Sponsored Link]

DROUGHT/WATER

• Water-Cleaning Technology Could Help Farmers
• Water takes center stage at World Ag Expo
• February Forecast: Limited Water Supply In Westernmost States
• Aussie drought support wait continues
• Drought, frost, competition, insights and discontents
• Demand rises to finance alternatives to water as drought persists

• Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource [Sponsored Link]

FINANCE, M&A

• Vaynerchuck’s new $25M fund
• Virgile Joly: Doing it the hard way

• The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow [Sponsored Link]

INVESTING IN WINE, COLLECTING & AUCTIONS

• Bordeaux First Growths Drop to 18% of Liv-Ex Market Share
• Suppose they gave a Bordeaux en primeur party and no-one came?
• Mouton Rothschild – value to be found?
• Wine: an investment that ages well

• Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization [Sponsored Link]

HEALTH

• Cure Crime and Cancer: Don’t Drink

REGULATION & COMPLIANCE

• AWOL Wineries & the American Wine Consumer Coalition
• OR: Liquor sales modernization stalled

MARKETING & SALES

• What drives wine drinkers? Price, of course
• New serve and preserve fine wine system

• Facebook Marketing for Wineries and Tips on How To Engage [Sponsored Link]

MEDIA MATTERS

• Like Quality Wine, Quality News Is Not Free
• Gregutt: Goodbye … Again
• This system wants you to decide how much an author gets paid
• Two Texts for Winter Wine Reading
• Roberts: SVB’s State Of The Wine Industry 2014 Report Makes Us Look Like Geniuses
• Ethics? Ethics? We Don’t Need No Stinking Ethics!

• Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment [Sponsored Link]

MATTERS OF TASTE

• Huet: Just How Crappy Does A Wine Have To Get To Ban Tasting?
  
• Drink Petrus with Robert Parker in Beijing for ¥60,000
• 13.6%: The Optimal Ripeness In Cabernet
• US Finger Lakes could rival Mosel, says Paul Hobbs
• Newcomer Vintners Shaking up Chilean Wine Scene
• The Charm of Terroir
• Robert Parker and his predictions for 2014
• Can Bag-in-Box Plastic Pouches Compete with Glass Bottles for Wine Quality Over Time?
• Non-beef pairings for Cabernet Sauvignon

• The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert: Take a Whiff of That [Sponsored Link]

TRADE SHOWS & CONFERENCES

• Washington Grape & Wine Convention Breaks Record
• 7 Tips for the Vancouver International Wine Festival
• Scrap unnecessary wine shows

• Planning Wine Trade Show Participation [Sponsored Link]

SOCIAL MEDIA & TECH

• Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid
• How to Access your Winery Website’s “Big Data”
• Wine.com hires exes from Shutterfly, Williams-Sonoma

• Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years [Sponsored Link]

MANAGEMENT & EMPLOYMENT

• H-2A can attract domestic workers
• “Internal communication” no longer exists
• Helping the Disabled and the Wine Industry

• Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for the New Healthcare Law [Sponsored Link]

LEGAL MATTERS

• “Go Texan” Mark As Applied to Wines
• Cal high court may end protection for alcohol party hosts

• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water [Sponsored Link]

ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY

• Idaho’s Bitner Vineyards creates buzz for sustainability

• Chinatown (DVD) [Sponsored Link]

AG, GROWER & CELLAR NEWS

• Challenges, rewards of a 30-year wine grape vineyard

• Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever [Sponsored Link]

EUROPE & THE UK

• Bordeaux-based Viniv to offer Crushpad-type winemaking service
• Tesco bolsters wine team

• Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France [Sponsored Link]

ASIA & PACIFIC RIM

• Interview with One Of The Largest Wine Importers In China

• How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region [Sponsored Link]

NOT JUST FOR THE TRADE

• Cotechino and Sorbara – An Existential Dilemma
• Dusk in the Vineyard: Moonrise at Sunset
• Jean-Charles Boisset: Smooth Operator
• Invisible Cities, Imaginary Wines

• The Control of Nature [Sponsored Link]

OLIVE OIL

• US olive oil pushing gov’t to test imported oils