NEWS FETCH — February 17, 2016

TOP NEWS

• Restaurants are booming despite financial market turmoil
• Chrysalis Vineyards wins Virginia Supreme Court fight to upgrade its facilities
• Southern Creates New Transatlantic Division To Handle Bacardi Business
• Pests And Pesticides In The Gironde’s €4 Million Wine Business
• Farming industry balks at Obamacare costs
• This former winery GM shows you how you can easily get meaningful reporting and compliance information from your business data *Sponsored Link*

WINE SUPPLY

• Australian wine under threat from climate change, as grapes ripen earlier than ever
• Your ticket to the world of wine! Experience creations from 6,000 exhibitors at ProWein 2016 *Sponsored Link*

CALIFORNIA BRIEFS

• Jean Arnold Sessions named interim head of Sonoma County Vintners
• Ruling on Atascadero basin will have little impact, water agencies say
• Halter Ranch welcomes new marketing manager
• How to Hire Top-Selling Sommeliers and Drive Your Sales *Sponsored Link*

PUBLIC COMPANIES

• Beam Suntory posts strong post-merger 2015 results
• Pernod Ricard benefits from range rationalisation and EDLP to grow sales
• Pernod sees problems on Chinese horizon

DISTRIBUTORS

• David Bowler Wine to distribute Vega Sicilia in New York and New Jersey
• Practical Information for wine reps on how to successfully grow sales network in US Market *Sponsored Link*

INVESTING IN WINE, COLLECTING & AUCTIONS

• Dujac, Jayer Among Top Burgundy Lots at Acker New York Auction

HEALTH

• How alcohol can improve your memory
• Alcohol also damages the liver by allowing bacteria to infiltrate
• Olive Oil Consumption Protects Against Coronary Artery Disease

REGULATION & LEGAL MATTERS

• TN: Liquor retailer says proposed license cap is anti-free trade
• Alabama wineries seeking looser rules to boost business
• Lawsuit challenges regulations letting farm unions trespass

DATA & TRENDS

• Wine and Statistics—Gotta Love Them
• Top 20 Off-Premise Brands

WINE SELECTION AND RECOMMENDATION

• Taking the Guesswork out of Wine Purchasing

MARKETING & SALES

• Marketing Lessons from the 2016 Boston Wine Expo
• Pernod Ricard targets British millennials with ‘unfussy’ new wines
• Moët & Chandon is helping consumers differentiate between Champagne and sparkling wine (perhaps Gallo should sit in on this?)
  
• American Football Finally Embraces Wine
• Bottling the Heroism of the Purple Heart
• Yellowglen launches rainbow label in support of LGBTI
• How Carrots Are Selling More Wine

PACKAGING, LABELS & CORKS

• Communion wine now available in a packet

TRADE SHOWS & CONFERENCES

• Tool frontman to headline NZ Pinot conference
• Wine Importers and Distributors, meet the world in NYC and source your next brand at USATT. Get your trade Pass Now and Avoid Gate Fee. *Sponsored Link*

SOCIAL MEDIA & TECH

• That Comcast outage? It’s not just you; it’s nationwide. Comcast says it’s fixed. These graphics say otherwise.
• B2B Social Media Can Deliver a Strong ROI – But It Needs to be Defined

MEDIA MATTERS

Presented for your amusement: a wandering mess of words compiled into the most poorly written news release of the day (maybe for the whole year): Southern Announces Appointments to Transatlantic Spirits Division.

Just try to make sense of the near-random jumble of verbiage in the lead. This is a good example of bad writing that editors will pass around and laugh at for days (or weeks).

Thanks to Shanken News Daily which put on its hip boots, waded into this verbal pile, and pulled a very small pony from this metric ton of offal: Southern Creates New Transatlantic Division To Handle Bacardi Business

MATTERS OF TASTE

• How to Taste Wine and Seem Like You Know What You’re Doing
• Importance of terroir still unsettled
• Hamilton Russell: no longer ‘cool’ to dislike Pinotage
• Tasting wine From Donald Trump’s Virginia Winery
• $15 coffee tasting on TV: Same snobs, different drink

WINE PLACES

• Uncovering Value in the Wines of Tuscany
• The Secret $25,000 Speakeasy Inside Disneyland
• Reinvention in Walla Walla’s Wine Country

AG, GROWER & CELLAR NEWS

• Brett 101, And The Tool Winemakers Don’t Know They Need (Yet)

EUROPE & THE UK

• European launch for premium Canadian Okanagan winery

DOWN UNDER

• Committee chair defends recommendation to scrap wine tax rebate

ASIA & PACIFIC RIM

• China’s Thirst for Wine Has Chile Raising a Glass

OLIVE OIL

• 3 Common Myths About Olive Oil Quality

CRAFT BEVERAGES: BEER, CIDER, WINE & SPIRITS – A Sampling of Today’s Headlines

• US Wineries: Do your wines qualify for the small producers tax credit: Part 2
• Australian wine region a barrel of laughs for whisky distiller

Get the rest of today’s craft news at Craft Beverage Insights