wine news

Wine News: Wine to stop Muslim radicals, naked vintners, Majestic up, Australia down, Sarah Palin to ruin wine conference

torsten — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:48:47 +0000

Wine News: Wine to stop Muslim radicals, naked vintners, Majestic up, Australia down, Sarah Palin to ruin wine conference

It is time again to write up some wine relate news: the juicy, the interesting, the random and all other sorts of miscellaneous wine information the Wine Rambler happened to stumble upon over the past few weeks.

I don't know how this always happens, but again we have a few miscellanies on the wide and, potentially, attractive topic of 'women and wine'. 'Potentially attractive' would perhaps be a good way of referring to something I came across the other day on the website of the Austrian Kronen Zeitung. Every so often you will find men and women stripping in front of a camera, to produce a calendar that supports some good cause (fight against cancer, making money etc.). Recently, the Austrians got a dozen women (almost) naked to support the Austrian wine industry. Personally, I think Austrian wine is good enough not to need that kind of support, but the organiser feels that the calendar will support the marketing of Austria's good wine in a 'modern and personable way'. 'Who', she say, 'would be better suited for this than our own vintner offspring?' So they put twelve (almost, I hasten to add again) naked daughters of vintners in wine related surroundings (vineyards, cellars etc.), decorate them with stockings and all the like and think that this will help to improve the image of Austrian wine.

torsten Sunday, 07/02/2010

Wine News: one helluva Merlot, Amazon.com, French wine strikes and England the new Champagne

torsten — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:11:39 +0000

Wine News: one helluva Merlot, Amazon.com, French wine strikes and England the new Champagne

While the week comes to an end, it is getting time for some wine news from the Internet: the miscellaneous, the bizarre, the enlightening. Let's start with Spar. 'Spar' means 'save money' in German (and, as I understand, also in several other languages such as Dutch, Danish or Norwegian) and I always took it for a smallish continental food retailer, until I found out that it actually is one of the world's largest. Maybe it is this international aspect of the business that has convinced Spar to go local with regards to wine. In the UK, Spar is now selling wines with the labels translated, well, not into English, but into regional dialects.

torsten Thursday, 05/11/2009

Wine News: wine and sex, Canada, iPhone, Riesling, Austrian red wine

torsten — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:13:23 +0000

Welcome to a new category of Wine Rambling: Wine News. Wine News is not really news in the sense that it brings you all the most important events and news from the day, it is much rather a quite random summary of bits of news, blog posts and other randomia I come across. The useful, the interesting, the weird. So let's jump right into it...

Canada seems to have a minority complex with regards to wine. Or why else would you think that the country would have to turn to a men's web portal to demonstrate it does good wine? Canada.com featured an AskMen.com article on the top 7 emerging wine regions, Canada being no. 5. This means that Canadians take pride in having beaten the English (#7) and Brazilians (#6), but being beaten by the Greeks, Romanians, Ukrainians and Swiss (#1)! For a German with Alemannic roots such as me being beaten by the Swiss is like the worst possible nightmare. Why the Canadians would be proud of this, I don't know. It is true, however, that Canadian ice wine does get more interest these days.