Some truths are uncomfortable. The Experts Are the Best Sources of Wine Info and Recommendations The tendancy to disparage "wine experts" or "wine elite" grows as the role of social media and peer reviews grow. Yet the fact remains that…

Minors Don’t Buy Alcohol On-line. And yet, this fundamental fact has gone unnoticed in the wake of a recently released study that looks at minors access to alcohol conducted by Chapel Hill North Carolina and funded by the Robert Woods…

"The advantages is to enjoy the drunk sensation with none of the harmful effects of alcohol on the body." This sounds a bit like a description of love. It’s not. It is a description of a new product called "Wahh"created…

I am always excited when I see an article or blog post on-line that was written in response to something on this blog. At the very least it means someone is reading me. Even better, it could mean that what…

You could spend your entire trip to Napa Valley doing nothing but eating and drinking. It’s a good plan. The food is tasty here and the wine delicious and copious. And we make it easy for you to do nothing…

Writer and author James Conaway helped me get my first job in the wine industry. It was his 1990 expose of the Napa wine industry, "Napa", that I wrote a review of and put in my portfolio to show potential…

Is the wine industry as open to women advancing up the ranks as it is to men? This was the question that eventually occurred to myself and my beautiful wife, Kathy, a bit over a week ago when I was…

I experienced "pot wine" some years ago and as Crane Carter, Napa’s pot evangelist tells the Daily Beast, it does produce "an interesting little buzz.” However, as trends go and as stories about trends go, the recent story about pot-laced…

I like Deborah Harkness for a whole bunch of reasons. I first came across her when I discovered her wine blog, Good Wine Under $20. And I wasn’t the only one who discovered Deborah’s well written, witty, and well-focused wine…

MARKETING BOY #1: Dude, turn the fucking TV off, we have to get this new ad comped and up on Facebook. MARKETING BOY #2: I know, I know. Chill. (clicks remote)….Hey, pass me the bottle of Goose Juice. MARKETING BOY…

< Branford Marsalis, the great jazz saxophonist and member of the remarkable Marsalis jazz family, is coming to Napa Valley. He along with his longtime pianist partner Joey Calderazzo will play the intimate Napa Valley Opera House on March 29th….

It’s reported in today’s New York Times that marketing behemoth Omnicon is involved in starting a new agency aimed at spotting "emerging trends in popular culture and take advantage of them by creating and distributing content sponsored by brands and…

While the faith in science and technology to make our lives better is a constant, it doesn’t always play out that way. However, sometimes science comes through. Consider this story: DRUG DEVELOPED TO MAKE PEOPLE DRINK LESS As reported by…

A bill under consideration in Utah would require that two of the five members of its Alcohol Beverage Control Commission must be "drinkers". This is pretty funny on its face as no other state in the Union would ever have…

A billboard for Wodka Vodka placed in the Bronx, New York has a headline that reads as follows: "Escort Quality, Hooker Pricing" Yes….Really. Oddly, as you can see on the web page of the NY Daily News, the marketers of…

It’s clearly an attack on faith and conscience!! It has come to my attention that as part of implementing the mandates of the new federal health care law, I am required to provide health insurance to Wark Communications employees that…

Every now and again I like to take account of what wine books will be coming our way in the next few months. It’s a way of glimpsing what I’ll be thinking about in the near term where wine is…

As a wine publicist, I almost always am dealing in minutia, not Big Picture thinking. It’s the nature of the job. What’s the best way to deliver this message? How to define this niche? What’s the import of this particular…

If I’m not mistaken, we are seeing the development of a strong cultural aversion to the now notorious "1 Percent". Put another way, there appears to me to be a strong and still developing cultural and political zeitgeist that includes…

In a recent post concerning New Jersey and the State of Direct Shipping, I concluded by writing, "There is a great deal to do across the country to make consumer interests paramount in the alcohol regulatory world." This kind of…

There appears to be a nascent move among public health advocates and government consumer protection agencies to much more carefully monitor how alcohol is advertised and marketed in the digital world. The Sunday Baltimore Sun Article, "Review Shows Alcohol Companies…

Any wine pundit worth his syrah must at some point make the effort to evaluate the quadrennial crop of presidential candidates for their potential to promote American wine. Who would be most likely to push American-made wine front and center…