Weekly Wine Web Wrap-up - In-Flight Dining Edition

Welcome to the 2nd edition of the Weekly Wine Web Wrap-up, where Dude highlights the wine news stories of the past week (complete with snide Dude commentary, of course!).

Cover Globally, Vinify Locally
The highest profile wine news coverage of the week is likely this article in U.S.A. Today, which details the growing trend of 'micro-brew' wineries in urban areas that source their grapes and/or juice from rural vineyards. A handful of these wineries and their winemakers in NY and the midwest are featured by name (thus ensuring that their websites crash and their ISP demand additional hosting charges for their traffic overages).


"Pardon me, old chap, but can I have my $36,000 back?"
The UK Press Association reported this week of a Zafferano restaurant customer (in London) who returned a bottle of the legendary 1961 Ch. Petrus that cost the bargain price of £18,000 (about $36K USD), under the complaint that it might have been a fake. The restaurant told him that the wine was off-tasting anyway - a case of sour grapes, perhaps...?


Whew-yew! Now you can pay even more for Yellowtail!
ABC news in Australia reports the comforting news that the recent oversupply of cheap Aussie wine is on the decline, which should result in a halting and then reversal of the recent declining price trend for those wines locally. Presumably, they'll be shipping those more expensive bottles of Yellowtail over to the U.S. since we seem to be drinking it up, even though most of them taste like plonk...


When We Got There, There Was No 'There' There
Don't you just hate it when you fly to Bordeaux to visit the Chateau of your favorite French wine only to find when you get there that the place doesn't exist? Me too. So do the British, as do the Fédération des Grands Vins de Bordeaux, according to this story in the Times Online. Apparently some Bordeaux wineries are selling wines under multiple labels, with specious references to non-existent Chateaus. The crackdown has begun in earnest against this practice - which has been outlawed in France since 1993. So to be fair we should give them about 20 more years to get things under control...?


Poisoning The Youth of Canada?
The St. Catharine Standard ran a story of a movement in Canada to introduce their younger drinking generation to Canadian wine. Youth that was weaned on Canadian wine? Does that include ice wine? Plus they have free health care, almost no crime, and legalized marijuana. Dammit, why couldn't I have grown up in Canada!!!


"Does That Come in a Double D?"
Uhm... uhhh..., well, you just can't make this kind of stuff up, can you?

A bra. That holds wine. You know what? Put Chateau Y'quem in anything and I'll probably drink out of it...




U.S. Kicks Britain's Butt Again!
And finally, despite the fact that British Airways has the venerable Jancis Robinson picking their wines for them, Fox reported that American Airlines bested the competition for in-flight wine quality in a recent international face-off (wine-off?). While it's too bad that you may need several stiff drinks at 30,000 feet just to deal with AA's notoriously poor service, as least those drinks will be the best that an airline can offer!

Cheers!