Mike Veseth's Blog, page 2

Whatever Happened to Bargain Wine?

“Every time I open a bottle of wine, I thank my lucky stars that I am living in the golden age of wine. … There is a wine for every taste, from sweet to dry, and every wallet, from fat to lean.”

This is how George M. Taber (author of The Judgement of Paris) began his 2011 book, A Toast to Bargain Wines. Taber thought the bargain wines of that not-so-long-ago time were important for more than just their affordable prices. Indeed, the book’s subtitle promises to explain “how innovators, iconoclast...

Existential Threat? Anatomy of Italy’s Wine Crisis

It is cold comfort for U.S. winegrowers, producers, distributors, and retailers, but they are not alone in suffering a cascade of wine market woes. Recent reports from Italy, for example, paint an increasingly clear picture of a major wine-producing country in crisis.

UIV Analysis Focuses on Exports

The Unione Italiana Vini, which has more than 800 members and accounts for 85% of Italian wine exports, has been “the voice of Italian wine” since 1895. Recently that voice has sounded an alarm. A Ju...

Searching for Italy’s Wines: A Stanley Tucci Flashback

The first season of Stanley Tucci’s new travel and food series, “Tucci in Italy,” is running this summer on the National Geographic network. Click on the image above to view the series trailer.

Sue and I can’t get enough of Italy, so we’ve been tuning in regularly for this just as we did a few years ago for his CNN series “Searching for Italy.” We enjoy the shows (it is fun to count the number of times Tucci says “wow” in each episode) and the many memories they inspire, but we have a gripe.

Whe...

Bodegas Tradición & Gonzalez Byass: The Jerez File (Part 2)

This is the second part of our report on the five very different wineries that Sue and I visited during our brief stay in Andalusia. Click here to read the first half of the story.

Bodegas Tradición and Bodega Gonzalez Byass

We’d like to finish with an exercise in compare and contrast involving the smallest winery we visited (Bodegas Tradición) and the largest (Bodega Gonzalez Byass).

Big barrel rooms and small libraries were featured in both wineries. The barrels are easy to understand. Sherry ...

A Volta ao Mundo em 80 Vinhos Named Best Wine Book Translation

The Portuguese translation of my book Around the World in Eighty Wines has received an award. A Volta ao Mundo em 80 Vinhos, published in Brazil by Editora Valentina, was named best wine book translation by Gourmand International.  The book is available from the publisher as well as through the usual online sellers, including Amazon.com in the United States.

I am grateful to Gourmand International founder Edouard Cointreau and to the team at Editora Valentina. Special thanks to everyone who help...

Five Faces of Andalusia Wine (Part 1)

Sue and I recently spent more than two weeks in Andalusia, Spain, about half of the time exploring the wine scene and the other half enjoying the region’s history and culture.

We covered a lot of territory and were a little surprised that the dominant feature of the landscape was not grape vines as you might expect, but olive trees! As far as the eye can see. Olives everywhere! We even visited an olive oil cooperative and learned that the main factors that lead an olive oil cooperative to either...

How Sherry Went from Boom to Bust to Today

We published an article here at The Wine Economist a few  years ago, asking “Can Sherry be the Next Big Thing?” “Probably not,” we said. “But it doesn’t have to be. It is a timeless wine waiting to be re-discovered by a new generation of wine drinkers.”

I’m glad we didn’t go too far in our assessment of Sherry’s potential back in 2017 because Sherry producers who have been around for a while are cautious about booms because they know they can be followed by busts. That was one message we heard w...

Field Notes from a Visit to the Sherry Triangle

Sue and I recently returned from three weeks in Spain. We spent a few days in Madrid (where we dropped in at FEV General Assembly meetings), but most of the time in Andalusia, home of Sherry and Montilla-Moriles wines. Great wines, good food, and welcoming people. We soaked up a lot of information (and wine, too).

This is the first of a brief series of Wine Economist columns about our experiences and what they tell us about these wines and their wine market more generally. We begin with a “field...

The Trouble with Tribbles, Tariffs, & Wine

The Trouble with Tribbles, if you remember your Star Trek history, is that they are adorable. People fall in love with the fuzzy little creatures. But Tribbles multiply like crazy, and pretty soon the place is overrun with them.

Tariffs are not very much like Tribbles, to be honest, but they do have a few things in common right now. First, some people are really in love with tariffs to the point where just saying the word seems to make them feel good.

But, a bit like Tribbles, tariffs tend to mu...

Tenuta Licinia: In Praise of Philosophers & their Wines

If you flip to the back of my 2017 book Around the World in Eighty Wines, you’ll find a list of the wines from my global adventures. I didn’t want to just list them alphabetically or sort by price or critic rating. Organizing them by country of origin didn’t seem right, either. So I invented categories that would link wines with similar characteristics.

The Joy of Lists

The first category, “Wines of the People,” includes Two Buck Chuck, Mateus Rosé, Mouton Cadet Rouge, and Four Cousins Sweet Ros...