Mike Veseth's Blog, page 22

Scratching the Surface of Croatian Wine

We finally pulled the cork on that bottle of Croatian wine we’ve been saving. It was a Babić from Rak winery — a gift from Dr. Matt Horkey that we set aside to share with a particular Croatian-American friend and then, well, covid happened and lots of things, including this wine, were put on hold.

Croatian Wine Uncorked

The wine was terrific. Babić is a medium-bodied red wine with nice fruit and good balance and acidity, and a certain distinctive character. It matched up well with the sausages w...

What Can Wine Learn from the Cruise Ship Industry?

Here is a “flashback” column from pre-covid 2017 that asks what wine can learn from the cruise ship industry? That’s an  unexpected question but, as you will see below, I think there are some potential insights.

What does wine have in common with cruise ships? As we have seen, both on-premise wine sales and cruise ship revenues have been badly affected by pandemic restrictions. But there is more to it than that. Package tours are a bit like the “mystery box” wine promotions that I wrote about in...

Bicycles, Locomotives, and Wine Market Growth

Growth is the big question mark for the global economy and for the US wine market. The International Monetary Fund released their report on global growth last week, for example, and it was one of those situations where  you wonder if your glass is half empty or half full.

The forecast for global growth was in the range of earlier estimates — about 6% economic growth for 2021 — but this solid expected performance was a combination of higher growth for the U.S. (7% growth) and some other developed...

Global Wine Trade: Headwinds, Obstacles, Distortions

Wine has become one of the world’s most globalized consumer goods. The OIV estimates that 45% of all wine crosses at least one international border on its way from producer to consumer. And that’s just the finished product. If we examine the whole product chain, to include bottles, corks, and so forth, wine’s globalization index would be even higher.

So it is significant that wine today faces headwinds, obstacles, and distortions that make global wine a risky business. Taken together, these forc...

Pink Power: Five Rosé Market Trends to Watch

Summer is here and shop shelves are filled with pink wine. Rosé isn’t just for summer any more, but sales do rise at this time of the year and so it is appropriate to take a look at global market developments. Herewith five Rosé  market trends to watch.

Pink Prosecco is a Thing

I have tasted a number of refreshing pink sparkling wines from northeast Italy in recent years. I remember one in particular that was a blend of Glera, the Prosecco grape variety, and Raboso, an energetic red (Raboso mean...

Flashback: the Very Model of a Modern Cooperative Winery

I’ve been busy working on a revision to my 2011 book Wine Wars and I had one of those deja vu moments. I was reading the chapter on “The China Syndrome,” which includes a report from my friend and former student Matt Ferchen, who was working in China at the time the book was published. Matt attended a wine fair in Beijing sponsored by Portuguese producers and sent me a report of what he found, which I included in Wine Wars.  Matt said that he was impressed with the Portuguese wines.

The first w...

How Much Does That Wine Bottle Weigh?

How much does that wine bottle weight? The answer, too often, is simply too much.

Everyone talks about sustainability in the wine business (or at least that’s what it feels like sometimes), but how much of it is backed up by action and how much amounts to little more than greenwashing? That’s an important question and a complicated one, since sustainability has so many aspects and complicated trade-offs. What can a wine producer do to improve sustainability and signal it clearly to consumers?

On...

Out of the Shadows: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

One of the last in-person wine events we attended before the coronavirus pandemic put most such activities on hold was a symposium on the wines of Italy, which I wrote about on The Wine Economist. One particularly memorable session was sponsored by the Vino Nobile de Montepulciano consorzio, which was hoping to draw attention to the region and its wines.

Chianti’s Deep Shadow

It is easy for a wine region — even a very important one like Vino Nobile — to get lost amongst famous names from across ...

Wine Book Review: Invisible Pignolo Revealed

Ben Little, Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible. 2021. Available exclusively from The Morning Claret Shop.

Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible is quite a fantastic multi-media exploration of one of Italy’s (and the world’s) nearly forgotten grape varieties. My first impression of the book was fascination — so playful, so colorful. I just had to thumb through it to discover what was on the next page. Then there was puzzlement, because I would read short passages and it wasn’t really clear what was ...

Too Much, Too Much, Too Little: Solving the Canned Wine Puzzle

Sogrape, a leading Portuguese wine producer, recently sent us samples of their new entry into the canned wine market: Gazela. Gazela is characterized as a “refreshing white wine” and it certainly lives up to that billing. A really nice wine for those casual summer outdoor occasions and a strong entry into the booming  canned wine market segment.

There is a lot to like about Gazela, but I am especially interested in the way that it addresses three problems in the popular canned wine category: too...