Mike Veseth's Blog, page 9

The Road Ahead: Lessons from the Unified Symposium

What’s the state of the wine industry? Here are five observations inspired by things I learned at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium‘s State of the Industry session and in hallway conversations. The theme, if there is one, is a spin on Robert Frost’s poem about the road not taken. The industry needs to choose a direction. Follow the well-trodden path that got us where we are or break away? Frost thought the choice was significant. What do you think?

One: The wine industry has a problem. But it i...

The Case for Cautious Optimism about the Future of Wine

Sue and I have just returned from the 30th edition of the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento. The Unified is the largest wine industry gathering in the Western Hemisphere with about 12,000 attendees over three days and 900 trade show exhibitors. If you want to take the pulse of the American wine industry, this is the place to go.

So how is the industry’s health? Well, if you go by the economic indicators such as sales trends (more about this next week), the patient is in bad shape.  Th...

A Look Back at the Future of Wine

The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, North America’s largest wine industry conference and trade show, is happening this week in Sacramento, California. It is an exciting event where people from throughout the industry (and around the world) gather to share concerns and ideas about the challenges facing wine today.

Questions about the future of wine are never far below the surface of these discussions, which perhaps might explain why, in the run-up to the Unified, a very old Wine Economist column ...

The “Uncork Ontario” Regional Wine Cluster Strategy



Although the U.S. economy performed surprisingly well in 2023, the wine business news columns were filled with gloom and doom as wine demand lagged behind the growth needed to sustain the industry. The problems affected the wine sector at all levels, but were most obvious in the vineyards. I’ve heard reports from all aroound the world of vineyards simply abandoned for lack of a market for the grapes or grubbed up and repurposed to a more profitable use.

2023 was a bad year for wine, but that’s...

Argentina Wine, Economy, and the Chimera Effect

Sue and I spent a pleasant week last month tasting our way through a group of very interesting wines provided by  Wines of Argentina (see the wine menu below). We scheduled the last of the wines, the Achaval Ferrer Quimera to taste with a meal of smoked brisket and roast vegetables on December 13. We were looking forward to the wine because of our great memories of visiting the winery on our first trip to Mendoza.

We awoke on December 13 to find that the Quimera tasting had taken on a broader m...

Is 2024 the Year for Next-Level Cava?

Did you celebrate the New Year with sparkling wine? If so, what kind did you choose? Sparkling wine is a crowded category, so you have lots of choices. Champagne? Prosecco? Maybe a Cap Classique wine from South Africa?

Cava vs Competition?

The Spanish Cava producers hope that you think of their wines when you make your sparkling wine shopping list, but it is a tough nut to crack with so much competition here in the U.S. market. Cava benefited from the rising sparkling tide in the last several ye...

Adventures on the China-Spain Wine Trail

The Spanish edition of Cynthia Howson and Pierre Ly’s 2020 book Adventures on the China Wine Trail has just been published by Tolosa Wine Books.

Aventuras en la Ruta del Vino de China

Aventuras en la Ruta del Vino de China is a first-person account of the natural, social, political, and economic forces that shaped the Chinese wine industry and the people who made it all happen. I have always thought of it as the perfect complement to Suzanne Mustacichi’s 2015 best-seller Thirsty Dragon.

Why a S...

Non-Alcoholic Wine and the “Second Glass” Test

Sue and I hadn’t given much thought to non-alcoholic wine (NA wine) for a while but then we read Florence Fabricant’s NY Times article on “8 Non-Acoholic Wines for the Thanksgiving Table” and we knew we had to take another look at this growing category.

The “Second Glass” Test

There are more and more wines in the “No and Low” alcohol category and when we have occasionally tried one or two we have been disappointed. Although we’ve had a sense that the quality is rising along with demand, nothing ...

Wine & Chocolate? The Chocolate Moonshine Challenge

This is a report of our recent experiment pairing various Chocolate Moonshine truffles and fudge (which are not alcoholic despite the name) with different wines. Chocolate Moonshine takes its name from its early days when they made the fudge in the basement of their Pittsburgh-area home. The steaming copper pots so reminded neighbors of copper stills that they called it moonshine fudge. The name stuck along with the nickname of “America’s Favorite Fudge.”

We didn’t set out to explore the world o...

Wine, Globalization, and the End of History

I have been thinking a lot recently about how much things have changed since the 1990s and what the future might look like in this light. The event that has provoked this unexpected thoughtfulness is the upcoming Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, which will be the 30th edition of what has become North America’s largest wine industry gathering.

A Golden Age?

Looking back at the program for the first Unified, it is clear that the American wine industry was worried about the future. It must have seem...