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Category Archives: Wine

I drink therefore I write.

Sebastiani Deep Throat Says Winery Sold

By Daedalus Howell | December 20th, 2008
As a tribute to W. Mark Felt. Sr., the Watergate informant otherwise known as Deep Throat who died yesterday in Sonoma County, this journalist would like to introduce Big Gulp, his very own informant, who leaked that Los Olivos-based Foley Wine Group, has purchased Sonoma’s Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery. The property was originally planted by Franciscan [...]
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Brand Slam

By Daedalus Howell | December 12th, 2008
If you pop a cork of bubbly in the Champagne region, of France, it’s champagne. Do the same anywhere else and it’s “sparkling wine.” Why? Because the French are vigilant about the brand identity of one of their most popular exports. And yes, a region can be a brand. So can people. Like Oprah. If [...]
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Menage a Trois at Whole Foods

By Daedalus Howell | December 7th, 2008
A few years ago, Brand Autopsy’s John Moore blogged The Ten Winning Ways of Whole Foods Market in the competitive grocery market, um, market. Point No. 4 was dubbed “Food as Theater,” in which Moore observed, “…WFM celebrates food like it is a theatrical production.” This simile is especially evident in the wine aisle here [...]
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Breakfast Cuvee

By Daedalus Howell | December 4th, 2008
Add this to your sport-drinking itinerary – wine-tasting in the morning, with olive oil and cabernet fudge. Yeah, I wasn’t convinced either, until Flash Lely pulled his vintage Mustang into my driveway and the rumbling V8 roused me from dreams of sleeping in. It was 10:15 a.m., Tuesday, and we were on deadline. Coates PR had [...]
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Presidential Pairings: Obama is Pinot, McCain is Merlot

By Daedalus Howell | November 1st, 2008
“Sommelier to the Stars” Christopher Sawyer has made a successful sideline pairing wine with – not cheese – but film (as seen on MSN, NBC, ABC and CNN and in USA Today, Redbook, Maxim, National Geographic Traveler and – breath – Esquire). Some might dismiss this skill as merely a parlor trick, and in part [...]
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Plug-n-Play Dessert Wine

By Daedalus Howell | October 30th, 2008
Apparently, if it’s not from Portugal, it’s not port – it’s dessert wine. This is a new mutation of the name game the Champagne region of France plays with “sparkling wine” made anywhere but there, or Kobe beef, versus “Kobe-style,” when outside of Japan. The fine minds at Peltier Station Winery, however have found a [...]
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Gary Vaynerchuk: Wine’s Brand Man

By Daedalus Howell | October 26th, 2008
Despite the media credentials I was granted, I somehow I managed to miss the Wine Bloggers Conference 08, hosted this October in Sonoma County’s Santa Rosa, California. No worries, the conference’s main attraction was video wine blogger and marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.com with whom I recently had a chat for FineLife Sonoma Magazine. Vaynerchuk [...]
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Wine Fraud Uncorked

By Daedalus Howell | September 14th, 2008
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, unless it’s the bouquet of a fine Bordeaux, that’s really a “faux-deaux.” Like the imitation Gucci bag and the Rolex reduxes strapped on cheaper wrists, wine too has made a splash among counterfeiters as purveyors of bogus plonk have turned the cellars of the unsuspecting [...]
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Merlove

By Daedalus Howell | September 11th, 2008
Pour yourself of glass of your favorite oft-maligned varietal and enjoy this chat with Rudy McClain, producer-director of the pro-merlot documentary Merlove. The podcast was pulled from a recent broadcast of Mornings in Sonoma (KSVY 91.3 FM), which I co-host with Ken Brown (hence all the raucous laughter). They say that wine improves with age [...]
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Point, click, sip

By Daedalus Howell | September 11th, 2008
Whodda thunk that Napa Valley would be early adopters? According to Terry Hall, head flak at the Napa Valley Vintners, online uber-store Amazon.com will start selling Napa wines as well as those from an additional 25 states as early as the end of September (thus spake the Wall Street Journal). I’m all for mixing a little [...]
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