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It Takes A Celebrity
Hillary Clinton’s famous book It Takes A Village set out to explain how important it was to have a whole community involved in the rearing of a child. In our ‘now’ culture that book would be retitled It Takes A Celebrity. Lisa Abend’s Time Magazine article Kitchen Gods was about… what else? Celebrity chefs. What [...]
Continue reading...Another Tool To Turn Substandard Grapes Into Wine
By Amy Atwood - Apr 9, 2010
When I read a recent article about the new flash extraction machinery at Monterey Wine Company, I did a double-take. I thought it had gotten mixed in with all of those April Fools Day blog posts. But no, it seems they are quite serious about utilizing this new wine technology and are proud to spill [...]
Continue reading...Once You Go Natural Wine, There Is No Going Back
By Amy Atwood - Mar 17, 2010
I grew up as a child in the 70′s. A confusing culinary juncture for North America. We ate Wonder Bread but hearty whole grain breads were starting to slip in there as well. I was raised in Texas and we were shopping at the early incarnation of Wholefoods when I was a pre-teen. Back then, [...]
Continue reading...Organic Wines Are Great As Long As You Don’t Tell Anyone They’re Organic
By Adam Morganstern - Mar 12, 2010
There’s been a lot of buzz online recently about an academic paper done by two students; Magali A. Delmas of UCLA and Laura E. Grant of UCSB titled Eco-labeling Strategies and Price-Premium: The Wine Industry Puzzle. The study looks at eco-certification and eco-labeling as two separate business strategies, and they found that wineries that are [...]
Continue reading...Shinn Estate Takes The Right Fork
By Jonathan Russo & Deborah Grayson - Mar 8, 2010
New York’s Long Island breaks into two at Riverhead, some 80 miles from Manhattan. The South Fork encompasses the Hamptons, with its super-fabulous lifestyle astride the magnificent beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The North Fork has always been quieter, more agricultural, with its bay front coves and more easy-going people. In the last decade, the [...]
Continue reading...2009 – Thanks From The Organic Wine Journal
By Jonathan Russo - Dec 30, 2009
This last decade in wine has been one of polarization – two trains speeding down the rails with different destinations in mind. The world of branded image-driven corporate wine got bigger. The top brands consolidated their stranglehold at the distribution and retail level. Mega corporations with thousands of employees pressed and sold billions of gallons [...]
Continue reading...Send Monsato The Bill
By Jonathan Russo - Oct 4, 2009
According to the Associated Press, congress has granted $350 million in aid to struggling milk producers. It seems there is an oversupply of milk, and the price paid to farmers is so low they are losing money on every gallon sold, hence the needed rescue by taxpayers. What wasn’t written about is how the farmers [...]
Continue reading...Organic Wine Journal’s 7th Inning Stretch
By Greg Wacks - Aug 20, 2009
We’re getting into late August which means grapes all over the Northern Hemisphere are ripening, weather forecasts are being watched more closely, and we here at the Organic Wine Journal are taking a breather. Between baseball games and late summer getaways, we’ve been tasting lots of incredible organic, natural, and biodynamic wines while taking copious [...]
Continue reading...Judging The Judges
By Jonathan Russo - Aug 10, 2009
The recent announcement that Wal-Mart will be evaluating the environmental impact of the products sold in its stores was more than a little weird. As the biggest of the big box stores worldwide, a merchant that made “we sell for less” the gold standard in retailing, this new obsession with “sustainability” and “traceability” gave us [...]
Continue reading...Earth Day Thought – Switch The Burden
By Adam Morganstern - Apr 22, 2009
It seems strange that the burden of labeling and certifying is placed on organic farmers. That gives the impression they're doing something remarkable when, with the exception of about a century, they have all of history behind them.
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By Jonathan Russo - Jun 18, 2010
Editorials