Not So Fast!
Napa Valley Vintners and Sonoma Valley Vintners are among eight noted American wine regions (representing almost 2,000 wineries) that have banded together in opposition to the rights-to-the-highest-bidder release of generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) such as .wine and .vin by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Citing the potential for consumer confusion and possible negative economic impact on the American fine wine industry, members of Congress, including Mike Thompson of California’s 5th District and Anna G. Eshoo, of California’s 18th District, have appealed to both ICANN and the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to delay or permanently stop the issuing of these domain names.
The fear is, if granted to unscrupulous bidders, second-level domain names such as “napavalley.wine” could be held in perpetuity by a company or individual that has never seen a vineyard, cultivated fine winegrapes or made a single bottle of wine.
California Wine Insights
San Francisco Wine School, in conjunction with Wine Institute and Discover California Wines, has produced a series of educational videos featuring school founder and Master Sommelier David Glancy.
In his easygoing, friendly style, Glancy offers insights into California’s signature grape varieties and wine regions, providing valuable tips for visitors from a wine insider, including the answers to these questions, and more:
Which wine region is 10 times the size of Napa Valley, with more than 600 mostly boutique wineries? Who grows wine with “altitude,” around 3,500 feet of altitude? Where’s the Blue Grand Canyon and what does it have to do with wine? Where do winemakers sometimes speak their own local dialect called “Boontling”? Which California wine region is just 10 minutes from Silicon Valley?
The eight videos, each less than two minutes in length, follow San Francisco Wine School’s California Wine Appellation Specialist program, covering Lake County and the Sierra Foothills, Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma, Livermore, Lodi and Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey and San Benito, Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara and South Coast.
That’s the entire state of California in less than 15 minutes.
Up and Down
In the 1860s, a French chemist made a fortune selling red wine mixed with cocaine. His Vin Mariani was endorsed by Queen Victoria, President McKinley and Pope Leo XIII.
Source: time.com
Flying High
According to onboard technology company GuestLogix, which tracked 8 million transactions across five U.S. airlines between November 2013 and March 2014, flyers spend more money on alcohol than any other in-flight purchase. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Liquor is overwhelmingly the most popular beverage of choice (34%) followed by wine (13%) and beer (10%). Non-alcoholic beverages account for a measly 1% of sales.
During the four-month period, alcohol sales brought in more than $43 million, which is $13million more than the airlines brought in food and comfort sales.
Source: skift.com
