Happy weekend and I hope everyone is enjoying the summer season, staying cool, hydrated, and healthy. Welcome back to your weekly round up of wine-newsy items. Locally, we have to talk about the California wildfire season’s effects on the wine industry (yes, this is an ongoing issue—check AGG and CAWG’s investigation on rejected 2020 fruit), political tensions, and—unfortunately—the continuous spread of COVID throughout the Sonoma community.

On a broad industry level, if you haven’t heard about Russia’s new rules surrounding ‘Champagne,’ take a read and let me know what you think. And—it look like there may be a new, more environmentally friendly, way to achieve Parker Points?

Fun Stuff: Next time you go to a bar, you may just get straws made of….pasta! And (shameless self-promotion), I dig into the notorious ‘wine twins,’ —wines commonly mistaken in blind tasting or tasting exams in my latest article for Wine Enthusiast.

There’s much much much more. So enjoy your coffee, tea, cocktail, wine—whatever time it is while you’re reading this post—scroll through, have fun, learn some stuff. Cheers.

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Happy weekend, folks. Can a week go by fast and slow at the same time? It definitely has for me—and the amount of news gathered in this weekly round-up is a testament to that. In fact, there’s so much stuff, I’m just going to let you do your thing. Scroll through, read, learn, have some fun. And, as always, drink good wine. Cheers.

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Enough said…enjoy your weekend reads! Cheers!

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Happy weekend. I’ll leave you to peruse the week’s wine news. I’ll be found with my head in a study book (and a glass in hand).

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A bit of personal update to start. You may have noticed the lack of posts outside of your weekly news roundup. I’m on the countdown for another WSET Diploma exam, so, indeed, I am taking a hiatus from any original writing for this site. You can still, of course, read my writing in one of the many outlets I write for and I’ll be sure to include links to those articles in my weekly roundups as well.

On that note and in a moment of shameless self-promotion, I will be moderating a session at this year’s (virtual) Three-Tier Symposium, so be sure to sign up if you’re interested in learning more about how the US is navigating both the wholesale and DTC channels as well as innovative new technology and techniques for boosting wine sales.

And a fair bit of warning: This week I’ve categorized the news—Local, National, Around the World and of course Blogs and Press Releases. The warning comes with the Local News. It’s not very nice. But it is happening and it is affecting the local community and to an extent the wine community as well.

That’s all from me for now. Please don’t hesitate to drop a line. Cheers.

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