Spadarotto Wine

Spadarotto Cabernet

Sauvignon Spadarotto Cabernet: The Best Cult Wine You Never Heard Of -- Forbes

The Spadarotto family makes very little wine, very well. Terms like small-batch, micro-lot and ultra-premium get tossed around liberally at times, with even the bigger producers trotting out their own versions of small lot, special wines from their massive portfolios. But Spadarotto’s production is authentically intimate, ranging from 200 to 500 cases per year. This unique position of tiny production and rarity (not to mention a plum position on the wine list at Michelin three star Restaurant at Meadowood) qualify Spadarotto wines as cult phenomena in my book.

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My Comment: 200 to 500 cases per year is a small quantity .... but being linked to Stag's Leap makes me think that this wine is probably very good.

Italy's Antinori Family

Albiera, Alessia, and Allegra Antinori are taking the winery into the future. (Courtesy Antinori Family)

Italy’s Antinori Sisters Prepare To Run A Wine Empire -- Daily Beast

The women at the helm of the Antinori legend. When Italian winemaker Piero Antinori’s third child happened to also be his third daughter, he had to rethink a 600-year-old tradition of men running the family business. “He thought to himself, that’s life,” says 46-year-old Albiera Antinori, now the company’s vice president. “He didn’t have boys, so he had to deal with what he had.” Albiera, together with sisters Allegra, 42, and Alessia, 37, are the first women in 26 generations of the Antinori lineage to have any significant role in the family’s winery. They will eventually head the business when their father retires. They also lead a growing number of women making headway in the male-dominated Italian wine industry, though none for a house as significant and historical as Antinori.

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My Comment: Their website is here. More info on the family history and business can be found here.

$32,000 For A 50 Year Bottle Of Balvenie

 

The $32,000 Bottle Of Sscotch -- FOX News

Two important events took place at the Scottish firm William Grant & Sons in 1962. David Stewart was hired as an apprentice, and cask #5576 was filled with newly distilled whisky from The Balvenie Distillery. Although Scotland and its namesake spirit have a long and glorious history, the country hadn’t even begun exporting single malt Scotch at the time. Stewart rose through the ranks and became a Malt Master for the company (which owns distilleries including The Balvenie and Glenfiddich), nosing more than 400,000 casks of whisky through the years, while that single barrel matured. Many of Stewart’s techniques working with single malt whisky, such as aging the spirit in two different types of barrels, became industry standards, and he earned numerous accolades while that oh-so-special European oak sherry hogshead continued to age, mellow and evaporate.

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My Comment: I am going to stick with my Johnnie Blue.

Alcohol-Free Wine 'Doesn't Taste Like Wine'

Alcohol-Free Wine 'Doesn't Taste Like Wine' And Is Too Expensive, Say Experts -- Daily Mail

Doctors are often telling us about the dangers of regular alcohol. So for many people, alcohol-free wine is a healthy alternative. But new research has found that although it may be better for your liver, alcohol-free wine is certainly not better for your wallet. A Which? test of 10 alcohol-free wines found that you will be making a costly choice if you buy them.

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My Comment: I concur .... and yes .... it is expensive. On the positive side .... alcohol-free wine is good for your health.

Wine Prices Set To Rise After Poor Global Grape Harvest

Wine Prices Set To Rise After Poor Grape Harvest, Warns Majestic Boss -- The Guardian

Majestic Wine boss Steve Lewis says supermarkets are likely to increase the price of a £5 bottle by 50p or £1 next spring. Wine lovers are facing a worse than usual new year hangover as poor harvests in some of the world's most important wine producing regions threaten price hikes of up to £1 a bottle in 2013. Majestic Wine boss Steve Lewis said the increases would be most noticeable in the supermarket where British favourites such as Italian pinot grigio, New Zealand sauvignon blanc and Australian chardonnay sell for around £5 per bottle. "I would expect to see significant price inflation at entry price points," he said. "The price of a (£5) bottle of pinot grigio could go up by between 50p and £1 come February/March."

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Update: Great leap in price of grapes: Poor harvest could mean £1 hike in cost of a bottle of wine -- Daily Mail

My Comment: There's always beer.

How Expensive Whiskey Saved A Man's Sight

Expensive Whiskey Saves Man’s Sight -- FOX News

Alcohol tends to make eyesight fuzzy – but in one man’s case, expensive whiskey saved his eyesight, the New Zealand Herald reported. Denis Duthie, a 65-year-old catering tutor at New Plymouth’s Western Institute of Technology, had a bad reaction when he mixed vodka with his diabetes medication. Duthie told the New Zealand Herald that after mixing the two, “everything suddenly went black.” “I thought it had got dark, and I’d missed out on a bit of time, but it was only about half-past three in the afternoon,” Duthie said. “I was fumbling around the bedroom for the light switch, but . . .I’d just gone completely blind.”

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My Comment: I'll drink to that.