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Jess Jackson |
QRW mourns the passing of Kendall-Jackson founder Jess Jackson, who died on April 21 at the age of 81. An ex-Berkeley, California policeman who went on to become a top San Francisco lawyer, Jackson started K-J in the early-1980s, on the site of a former pear and walnut farm, and over the next 30 years built it into one of the Golden State’s great wine empires, with 14,000 acres of vines stretching from Mendocino to Santa Barbara.
The Bordeaux wine industry is living on borrowed time if global warming continues at its present pace, warns Jean-Pascal Goutouly of the French National Institute of Agricultural Research. Indeed, he told The (London) Telegraph last March, “The most pessimistic scenario says that the [Bordeaux] climate will no longer be suitable for Cabernet and Merlot wines by the middle of the century.” Now that’s a cheery thought.
California’s Fetzer Vineyards has been sold by Brown-Forman to Chile’s Vina Concha y Toro winery for $238 million. Included in the sale are the Fetzer brand, winery, bottling facility and vineyards in Hopland, California, along with the adjunct brands Bonterra, Little Black Dress, Jekel, Five Rivers, Bel Arbor, Coldwater Creek and Sanctuary. A winemaking facility in Paso Robles is also part of the sale. A fixture in Mendocino since 1968, Fetzer produces some three million cases annually, while Concha y Toro, founded in 1883, is Latin America’s largest wine company, with over 23,000 acres of vines.
Champagne giant Moët et Chandon says that it’s dropping the dosage on its non-vintage Brut Imperial brand from 12 grams of residual sugar per liter to nine grams. Dosage or liqueur d’expédition, as it’s also known, is a sugar-syrup mixture added to bottles of Champagne immediately after yeast disgorgement and just prior to final corking. This is done to temper Champagne’s naturally high acidity, which undosed would be too severe. By law, the dosage for a Champagne labeled as Brut may run anywhere from zero grams to 15 grams residual sugar per liter. Moët’s lowering of the dosage is not necessarily an attempt to produce a drier Champagne, but a recognition that, owing to global warming and better vineyard management, Champagne grapes are being harvested today with higher natural sugar vis-à-vis acidity, thus obviating the need for heavy dosing.
Inglenook is Inglenook once again. In April, film director Francis Ford Coppola, who owns Inglenook’s original Napa Valley winery and most of its former estate vineyards, acquired the Inglenook brand name from The Wine Group and announced that his premium Rubicon Estate wines would now be called Inglenook Estate. One of California’s iconic wineries, with roots in the 19th century, Inglenook was purchased in 1969 by the spirits giant Heublein (now part of Diageo), who sold the winery and the vineyards, and turned Inglenook into a jug wine factory. In recent years, the brand has existed mainly as a label. But Coppola is intent on changing that, to which end he has hired Château Margaux’s longtime estate director, Philippe Bascaules, to run things. Gustave Niebaum, who founded Inglenook in the 1870s, would be happy.
The British pop singer Chris de Burgh (“Lady in Red”) is $1,768,603 richer, after having sold part of his wine cellar at Christie’s London last March. The highlight of the sale was a collection of 62 magnum bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild from 1945 to 2005 — which went to a private Asian collector (but of course) for $250,000.
No longer content to peddle phony versions of Pétrus and Lafite-Rothschild, counterfeiters are now setting their sights on less recherché wines. Indeed, in east London last March, officials seized 340 sham bottles of the Australian value brand Jacob’s Creek. It was easy to spot the phonies: the phrase “Wine of Australia,” which appears on legit bottles of Jacob’s Creek, was misprinted as “Wine of Austrlia” on the bogus bottles. Oops!.
Starting with the 2009 vintage, all bottles of the Bordeaux Grand Cru Château Margaux and its sister wines, Pavillon Rouge and Pavillon Blanc, will come with a special anti-fraud seal, called a Prooftag. Attached partially to the capsule and to the bottle, the Prooftag will have a special pattern and reference number that can be tracked on Margaux’s website..
Jeff Mangahas has been named Winemaker at California’s Williams Selyem Winery, the fabled producer of Russian River Pinot Noir. Mangahas, who has a B.A. in Molecular Biology from the University of Washington and a Masters in Enology from U.C. Davis, was previously winemaker at Russian River’s Hartford Court winery. “I’m very excited we were able to hire Jeff,” says William Selyem’s Director of Winemaking Bob Cabral. ”He’s just another piece in the puzzle which makes up the strongest team I’ve worked with over the last 31 vintages.”.
Château-Grillet, a unique 8.5-acre monopole with its own appellation in the center of Northern Rhône’s Condrieu district, has been sold to French billionaire Francois Pinault for an undisclosed sum. Planted wholly in Viognier, Château-Grillet produces fewer than 1,100 cases annually of a highly aromatic dry white wine..
California’s MacCrostie Winery and Vineyards, a specialist in Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and Carneros Chardonnay, has been sold to the wine distributor Lion Nathan USA for an undisclosed sum. But have no fear, Steve MacRostie, who founded the winery in 1987, and his longtime winemaker Kevin Holt are staying on, and “will continue,” says the new owner, “to actively contribute to the winemaking program and the future direction of the brand.”.
In a surprise move, the Bordeaux Second Growth Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande (aka “Pichon-Lalande”) has appointed Sylvie Cazes, co-owner of the Bordeaux Fifth Growth Château Lynch-Bages, as its Managing Director. In this new role, Ms. Cazes will oversee all day-to-day operations at Pichon-Lalande, while continuing to serve as president of the advisory board of Lynch-Bages. Luckily for her, the two châteaux are located in the same town, Pauillac, only a short distance from each other..
The United States is officially the world’s largest wine drinking country, having consumed 329.7 million nine-liter cases of wine in 2010, while runner-up France consumed 320.6 million cases..
Castel, France’s largest wine company, has acquired a 50-percent stake in Bordeaux’s Château Beychevelle, and now shares ownership of the Saint-Julien Fourth Growth with Suntory, the Japanese drinks company..
California’s Chalone Vineyard recently recorded a public relations hole-in-one, inking a three-year agreement to be the Official Wine of the PGA (Professional Golfers Association)..
The Piper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck Champagne brands were sold last March for a reported 400 million Euros (around $570 million) to Société Europeenne de Participations Industrielles (EPI), a family-run company that owns several French clothing brands along with a wine estate, Château La Verriere, in France’s Côtes du Luberon appellation. The seller was the high-end spirits house Remy [Martin]-Cointreau, which had owned Charles Heidsieck since 1985 and Piper-Heidsieck since 1989..
Ascentia Wine Estates, the financially troubled owner of several wineries in California and the Pacific Northwest, has jettisoned two of its best-known brands, selling Buena Vista, Sonoma’s oldest winery, to Boisset Family Estates (DeLoach, Raymond, etc.), and Gary Farrell, a Sonoma Pinot Noir specialist, to the Vincraft group (Kosta Browne). What the future holds for the firm’s remaining brands — which include Geyser Peak in California, Columbia in Washington State, and Ste. Chapelle in Idaho — is unclear..
In March, Burgundy wine négociant Alex Gambal became the first American to own part of the Côte de Beaune Grand Cru white wine vineyard Bâtard-Montrachet. Gambal’s Bâtard holding, which totals just under an acre, was purchased in two parcels from Domaine Brenot and sits in the northern — or Puligny Montrachet — section of the appellation..
Virginia’s Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard, which went through foreclosure proceedings last December, was purchased this April by Donald Trump for $6.2 million. Under the deal, Trump got 700 total acres, 162 of which are vineyards, along with the winemaking facility, the brand rights and the current inventory. A Trump spokesman said The Donald will most likely work with the former owners, Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses, “to try to re-establish a first-class winery.” Hmm, sounds like the basis for a new reality TV series? Stay tuned..
NBC is thinking about producing a prime-time soap opera called “Vines.” According to the Napa Valley Register, the series would follow “a troubled family who buys a Napa Valley vineyard in hopes of a fresh start,” but find that its “ancient vines possess dangerous mystical powers.” If this folderol does air, it will only confirm NBC’s reputation as American’s dumbest television network.