Posts Written ByJim Silver

Should the Long Island Wine Industry Police Itself More Effectively?

As you may have seen earlier this week, the New York State Liquor Authority revoked Vineyard 48’s liquor license. It’s hard to know exactly what happens next, but in the meantime, wineries on Long Island and beyond are now free to openly discuss a difficult subject — an industry and community policing itself. It’s rare for wineries to speak in support of one other when speaking to power — being beholden to so many regulatory agencies, banks and the public can make a winery owner fearful on many levels. It is rarer still for them to openly criticize one another’s…

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Wine Should Be Expensive. Seriously.

Wine should be expensive — and by “expensive” I mean it should pay for its own existence. Wine, as you well know, takes a long time to grow, a long time to make, a long time to brand, and a long time to sell. When overly-powerful retail-market forces press suppliers to roll back price points that natural competition drives off the last scant profits that may exist for that producer. When distributors mandate ever-increasing contributions to marketing from the producer, usually in the form of actual cash discounts, or dedicated sales representatives, there is very little left for the producer…

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New York Wines in China: Final Thoughts… and Our First Orders

When a California winery opens its doors for business, they can sweep their arms over the map of the entire United States and know that they are welcome in any of the fifty states.  They aren’t the “local” wine, it’s a given that the wine will be competently made and meet the consumer’s expectations.  Indeed, the majority of consumer’s expectations are actually defined by the profile of California wines — and it’s when East Coast wineries try too hard to be like their California rivals is when they fail themselves and their customers. When a New York winery opens its doors for…

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New York Wine in China: Day 2

We learned the first day that Taipei is considered a more sophisticated market these days, moreso than Shanghai because they buy more and and more diverse wines, but they buy almost exclusively on “score.”  Clearly that’s a generalization, and readers of this site probably would argue that doesn’t seem like sophistication, but this is what we’re dealing with here. On a visit to the Shanghai Wine Exchange we discovered what the high net worth Chinese is doing with his relatively new money — investing in trophy wines, but almost nothing else of any lesser stature.  We’ve been trying to build a…

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New York Wine in China: Day 1

This was not at all the culture shock I was expecting as most of our group arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport early midday Tuesday. This first day was to get acclimated to the drastic time difference – we lost exactly twelve hours on the way over, so dinner for us was around six in the morning. The city is a stunning mix of hyper-modern and classical, with no sign of the overcrowding one might think exists. Streets are wide and fast, populated by an odd mix of scooters, mini-bikes, bicycles, container trucks, and Audis…lots and lots of Audis, as well…

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New York Wines in China: Opportunities, Challenges and a Unique Education

Editor’s Note: Tomorrow, Jim Silver, general manager of Peconic Bay Winery and Empire State Cellars, will fly to China as part of a delegation set to represent and eventually sell New York wines there. While he’s there, he will be publishing a travel diary here on the New York Cork Report. I asked him to introduce that diary before he left. Bloomberg reports that the Chinese Gross Domestic Product grew 7.6% in the third quarter of this year over last year. The same report considers that a “drag from inventory restocking…” One has to wonder what they would consider robust growth. Sparing…

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A Different Perspective on “Wine on Tap”: It’s Working. And is Growing.

By Mark Grimaldi, Director, Marketing and Events The subject of wine on tap (WOT) has always been one for debate, especially here on the New York Cork Report. Having been involved with kegged wines since they first started to become commercial a few years ago, I am now even more a proponent, seeing just how successful it is becoming. Some still see it as a downfall for our industry,

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