Looking on Instagram, you’ll get the impression that only sex sells when it comes to wine, but fame and stardom, too, are valid arguments. Luckily, that’s not all and there are other news in this week’s JollyCellarMaster weekly:
The latest trends: The Rich and the Famous or Bulk Wine?
Fame is Proof that People Are Gullible
Not my words, but those of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist. Anyway, I have to admit that I’m not much of a golfer. I tried it a few times, it was fun, but I don’t usually follow what’s going on. I picked up a headline though that an outlier won the recent 2021 PGA Championship. Following his victory, Phil Mickelson posted an Instagram video showing him drinking $450 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon called Black Magic from the trophy. As a result, the producer received thousands of enquiries from Mickelson’s fans about how they could get their hands on the wine. With a production of only 3000 bottles there was already little left, but the rest must’ve sold like hotcakes.
Celebrities selling other people’s wine or producing their own it’s nothing you. From Kylie Minogue to Sting to John Malkovich, they all have their own brand, and only last week, actress Cameron Diaz talked about her winemaking journey in an interview with ABC. Many of those celebrities claim their owning vineyards is more than a hobby, but a proper business. In a recent Falstaff tasting, several celebrity wines achieved high marks. I’m not judging on whether it is due to their fame or the resources they bring to winemaking, but it certainly helps to be famous when you want to sell wine, don’t you think?
Italian Trends
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair claims that’s not fine wine bad and every day bulk wine is the latest trend in Italy. With great value for money, whether from the tap or as bag-in-box, it represents a return to the roots, to what the consumption of wine used to be like according to the article. And I have to admit that one of my favourite wines was the one my wife’s uncle used to produced as a perfect companion for everyday meals, nothing fancy, but a solid wine.
(Kind of) singing from the same song sheet, the authors declare that “more often than not, the organoleptic qualities of a wine from the tap are superior to those of an entry level bottle offered by the supermarket”, which can be a bit of a stretch, I suppose, depending on what you take as an example of either, but in general, it’s not entirely wrong, I’d say. Which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t pay off to spend a little bit more on the wine you drink.
Japanese picture and character
It is an absolute outrage! You have probably come across the same problem as me many times yourself: you’re in the middle of writing a message on your phone to your friends about meeting up for a glass of wine and with the current increase in temperature the wine of choice can be nothing else but rosé. And here the drama begins: while there are emojis for red and sparkling wine, there is no such thing for rosé. What are we to do during these months of summer that lie ahead of us?
But do not despair, the Consortium of Chiaretto di Bardolino comes to the rescue! The consortium commissioned a design studio in Verona to create a symbol and the result is “Pink Wine”: two glasses filled with pink wine topped by a small pink heart. Just what you needed, isn’t it?
However, in order for the emoji to be added to the already seemingly endless choice of pictograms, logograms, ideograms and smileys , it To be submitted to and approved by the Unicode consortium. To support the motion, a petition is also be launched on June 21, the national day of Italian rosé wines. Well, let’s hope this gets resolved rather sooner than later, right? And if you’ve asked yourself what it has to do with Japanese picture and character, well, emoji is made of the two Japanese words, e and moji. Just a nice bit of trivia…
Just to finish off, and to follow up on a recent story about the cooperative winery of the Eisack valley producing a special edition of its Sylvaner to support a local aid agency, I’m pleased to share with you that a winner has been found and that the wine will be named “Lumina”. If you had any ideas, I’d still love to hear them, so please get in touch. That’s also the case if you have an interesting story, connect on Twitter and if you want to stay in the loop about things happening at the JollyCellarMaster and the world of wine, make sure you sign up to our newsletter. And if you want to come on the show and talk about wine, make sure you drop us a line.
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