Monday June 24th 2013

LETS GO BRUINS!!!!!!

On Premise Beer and Spirits volumes improve in 2Q vs 1Q, Wine Slows on higher prices

 

Source: GuestMetrics

Jun 23rd

 

According to GuestMetrics, food & beverage sales at table service restaurants and bars through mid-June 2013 lost some of the improvement seen towards the beginning of 2Q13.  While total F&B sales were up +1.3% in 1Q13 and improved slightly to +1.6% during 2Q13 to-date, when looking specifically at the most recent 4 weeks ending June 16th , sales were softer at +0.6%.

 

“While there were signs of improvement in food & beverage sales during April and the first half of May after a weak 1Q13, the full service restaurant and bar channels appear to have decelerated during the 4-week period through June 16th,” said Bill Pecoriello, CEO of GuestMetrics LLC. “On-premise alcohol volumes were in negative year-over-year territory during 1Q13 at -2.3%, then improved slightly during 2Q13 to-date to -1.1%, but looking specifically at the most recent 4-week period ending June 16th, they softened further into negative territory at -1.4%.  It will be important to monitor in the coming weeks and months whether this is just a temporary pause in the recovery perhaps due to either weather or a temporary slowdown in consumer discretionary spending, or an early sign of a negative inflection point as we head further into the important summer season.”

 

According to GuestMetrics, alcohol dollar sales were up +1.1% during 1Q13, accelerated to +2.6% for 2Q13 to-date, but looking specifically at the most recent 4 weeks, softened to +2.2%.  Price/mix in overall alcohol has remained fairly consistent at +3.5% in 1Q13, +3.7% in 2Q13 to-date, and +3.6%, though the various alcohol categories have taken differing degrees of pricing during those periods.

 

“Looking at the alcohol categories, on-premise beer volumes were -4.3% during 1Q13, but improved to -2.1% during 2Q13 to-date, and remained consistent with that pace at -2.0% in the past 4 weeks,” said Peter Reidhead, VP of Strategy and Insights at GuestMetrics. “Spirits saw a difficult 1Q13 with volumes at -1.7%, improved to -0.8% during 2Q13 to-date, and in the most recent 4 weeks remained consistent with that pace at -1.0%.

 

Looking at wine, however, we see a different story.  Wine started out the year on a positive note with volumes up +2.2%, decelerated to +1.5% during 2Q13 to-date, and when looking specifically at the most recent 4 weeks, fell into negative y/y territory at -0.8%.  The deceleration for wine volumes was seen across all three on-premise segments, and is potentially linked to an increase in in price/mix with the category moving up from +1.1% in 1Q13 to +2.2% in 2Q13 to-date, with a particularly meaningful uptick of +3.8% during the most recent 4-week period.”  Based on data from GuestMetrics, price/mix for beer increased from +3.4% in 1Q13 to +3.9% during 2Q13 to-date, and was at +4.0% during the most recent 4 weeks.  For Spirits, price/mix increased from +2.9% in 1Q13 to +3.3% in 2Q13 to-date, and was at +3.0% during the most recent 4 weeks.

 

“When looking at the various segments within on-premise, all three decelerated in the latest 4 weeks ending June 16th.  The most dramatic deceleration was among bars/clubs, where sales decelerated from +0.2% in 1Q13 to -1.4% in 2Q13 to-date, but looking at the most recent 4 weeks, sales were down -3.2%.  While casual dining sales had shown signs of improving going from -2.0% in 1Q13 to +0.1% in 2Q13 to-date, sales were -1.2% during the most recent 4 weeks.  Fine dining sales have remained in positive y/y territory, but are also showing signs of some slowdown recently, decelerating from +5.1% in 1Q13 to +4.0% in 2Q13 to-date, with the most recent 4 weeks at +3.6%.  Much of the deceleration in on-premise was driven by the food category, which accounts for about 65% of total sales in the on-premise sector,” said Brian Barrett, President of GuestMetrics.

 

“While food sales were up +1.5% during 1Q13 and have held generally steady at +1.4% during 2Q13 to-date, looking specifically at the most recent 4 weeks, food sales growth decelerated to just +0.1%.”

 

 

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Darden: Major brands see 4Q sales turnaround

 

Source: NRN

Erin Dostal

Jun. 21, 2013

 

Same-store sales increased at the company’s Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse brands at the end of a difficult year.

 

Darden Restaurants Inc. reported same-store sales increases across all of its major brands during the fourth quarter of 2013 – a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy year for the Orlando, Fla.-based company.

 

“I think many of you know that we moved with added urgency to address the same-restaurant traffic erosion we’ve been experiencing since the recession started,” said chief executive Clarence Otis during an earnings call with analysts. “But in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, our same-restaurant traffic decline exceeded the industry’s.”

 

The company’s fiscal 2013 fourth quarter and full year ended May 26.

 

During fiscal 2013, Darden shifted its focus toward value-conscious consumers at its three largest brands: Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Red Lobster, Otis said. But that shift toward affordability wasn’t without its challenges.

 

“As we look back, we also know that many of our promotional core menu affordability efforts involve more margin pressure than initially anticipated,” he said.

 

The last year had its host of challenges with staffing, too, Otis said, including adding new leadership roles that required “new skill sets and professional experience.”

 

“Now as we look back, the cost of the leadership changes we made was much higher than we expected,” he said. “And the most significant but difficult-to-measure cost was that associated with reduced executional effectiveness.”

 

Darden’s net income during the fourth quarter was $133.2 million, or $1.01 earnings per share, a decrease from $151.2 million, or $1.15 per share the prior year. Revenue for the quarter was nearly 2.3 billion, an increase from just shy of $2.1 billion the prior year quarter.

 

Net income for the full year was $411.9 million, or $3.13 per share, falling from $475.5 million, or $3.57 per share, the previous year. Revenue for the full year was slightly more than $8.5 billion, rising from nearly $8 billion in fiscal 2012.

 

This year, Darden’s reported net income included costs and adjustments related to the Aug. 29 acquisition of Yard House, the company said in a statement. The acquisition reduced net earnings per share for the quarter by one cent, Darden said, and net earnings by $1.9 million.

 

Same-store sales swing positive

 

Olive Garden, Darden’s largest brand, reported total sales of $952 million and a same-store sales increase of 1.1 percent during the quarter. For the full year, the brand reported total sales of $3.68 billion, and a same-store sales decrease of 1.1 percent.

 

At Red Lobster, U.S. same-store sales rose 3.2 percent during the fourth quarter, with sales totaling $703 million. For the full year, the brand reported a same-store sales decrease of 2.2 percent at U.S. locations. Red Lobster reported total sales of $2.62 billion for the full year.

 

LongHorn Steakhouse reported a same-store sales increase of 3.5 percent during the fourth quarter at U.S. locations, reporting total sales of $339 million for the period. Annually, the steakhouse chain reported total sales of $1.23 billion – a 10.3-percent year-over-year increase – and a same-store sales increase of 1.2 percent.

 

Next year, Darden will continue to differentiate LongHorn from other steakhouse competitors by adding more fine-dining elements like seasonal appetizers and add-ons, said Andrew Madsen, chief operating officer and president at Darden.

 

“We plan.to elevate culinary innovation with approachable new dishes inspired by fine-dining and polished-casual restaurants,” he said.

 

At Darden’s specialty restaurant group, which performed strongly throughout 2013, same-store sales rose 4.5 percent for the fourth quarter. The group reported $295 million in revenue for the quarter and $986 million in revenue for the year.

 

The specialty restaurant group is composed of Seasons 52, Yard House, Eddie V’s, The Capital Grille and Bahama Breeze.

 

In 2014, boosting in-restaurant traffic will be the priority for Darden, even if that means taking a hit on margins, Otis said.

 

“We believe that same-restaurant traffic growth is critical,” Otis said. “That, ultimately, is the best measure of brand health.to the extent that that puts pressure on restaurant-level margins, that’s pressure we’re willing to accept.”

 

In 2014, same-store sales should be flat to an increase of 2 percent at LongHorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden and Red Lobster, said Brad Richmond, Darden’s chief financial officer. Same-restaurant traffic at the three brands should be flat to a 1-percent increase for the year, he said.

 

Total sales growth for 2014 is expected to be between 6 percent and 8 percent, he said.

 

Stephen Anderson, senior analyst, restaurants, at Miller Tabak + Co. wrote in a report that although Darden missed Wall Street’s expectations for earnings during the fourth quarter, top-line trends are encouraging.

 

“We acknowledge continued margin pressure as management adjusts to changes in menu mix and higher management compensation expenses, but argue investors should focus more on positive comps at nearly every concept last quarter, marking the first time this has happened in five quarters [and] sequential improvement at DRI’s largest concept, Olive Garden, in each month of the May quarter,” he wrote.

 

“DRI posted its best overall same-restaurant sales quarter since early 2012,” Anderson added.

 

Darden has more than 2,100 company-owned restaurants systemwide, including 828 Olive Garden locations, 430 LongHorn Steakhouses and 705 Red Lobster restaurants.

 

 

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Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI): Reducing EPS estimates to reflect increased margin investments

 

Source: Goldman Sachs

Jun 21st

 

What’s changed

We lower our FY2014-2016 EPS estimates to $2.99/$3.09/$3.19 from $3.09/$3.26/$3.40. Our revenue estimates are up slightly, but we expect increased margin investment to generate the top-line growth. We retain a Neutral rating on DRI shares as fundamentals remain challenged.

 

Implications

 

(1) Traffic growth returned to positive territory in 4QFY13; however, we believe this was driven more by easy compares than by true improvement in fundamentals. Going forward, Casual Dining industry trends are soft, DRI’s brands lack momentum and the competitive environment is tough.

 

(2) We now expect restaurant margins to decline by 70bps in 2014, which would represent the third consecutive year of declines. Operating profit dollars declined at both Olive Garden and Red Lobster this past quarter, despite a return to positive SSS, due to DRI’s ongoing investments to rebuild traffic. Looking forward, margins may remain under pressure given DRI has signaled that it plans to absorb incremental food inflation and increased health care costs rather than pass them on to the consumer.

 

(3) Calls on DRI’s FCF are tight and leave limited room for flexibility. With this latest dividend increase, DRI now has a 70%+ dividend payout ratio, which is crowding out other potentially accretive uses of cash. Further, its EBITDAR coverage ratio is outside of its target zone, and thus DRI believes it needs to de-lever. Ultimately, if the company fails to hit SSS and margin targets, it will likely need to lower capex further to meet its commitments.

 

Valuation

We lower our P/E and DCF-based price target by $3 to $49 to reflect our lower estimates. This equates to a 4.5% dividend yield.

 

Key risks

Upside risks include better Casual Dining trends or a turnaround in DRI’s brands. Downside risks include lower margins than we are assuming.

 

 

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Why Alcohol Labels Are More Important Now Than Ever

 

Source: Huff Post

06/21/2013

 

The first half of 2013 has seen a flurry of activity related to alcohol regulation. Heads first turned in February when controversial alcoholic beverage (and onetime energy drink) Four Loko was ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to put new labels on its packaging to provide vital serving-size information.

 

A few months later, in May, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made headlines when it recommended that states lower the blood alcohol limit for drivers from .08 percent to .05 percent — nearly a 40 percent reduction.

 

Most recently, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) decided in early June to allow voluntary nutrition labels on alcoholic beverages for the first time in modern U.S. history.

 

Perhaps the stars are finally aligning to require nutrition labeling on alcoholic beverages, the subject of hot debate for decades. Alcohol labeling and the blood alcohol limit have usually been separate conversations, but the issues are actually connected. The link: how much consumers want or need to know before they drink.

 

NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman told The Huffington Post that she believes “there are a lot of people who will embrace more information and use it to make better choices.” Facts like serving size and alcohol content “are important things for people to take into consideration, and it will change some people’s behavior,” said Hersman, whose agency does not have an official stance on alcohol labeling. “I think some people will drink less.”

 

The Consumer Federation of America, which has been vocal in its campaign for more extensive labeling of alcoholic beverages, takes no official position on the NTSB’s recommendation. But its director, Chris Waldrop, told HuffPost that the move “further demonstrates the need for alcohol labeling.”

 

“If [the blood alcohol limit] changed, that would affect consumers when they’re going out and drinking and considering how many drinks they’re going to have and whether or not they’re going to drive home,” Waldrop said.

 

In the century since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, several governmental agencies have had a say in the labeling of alcoholic beverages, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the TTB. Understanding the history of alcohol labeling means sifting through a dizzying series of rulings and memorandums involving these agencies, which at various times held sway over the issue. Today, matters related to the production of alcoholic beverages are mainly the provenance of the TTB, which was established in 2003.

 

Alcoholic beverages currently have no nutrition labels because in 1993 the ATF rejected a petition to require the kind of labeling that the FDA mandates for food and other beverage products. There was not enough consumer interest, the ATF reasoned, or sufficiently convincing evidence that nutrition labeling would prove useful to consumers.

 

Two decades earlier, the ATF had decided against requiring full ingredient labeling for alcoholic beverages. It cited several reasons, including the cost of implementing the labels, the existing regulation of alcohol content and the difficulty that labels pose in international trade negotiations. The 1975 ruling also reasoned that such labels would be “of little value and, in certain cases, even misleading” to consumers and that “ingredient labeling is supported by only a small segment of the public.”

 

Alcohol content by volume has been allowed on beer labels only since 1995, when a Supreme Court case filed by Adolph Coors Co. overturned a 1935 law forbidding it.

 

But times are changing. In the midst of a national obesity epidemic, the public has become increasingly health conscious.

 

Still, the future of both alcohol nutrition labeling and the blood alcohol limit remains unclear. The TTB ruling isn’t the final word, and the agency will continue to mull proposed rules to make nutrition labeling mandatory. The NTSB’s recommendation is not binding, although it could go a long way in influencing policymakers.

 

But Waldrop is hopeful. “We kind of see it as a first step forward,” he said of the TTB decision. As for the blood alcohol recommendation, Hersman suggests “this is a debate that will continue.”

 

Although she said she hadn’t considered it before, Hersman agreed that the two issues may be intertwined. “Certainly, talking about this and getting information out will make people more aware,” she said.

 

 

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Why She Drinks: Women and Alcohol Abuse

 

Women’s growing predilection for wine has a darker side-and the only way to deal with it is to acknowledge the profound differences between how women and men abuse alcohol.

 

Source: WSJ

By GABRIELLE GLASER

Jun 21st

 

Author Gabrielle Glaser talks to WSJ’s Gary Rosen about the growing problem of alcohol abuse among upper middle-class women and why A.A. is not the solution for most of them. Photo: Getty Images.

 

A few summers ago, I stuffed my car full of the last flattened cardboard boxes from a cross-country move and headed to the recycling depot of my suburban New Jersey town. I pulled up behind a queue of slender women at the wheels of shiny SUVs. Their eyes concealed by giant sunglasses, they hopped from their seats to their open trunks and, one by one, reached for the bags that are the totems of upper-middle-class life: silver ones from Nordstrom, plain ones from Whole Foods. Out poured wine bottles, clanking into the rusted recycling truck.

 

In Portland, Ore., where I lived for six years, I would watch most Sunday nights as a neighbor deposited two giant Merlot bottles in my recycling bin. Her house was a block away, and she had her own bin-but apparently mine seemed like a more discreet place to stash her empties. In New York’s Westchester County, where I had lived previously, women would pass around a flask at dreary school functions. Alcohol and motherhood were intertwined, so much so that after I had my third daughter in the anxious autumn after 9/11, I received bottle after bottle of wine as baby gifts.

 

The growing female predilection for wine seems at first glance like a harmless indulgence for harried mothers who deserve a break. There are T-shirts with a spilled wineglass that say, “Not so loud, I had book club last night.” Nearly 650,000 women follow “Moms Who Need Wine” on Facebook, FB +2.64% and another 131,000 women are fans of the group called “OMG, I So Need a Glass of Wine or I’m Gonna Sell My Kids.” The drinking mom has become a cultural trope, from highbrow to pop: Jonathan Franzen’s Patty Berglund wanders through the first half of “Freedom” with a ruddy complexion he calls the “Chardonnay Splotch.” Wine is so linked to the women of “Real Housewives” that several cast members have introduced their own brands. That’s no accident: According to the Wine Institute, an industry trade group, women buy the lion’s share of the nearly 800 million gallons of wine sold in the U.S. annually-and they are its primary drinkers.

 

Indeed, more women are drinking now than at any time in recent history, according to health surveys. In the nine years between 1998 and 2007, the number of women arrested for drunken driving rose 30%, while male arrests dropped more than 7%. Between 1999 and 2008, the number of young women who showed up in emergency rooms for being dangerously intoxicated rose by 52%. The rate for young men, though higher, rose just 9%.

 

These numbers are not driven solely by young women living it up on spring break. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of binge drinking-that is, having four or more drinks for women or five or more for men within two hours-revealed a surprising statistic. While the greatest number, 24%, of binge-drinking women are college-age, 10% of women between 45 and 64 said they binge drink-and so did 3% of women older than 65. The college-age binge drinkers and the senior binge drinkers overdid it with a similar frequency, about three times a month.

 

Gallup pollsters have repeatedly found that the more educated and well off a woman is, the more likely she is to imbibe. White women are more likely to drink than women of other racial backgrounds, but in the past few decades the percentage of women who classify themselves as regular drinkers has risen across the board. An analysis of the drinking habits of 85,000 Americans in 2002 found that 47% of white women reported being regular drinkers, up from 37% in 1992. The percentage of black women who said they drank regularly rose from 21% to 30%, and the percentage of Hispanic women who said the same grew from 24% to 32%. (American Indian and Asian-American women were not included in the study.)

 

In one sense, the rising rates of alcohol consumption by women are a sign of parity. But this is one arena in which equal treatment yields unequal outcomes. Women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol’s toxic effects. Their bodies have more fat, which retains alcohol, and less water, which dilutes it, so women drinking the same amount as men their size and weight become intoxicated more quickly. Males also have more of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This may be one reason why alcohol-related liver and brain damage appear more quickly in heavy-drinking women than men.

 

Still, modern women haven’t caught up to the drinking habits of America’s early settlers, whose only safe beverage was alcohol. Historians estimate that colonial men and women drank about a gallon of low-alcohol beer or hard cider a day. In a collection of 500 recipes that Martha Washington left to her granddaughter, 50 were for boozy drinks, plus a couple of hangover cures.

 

The growing sales of wine to women can be traced to some clever marketing decisions in the 1960s by California’s vintners. Wineries had all but perished during Prohibition, and the beverage was considered the drink of poor immigrants and Skid Row drunks. Americans, accustomed to more straightforward spirits and beer, were slow to warm to wine’s complexities.

 

Wine also felt off-limits to women. It was consumed mostly in restaurants, where waiters offered men the wine list, the first taste and the cork. Strategists saw a growth opportunity in the vast numbers of postwar housewives. “We used to joke that if we could just get a bottle of sherry into the kitchen, we’d be off and running,” says Harvey Posert, one of the industry’s early promoters.

 

Vineyards got an unexpected boost from Jacqueline Kennedy, who in 1962 led 56 million viewers on a televised tour of the White House. In the dining room, the camera panned to the elegantly laid table, lingering for a few seconds on the crystal glasses next to each place setting. Few could afford the first lady’s designer clothes, but the crystal, manufactured in West Virginia, was a small piece of Camelot glamour that women could own for themselves. It took the Morgantown Glass Co. factory years to fill all the orders.

 

Surveys have found that the more educated and well off a woman is, the more likely she is to imbibe.

 

Getting female buyers for the wine, though, was another challenge. In California, where laws allowed wine to be sold in supermarkets, Robert Mondavi’s marketers hired middle-age housewives to stand at in-store tasting booths. The saleswomen offered shoppers sips from bottles that would pair perfectly with what they had planned for dinner. The friendly older women helped turn the younger women into confident consumers.

 

Women’s magazines offered tips on how to order, serve and drink the stuff; McCall’s magazine, in 1977, featured wine as essential to an “Anti-Stress Diet.” Meanwhile, women in California were beginning to make wine, too, experimenting with tastes and textures that appealed to them.

 

Today, wine is certainly in American kitchens. It’s there for enjoyment, of course, but also as a respectable antidote to modern stress-especially for women.

 

Some social scientists link the rise in female alcohol consumption to the changing role of women in society. Rick Grucza, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who studies alcohol-use disorders, correlates women’s drinking to the rise in female college attendance. Others suggest that many women continue unhealthy postcollege drinking patterns in male-dominated industries such as finance and technology. Still others find a link among women who step away from their careers to be at home. “The baby’s crying, they’re not getting paid, they’re bored and anxious-and feel guilty that they’re bored and anxious,” says Mary Ellen Barnes, a psychologist in Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., who treats many female heavy drinkers. Drinking several tall glasses of wine can make those feelings recede-at least for a few hours.

 

Does that amount to a drinking problem? Doctors around the world differ. The National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Department of Health and Human Services say that for American women, anything more than a drink a day is risky. In countries such as France, Italy and Spain, where life expectancy for women is longer, authorities set the safe threshold at double that-and sometimes higher.

 

Many of the women whom I interviewed said that the strict limits set by American law helped to drive their drinking underground. A few glasses slide into a whole bottle, which becomes an embarrassing habit that needs to be concealed.

 

As she approached her 50th birthday, Joanna, a Pennsylvania information-technology specialist, grew tired of hiding her 1.5-liter empties from her husband. Joanna (who asked that her name be changed to protect her privacy) began attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous at the suggestion of her psychiatrist. In the U.S., the 12-step abstinence- and faith-based program is embraced by the nation’s courts, much of the medical establishment, insurance companies and popular culture as a one-size-fits-all approach to harmful drinking.

 

A.A. was founded in 1935 by two men who believed that alcohol dependence could be tamed by regular attendance at group meetings with other recovering alcoholics. Its doctrine calls for members to tame their egos, abstain from all drinking and acknowledge they are in the grip of a force they can combat only with help from a “higher power.”

 

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in gender studies to realize that this approach-which has worked well for millions of people-may not be perfect for women whose biggest problem is not an excess of ego but a lack of it. Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety as men-and are far more likely to medicate those conditions with alcohol.

 

Many women who drink heavily are also the victims of sexual abuse and have had eating disorders. The idea of being powerless can underscore a woman’s sense of vulnerability, researchers say. “Women need to feel powerful, not like victims of something beyond their control,” says Dr. Barnes. “It gives women power to feel they themselves can change.”

 

Scientists are continuing to explore the biochemical differences in the way that alcohol affects men and women. Studies show that after drinking, men report feeling more powerful, often overstating their capabilities and accomplishments, while women say that it makes them feel more affectionate, sexy and feminine.

 

In Europe, Hong Kong and elsewhere in the industrialized world, clinicians treat alcohol-use disorders with a variety of techniques developed in the nearly eight decades since the founding of A.A. (Researchers favor the term “alcohol-use disorder,” which encompasses a range of severity, over “alcoholism.”) Many combine different behavioral therapies with medications such as naltrexone and topiramate, which help block cravings. Both drugs have proved to be effective in helping patients abstain or moderate. Studies around the world have found that for those who are not severely alcohol-dependent, controlled drinking is possible. Advocates of the 12-step program reject these findings and continue to maintain that abstinence is the only remedy.

 

For Joanna, wine was a nightly antidote for her pressure-filled job. It also provided a respite from a decade of depression after her parents’ deaths.

 

Joanna tried some coed and women’s A.A. meetings, but she never felt comfortable exposing herself to strangers. Her concerns were not unfounded: A.A. members talk about the tendency of old-timers to take sexual advantage of fragile newcomers, an act known as the “Thirteenth Step.” Questioned about the sexual abuse of young women by one of its own trustees, the A.A. board’s Subcommittee on Vulnerable Members responded in 2009 that it could not do anything to oversee tens of thousands of meetings each day. The public-information officer at A.A.’s central office in New York had no comment.

 

A.A.’s membership surveys reveal that 12% of members are ordered to attend by the courts. Though most have been charged with drunken driving, some are sex offenders and other felons with violent backgrounds. In Hawaii in 2010, a veteran with a history of violence, ordered by authorities to attend meetings after a stay in a psychiatric hospital, killed a woman he met in A.A. and her 13-year-old daughter before shooting himself.

 

A.A. views the thousands of meetings that take place each day as the work of autonomous groups, responsible for supervising themselves. A group based on anonymity, board members argued, could not do anything to screen members without undercutting its basic principles.

 

Joanna searched for new options and found the website of Dr. Barnes and her practice partner Ed Wilson. The two offer five days of intensive personal counseling. The idea is to examine what triggers a woman’s drinking and to help her decide how she might design a healthier life. “Most of our female clients slip into harmful drinking in their 40s and 50s, masking the discomfort of fluctuating hormones, the adjustment to an empty nest, the death of parents and other role losses,” Dr. Wilson says.

 

For many such women, the problem is learning how to moderate their drinking rather than stopping completely. Decades of research show that it is possible, Dr. Wilson says, and it has been his practice’s experience. Clients visit a family doctor who conducts a physical exam and prescribes naltrexone. Once clients return home, they may follow up with the psychologists by phone for several months.

 

To Joanna, the treatment, which costs $8,750, offered brevity, privacy and encouraging results. Dr. Wilson said that his practice’s 240 clients reported a 70% success rate after six years, having achieved their desired goal of moderation or abstention.

 

Joanna, who decided it would be easiest to quit booze altogether, hasn’t indulged in nearly four years. She credits her therapy and three months of naltrexone, which in some small studies has been shown to reduce alcohol euphoria most effectively in women, as well as meditation, for her success. “It’s liberating,” she says. “I remember what I read at night now.”

 

Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist in St. Paul, Minn., and a former director of treatment research at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, believes that the new drugs, along with others in development, will lift the stigma of alcohol-use disorders, much as Prozac changed views of depression.

 

Notwithstanding the well-publicized trips of celebrities to rehab, fewer than 10% of the estimated 20 million Americans with harmful drinking habits ever receive specialized treatment. That could change, Dr. Willenbring argues, if primary-care doctors were trained to administer antirelapse drugs and counseling to those on the less troubled end of the spectrum.

 

That would be good news for the many women who have crossed beyond a controlled sipping point but are unable to spend a month in rehab and uncomfortable with the notion of powerlessness.

 

 

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Champagne discounts “killing the drink”, warns Pernod Ricard exec (Excerpt)

 

Source: Just-Drinks

By Andy Morton

21 June 2013

 

A Pernod Ricard Champagne regional head has branded heavy European discounting in the category “totally unacceptable”.

 

Hughes Le Marié, Pernod’s Americas and Western Europe director for GH Mumm, said prices as low as EUR6 (US$8) are “destroying the dream” of Champagne. He warned that the sector’s trade body will tighten appellation rules in response.

 

 

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Wells Fargo’s Weekly Economic & Financial Commentary

 

Source: Wells Fargo

Jun 21st

 

U.S.

.         The Fed continues to send signals of slowing the pace of asset purchases before the end of 2013.

.         Core consumer prices increased more than expected in May.

.         The overall pace of inflation is expected to edge higher in 2H13.

.         Housing remains strong as new home construction improved, and permits for single-family homes rose to the highest level in five years.

.         The homebuilder’s sentiment index hit its highest level since march 2006.

.         Existing homes are also benefitting as the both the pace of sales and prices strengthened.

.         While the leading economic indicator index pushed slightly higher in May, some headwinds may slow the pace of economic expansion this quarter.

 

International

.         According to the HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index, Chinese factory activity moved further into contraction territory in June.

.         This seems to reflect the struggles of shifting from an export-led economy to one focused on growing domestic demand.

.         While the Eurozone Manufacturing PMI remains in contraction territory, the better than expected report provides some hope that the European economy could return to growth in 2H13.

.         The services PMI also surprised to the upside.

.         U.K. retail sales surged in May, but an unemployment rate of 7.8% and rising inflation have caused concern regarding the sustainability of the growth.

 

Point of View

.         Interest Rate Watch

.         With the Fed observing fewer downside risks to the economy, it is increasingly likely that tapering will begin later this year.

.         Credit Market Insights

.         Despite recent increases in the household debt-service ratio, it remains near the lowest levels since record keeping began in 1980.

.         The upward movement in the debt-service ratio suggests that consumers are gaining confidence.

 

 

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News From TTB

 

Source: TTB

Jun 21st

 

REGISTER TODAY FOR THE NEXT WEBINAR IN THE PREVENTING UNDERAGE DRINKING SERIES

 

If you’re interested, mark your calendars for the next webinar in the Preventing Underage Drinking series!

 

The federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), of which TTB is a member, sponsors this webinar series.

 

The ICCPUD member agency hosting this event is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

 

Webinar #5:         The Role of Public Health in Preventing Underage Drinking and Excessive Drinking by Adults

 

When:         June 26, 2013, 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT

 

Who: CDC leadership, CDC staff, and a panel of national experts on excessive alcohol use prevention

 

What:          In this webinar, national experts will provide an overview of recent scientific findings on underage and binge drinking in the U.S. as well as Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF)-recommended strategies to address it; examine new research findings on the relationship between state alcohol policies and underage drinking; discuss the current status of alcohol regulations in the U.S.; and present case studies on the translation of CPSTF-recommended strategies into public health practice.

 

Where:        To find more information and to register, please visitwww.stopalcoholabuse.gov

 

 

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Beer Institute: Warehouse Fees Raise Costs for Metal Consumers

 

Source: WSJ

By TATYANA SHUMSKY

Jun 21st

 

A trade group that represents many of the world’s largest beer brewers has lodged a complaint with the London Metal Exchange, saying the exchange hasn’t done enough to alleviate supply bottlenecks in its warehouse system that the trade group says have raised the price of aluminum used in beer cans.

 

The Beer Institute says supply disruptions are raising the price of aluminum used in beer cans.

 

U.S. beer makers and their suppliers buy aluminum at prices set on the LME and must pay an added fee to cover the costs of metal transportation and delivery. This extra cost surpassed $200 a metric ton last year, as the wait to secure metal from LME-licensed warehouses stretched to a year or more in some locations.

 

In a letter to the LME sent in October 2012, the Beer Institute asked for “greater transparency” and changes in warehousing rules. The group represents brewers that account for 93% of beer sold in the U.S., according to the group’s calculations, including Anheuser Busch-InBev NV BUD -0.27% and MillerCoors LLC, as well as can manufacturers like Ball Corp. BLL -0.19% and Novelis Inc.

 

“These practices are basically preventing brewers and suppliers from obtaining aluminum in a reasonable time frame or at fair market prices,” said Christopher Thorne, a spokesman for the Beer Institute.

 

The LME said it shares the concerns of some in the market, and has “brought in a series of measures to relieve the situation,” an exchange spokesman said in an email. “We continue to monitor the situation and will act again if it is in the market’s best interests,” he said.

 

Aluminum began to pile up in LME’s Detroit warehouses in 2009. As of June 18, the LME’s Detroit warehouses held 1.4 million metric tons of aluminum, of which more than a million tons was in line to leave storage, according to LME data. At the current minimum delivery rate of 3,000 tons a day, it would take about 337 business days to empty those warehouses of the aluminum in line to leave storage. The LME’s total aluminum stockpiles are at a record 5.3 million metric tons, the data show.

 

Many traders say the long waits and rising fees are a result of warehouse operators being acquired by companies that also trade commodities. These companies pay above-market rates to lure metal to their warehouses, and can earn a profit from charging rent and on fees for prompt delivery, traders and consumers say.

 

The London exchange in April 2012 began requiring more metal to be released from warehouses each day, but metal users and traders said the rule changes haven’t resulted in shorter waits or lower delivery fees.

 

In April of this year, the exchange introduced another round of new rules, requiring warehouses with a hefty bottleneck in one metal to also deliver at least 500 metric tons of another metal a day.

 

Still, metal users and traders said neither rule change has resulted in shorter waits or lower delivery fees.

 

“We feel it was not enough to solve the problem…the distortion still exists,” the beer group’s Mr. Thorn said.

 

 

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Urban Outfitters Decides Maybe Prescription Pill Bottles As Shot Glasses Isn’t A Great Idea

 

Source: Consumerist

By Mary Beth Quirk

June 20, 2013

 

Would you like some booze with your painkillers?

 

Another day, another highly controversial item pulled from the shelves of Urban Outfitters. This time, the retailer caved to pressure from legislators in states like Kentucky and agreed to stop selling shot glasses, flasks and beer mugs that look like prescription pill bottles.

 

The thing is, Urban Outfitters sells a whole lot of merchandise to teens, and as such, many of their items are marketed directly at that age group. And in Kentucky, where the population is already struggling with addiction, sending the message to youth that prescription pills are funny and fun, and so is alcohol – well, that rubbed lawmakers the wrong way. They said such products trivialize the pain of people addicted to drugs.

 

“I wrote a letter to the Urban Outfitters CEO shortly after learning about this abominable product line, and I’m very pleased that the store has changed course,”  Gove. Steve Beshear said in a statement Wednesday via the Associated Press. “There’s nothing fashionable about prescription drug abuse, and selling teen-targeted items that glamorize prescription drugs is repulsive.”

 

The company issued a statement to the Courier-Journal of Louisville announcing the move to stop selling the items, after the campaign from anti-drug groups, legislators and 24 attorneys general. It called the “Prescription Line” a misinterpretation.

 

“In the 20,000 products that comprise our assortment, there are styles that represent humor, satire and hyperbole,” Urban Outfitters said in a press release. “We recognize that from time to time there may be individual items that are misinterpreted by people who are not our customer.”

 

Silly old people who aren’t hip enough to shop for overpriced bohemian chic clothing, don’t you get the joke? Booze and prescription drugs – together! What could possibly be wrong about that?

 

 

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Wine producers go hi-tech to outsmart fraudsters

 

Source: Phys.org

June 23rd, 2013

 

Making sure a glass of wine is everything it promises on the label was once a relatively simple process: hold against the light, tilt and observe the shade, swirl a little and give it a good sniff.

 

But with the ever-increasing global consumption of wine now attracting the attention of fraudsters, wine drinkers are soon just as likely to be advised to whip out their smartphones.

 

A quick scan can give the consumer a direct link to the supplier’s website to verify the label, trace the wine’s journey from vineyard to glass and provide information about the winery.

 

Fake wine and spirits can sour the drinks market, but new technology and international cooperation are now enabling producers to outsmart the fraudsters.

 

Castel, the largest producer of French wine, uses the technology on 13 million bottles for the Chinese market as well on exports to other emerging markets such as Vietnam where counterfeiting is most prevalent.

 

“The Chinese are asking for a lot of information and for reassurance regarding the origin of the product,” said Franck Crouzet, spokesperson for Castel.

 

But Chinese crooks are by no means the only perpetrators of wine scams.

 

“China is the most notorious but the problem is worldwide,” said Christophe Chateau, spokesperson for the Bordeaux Wine Council.

 

While many bottles are ugly reproductions easily spotted by a practised eye, others are quite clever.

 

And although little harm befalls a consumer uncorking bulk Chilean red instead of estate-bottled Bordeaux, the consequences can be lethal when criminals sell tainted drinks.

 

“Last year we had a case in the Czech Republic, at least 20 people died from drinking a counterfeit local spirit,” said Pierre Georget, CEO of GS1 France, part of a Brussels-based non-governmental organisation which uses unique bar codes to thwart the conmen.

 

GS1 guarantees that bar code numbers are never repeated worldwide, assuring traceability and authentication for everything from spare car parts and prams to Chianti.

 

“Chianti had some problems in the past in Russia. Our consortium spends 100,000 euros ($132,000) each year on registering and protecting our wines,” said Silvia Fiorentini, spokesperson for the Chianti Classico Consortium, which produces 35 million bottles annually, 80 percent of which is exported.

 

In order for wine lovers around the globe to feel confident they are drinking a bottle of wine originating in the hills of Tuscany, Fiorentini says Chianti Classico now carries a distinctive seal over the cap and neck of the bottle, marked with a unique number and code, as well as the appellation’s trademark black rooster.

 

Many wine regions are doing the same, and producers eager to learn more about fighting counterfeiters attended GS1’s presentation at Vinexpo, a major wine and spirits trade show held this past week in Bordeaux.

 

“In wine there is an enormous problem with counterfeiting,” said Georget. “The idea is to use unique identification – a bar code or data matrix bar code – to identify each bottle of wine. This is the same technology we already use for the FDA for drugs in America.”

 

But many say a bar code doesn’t go far enough and that the seal must contain an inviolable hologram.

 

“GS1 is a good start but it needs to be combined with a physical security feature,” said Damien Guille, sales manager for Tesa Scribos, a German company that produces so-called tesa VeoMark labels, used for brand protection in a wide variety of sectors, including luxury goods, car parts and wine.

 

The labels are scanned with a smartphone and Tesa Scribos counts among its customers the Bordeaux largest appellation, Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur producers, as well as merchants Barton & Guestier and Castel.

 

The Bordeaux Wine Council’s Chateau said that Bordeaux as a whole had chosen to work with firms ATT, Prooftag and Tesa Scribos, but that some 15 similar technologies also existed.

 

“Two years ago at Vinexpo, we had zero clients. Now we have a long list,” said Guille of Tesa Scribos.

 

 

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Wine-tasting: it’s junk science

 

Experiments have shown that people can’t tell plonk from grand cru. Now one US winemaker claims that even experts can’t judge wine accurately. What’s the science behind the taste?

 

Source: The Observer

David Derbyshire

Saturday 22 June 2013

 

Every year Robert Hodgson selects the finest wines from his small California winery and puts them into competitions around the state.

 

And in most years, the results are surprisingly inconsistent: some whites rated as gold medallists in one contest do badly in another. Reds adored by some panels are dismissed by others. Over the decades Hodgson, a softly spoken retired oceanographer, became curious. Judging wines is by its nature subjective, but the awards appeared to be handed out at random.

 

So drawing on his background in statistics, Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.

 

Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual “flight” of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.

 

The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson’s findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.

 

“The results are disturbing,” says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. “Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year.

 

“Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win.”

 

These judges are not amateurs either. They read like a who’s who of the American wine industry from winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers to wine consultants and academics. In Hodgson’s tests, judges rated wines on a scale running from 50 to 100. In practice, most wines scored in the 70s, 80s and low 90s.

 

Results from the first four years of the experiment, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, showed a typical judge’s scores varied by plus or minus four points over the three blind tastings. A wine deemed to be a good 90 would be rated as an acceptable 86 by the same judge minutes later and then an excellent 94.

 

Some of the judges were far worse, others better – with around one in 10 varying their scores by just plus or minus two. A few points may not sound much but it is enough to swing a contest – and gold medals are worth a significant amount in extra sales for wineries.

 

Hodgson went on to analyse the results of wine competitions across California, and found that their medals were distributed at random.

 

“I think there are individual expert tasters with exceptional abilities sitting alone who have a good sense, but when you sit 100 wines in front of them the task is beyond human ability,” he says. “We have won our fair share of gold medals but now I have to say we were lucky.”

 

His studies have irritated many figures in the industry. “They say I’m full of bullshit but that’s OK. I’m proud of what I do. It’s part of my academic background to find the truth.”

 

Hodgson isn’t alone in questioning the science of wine-tasting. French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of labels in 2001. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57 volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a table wine, the other for a grand cru.

 

The tasters were fooled.

 

When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. When the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely to use negatives such as weak, light and flat.

 

In 2008 a study of 6,000 blind tastings by Robin Goldstein in the Journal of Wine Economics found a positive link between the price of wine and the amount people enjoyed it. But the link only existed for people trained to detect the elements of wine that make them expensive.

 

In 2011 Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist (and former professional magician) at Hertfordshire University invited 578 people to comment on a range of red and white wines, varying from £3.49 for a claret to £30 for champagne, and tasted blind.

 

People could tell the difference between wines under £5 and those above £10 only 53% of the time for whites and only 47% of the time for reds. Overall they would have been just as a successful flipping a coin to guess.

 

So why are ordinary drinkers and the experts so poor at tasting blind? Part of the answer lies in the sheer complexity of wine.

 

For a drink made by fermenting fruit juice, wine is a remarkably sophisticated chemical cocktail. Dr Bryce Rankine, an Australian wine scientist, identified 27 distinct organic acids in wine, 23 varieties of alcohol in addition to the common ethanol, more than 80 esters and aldehydes, 16 sugars, plus a long list of assorted vitamins and minerals that wouldn’t look out of place on the ingredients list of a cereal pack. There are even harmless traces of lead and arsenic that come from the soil.

 

Three of wine’s most basic qualities – sweetness, sourness and bitterness – are picked up by the tongue’s taste buds. A good wine has the perfect balance of sweet from the sugar in grapes, sourness from the acids, particularly tartaric and malic acid, and bitterness from alcohol and polyphenols, including tannins.

 

Many wines are more acidic than lemon juice and are only palatable because that acidity is balanced by sweetness and bitterness. “It’s the holy trinity of the palate – sugar, acid and alcohol,” says Dr James Hutchinson, a wine expert at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

 

Professionals distinguish between the balance of these three basic elements and a wine’s flavour. And here the chemistry gets more complicated.

 

The flavour of wine – its aroma or bouquet – is detected not by the taste buds, but by millions of receptors in the olfactory bulb, a blob of nervous tissue where the brain meets the nasal passage.

 

Chemists have identified at least 400 aroma compounds that work on their own and with others to create complex flavours – some appearing immediately on first sniffing, others emerging only as an aftertaste. Most of these are volatiles – aromatic compounds that tend to have a low boiling point and waft away from glasses and tongues towards the olfactory bulb.

 

Some of these, the primary volatiles, are present in the grape. Others, the secondaries, are generated by yeast activity during fermentation. The rest, the tertiary volatiles, are formed as wine matures in barrels or bottles.

 

Over the last few decades, wine scientists have begun to identify the compounds responsible for some of the distinctive aromas in wine.

 

The grassy, gooseberry quality of sauvignon blanc, for instance, comes from a class of chemicals called methoxypyrazines. These contain nitrogen and are byproducts of the metabolism of amino acids in the grape. Concentrations are higher in cooler climates, which is why New Zealand sauvignon blancs are often more herbaceous than Australian ones.

 

The flowery aroma of muscat and gewürztraminer comes from a class of alcohol compounds called monoterpenes. These include linalool – a substance also used in perfumes and insecticide – and geraniol, a pale yellow liquid that doubles up as an effective mosquito repellent and gives geranium its distinctive smell.

 

The spicy notes of chardonnay have been attributed to compounds called megastigmatrienones, also found in grapefruit juice.

 

“People underestimate how clever the olfactory system is at detecting aromas and our brain is at interpreting them,” says Hutchinson.

 

“The olfactory system has the complexity in terms of its protein receptors to detect all the different aromas, but the brain response isn’t always up to it. But I’m a believer that everyone has the same equipment and it comes down to learning how to interpret it.” Within eight tastings, most people can learn to detect and name a reasonable range of aromas in wine, Hutchinson says.

 

Detecting and finding the right vocabulary may be within everyone’s grasp. But when it comes to ranking wines, Hutchinson shares Robert Hodgson’s concerns.

 

“There’s a lot of nonsense and emperor’s new clothes in the wine world,” Hutchinson says. “I have had a number of wines costing hundreds of pounds that have disappointed me – and a number costing between £5 and £10 which have been absolutely surprising.”

 

People struggle with assessing wine because the brain’s interpretation of aroma and bouquet is based on far more than the chemicals found in the drink. Temperature plays a big part. Volatiles in wine are more active when wine is warmer. Serve a New World chardonnay too cold and you’ll only taste the overpowering oak. Serve a red too warm and the heady boozy qualities will be overpowering.

 

Colour affects our perceptions too. In 2001 Frédérick Brochet of the University of Bordeaux asked 54 wine experts to test two glasses of wine – one red, one white. Using the typical language of tasters, the panel described the red as “jammy’ and commented on its crushed red fruit.

 

The critics failed to spot that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been coloured red with a flavourless dye.

 

Other environmental factors play a role. A judge’s palate is affected by what she or he had earlier, the time of day, their tiredness, their health – even the weather.

 

For Hutchinson and Hodgson the unpredictability means that human scores of wines are of limited value.

 

So if people cannot be relied on to judge wine, how about machines?

 

“In terms of replicating what a human can do we are a long way off,” Hutchinson says. “The one thing we can do well, though, is a lot of amazing analytical chemistry that allows us to detect a huge range of different compounds in a glass of wine.

 

”We can start to have an indication of how the acidity balances with the sweetness and different levels of flavour compounds.

 

“But the step we haven’t got to is how that raw chemical information can be crunched together and converted into something that reflects someone’s emotional response. That might be something we can never achieve.”

 

Meanwhile the blind tasting contests go on. Robert Hodgson is determined to improve the quality of judging. He has developed a test that will determine whether a judge’s assessment of a blind-tasted glass in a medal competition is better than chance. The research will be presented at a conference in Cape Town this year. But the early findings are not promising.

 

“So far I’ve yet to find someone who passes,” he says.

 

PUNGENT OVERTONES

 

In 2007, Richard E Quandt, a Princeton economics professor, published a paper entitled “On Wine Bullshit: Some New Software?” The study sought to describe the “unholy union” of “bullshit and bullshit artists who are impelled to comment on it”, in this case wine and wine critics. Quandt compiled a “vocabulary of wine descriptors” containing 123 terms from “angular” to “violets” via other nonsense descriptions such as “fireplace” and “tannins, fine-grained”.

 

Then, with the help of colleagues, he built an algorithm that generated wine reviews of hypothetical wines using his “vocabulary of bullshit”. For instance: “Château L’Ordure Pomerol, 2004. Fine minerality, dried apricots and cedar characterise this sage-laden wine bursting with black fruit and toasty oak.” He concluded that whether his reviews were “any more bullshit” than real ones was a “judgment call”. Sadly, he didn’t explore how long it would take a monkey to type a wine review.

 

 

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Highs and (Rare) Lows in Restaurant Wine Prices

 

Good restaurants have a lot of costs to cover when they’re pricing their wines, but some restaurateurs seem to take it too far. Lettie Teague on how to tell when you’re overpaying

 

Source: WSJ

By LETTIE TEAGUE

Jun 21st

 

ALTHOUGH I’LL ADMIT I’m particularly (perhaps even preternaturally) sensitive to restaurant wine prices, it seems as if they’ve gone up a lot lately-even more than they have in retail wine shops. Are restaurant wine directors actually paying more for their wines, or are they just taking higher markups? According to Chuck Ellis, president of the Newton, Mass.-based research group Restaurant Sciences, it’s actually a bit of both.

 

Restaurant wine prices for the same wines are definitely higher overall, said Mr. Ellis in a recent phone call, and the reason is “a mix of higher wholesale prices and higher margins.” Restaurant Sciences tracks thousands of wine, beer and liquor brands across tens of thousands of restaurants, nightclubs and bars in the U.S. and Canada, and in the past six months, the company’s researchers found an “absolute increase” in wine markups.

 

The markup of a wine-the amount of money a restaurant charges above the wholesale price-is a rather touchy topic for most restaurateurs. In fact, that was the first point that Bernie Sun, beverage director for the Jean-Georges restaurant group, made in an email to me. Mr. Sun, who oversees around 20 restaurants all over the world, sees the situation from two perspectives. He’s “a wine guy” who was once a sommelier, which means he wants wines to be accessibly priced. But he’s also a corporate director who knows that wine is a “revenue center.”

 

As a revenue center, wine has to support several other costs, said Mr. Sun. For example, there is the expensive stemware (Riedel), the salaries of the sommeliers (Jean-Georges has four) and even the cost of the wine list itself. For example, the 16 leather wine-list binders at the Jean-Georges flagship cost $500 apiece and every page in the book costs 15 cents a sheet. The list is 32 pages long and changes almost daily.

 

And then there’s the cost of inventory, particularly with wines that are kept for a period of years before they’re placed on the list. It’s expensive to buy wines and then store them. While these wines may be more pleasurable to drink after a few years of age, they restrict cash flow-and take up precious cellar space.

 

These are some of the more defensible reasons for a markup between two and three times the wholesale cost of the bottle. As Mr. Sun notes, the “conventional markup” at New York fine-dining restaurants sees bottles sell for around three times the wholesale cost. This seems to be true in other parts of the country as well, according to restaurant directors I spoke with from California to Cleveland. But there are exceptions to this rule-restaurants that mark up their wines to four times wholesale or more. (Generally speaking, the retail markup on a bottle of wine is one and a half times its wholesale price.)

 

Take, for example, Montmartre in New York. This simple French bistro doesn’t have a wine list in a fancy leather binder (it’s one page in a plastic sleeve) or a team of sommeliers, and I doubt that it has the wines in its cellar for more than few weeks. The restaurant has been open for only a few months, after all. And yet, the markup on its wine list is close to four times wholesale-and often more.

 

The list features some nice choices, but the prices are high-not necessarily in terms of actual dollars, but in terms of markups. The bottle of 2011 Clos de Roilette Fleurie that I ordered cost $64 at the restaurant, but it’s only $15 a bottle wholesale in New York (and even less if more than three cases are ordered, according to its distributor, David Bowler Wines).

 

The 2011 Brick House Gamay, a lovely Oregon wine that costs $20 wholesale, was priced at $70 on the Montmartre list. And there was more. The 2010 Dashe Dry Creek Zinfandel, priced at $64, costs $17 wholesale. The seemingly reasonable 2011 Les Garrigues Côtes du Rhône (one of the cheapest wines on the list) was priced at $40 a bottle but costs only $7.33 wholesale-and that’s not counting possible quantity discounts. That seemed like a pretty fat profit margin to me.

 

When I contacted Gabriel Stulman, the owner of Montmartre and New York restaurants Fedora, Joseph Leonard, Chez Sardine, Perla and Jeffrey’s Grocery, he said the wholesale prices he’d paid were higher than the ones I’d found (though he couldn’t give exact figures). He also noted that his restaurants were very small and his expenses were high, including a “substantially higher payroll” for his staff than average (though he didn’t cite salary figures).

 

While it is certainly laudable to compensate a professional staff, such markups are still annoying to wine drinkers and to the winemakers themselves. When I emailed one producer to tell him how much his wine had been marked up on a list, he expressed great frustration, explaining that he only made a few dollars profit on the wine himself.

 

Why do restaurateurs indulge in this sort of outrageous stuff? “Because they can,” said Bobby Stuckey, the owner and wine director at Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder, Colo., which this year won a James Beard Award for outstanding wine service. And he had an interesting theory: It was because restaurant critics weren’t acting as watchdogs. “Restaurant critics don’t have the expertise about wine. If a journalist doesn’t know it’s an abuse, they can’t give a restaurateur an incentive to change,” said Mr. Stuckey.

 

There are restaurants that Mr. Stuckey simply won’t patronize on account of their wine pricing. Was that because he knew how much a wine actually costs? In fact, it was because Mr. Stuckey regarded the excessive markup as a red flag of sorts, a clue that the diner “might not be getting the greatest food product.” In other words, if they’re gouging you on wine, they’re probably not doing you any favors when it comes to the food. (Mr. Stuckey was careful to point out his theory didn’t apply to restaurants at the highest level that spend a great deal of money on glassware and staff education.)

 

Mr. Stuckey has changed his wine pricing structure over the years. For several years, he charged only $20 over the retail price of the wine on every bottle on his list. But it didn’t make a lot of fiscal sense, and worse, no one even seemed to notice they were getting a great deal-neither customers nor reviewers. Right now, the average Frasca markup is about 2.75 times the wholesale cost. The fact that the restaurant is now in its 10th year and is much-acclaimed would seem like a solid indication that this is a good route.

 

David Gordon has been the wine director at Tribeca Grill in New York for more than 20 years and presides over one of the most reasonably priced lists in the city. This is especially true of the wines with some age. Mr. Gordon doesn’t mark up wines he has had for years-even if they gain in value over time. That’s how he manages to offer wines like an eight-year-old Riesling from the legendary German producer Hermann Dönnhoff for a mere $40 and the 2007 Isabel Ferrando Colombis Châteauneuf-du-Pape for an incredible $120 (I’ve seen it priced at $125 in a store).

 

For his part, Mr. Gordon thinks that some restaurateurs believe they can get away with high markups because their customers won’t notice or complain. He’s clearly right-and yet, some drinkers do notice. For example, a friend of mine was so turned off by the wine prices at Montmartre that he went to its sister restaurant Chez Sardine instead. But the deals were no better a few blocks away. “I paid $67 for a German Weissburgunder that cost $16 wholesale,” he reported, adding that he found it in a nearby store for $23 a bottle. “They didn’t even have to keep the wine in stock-they could just send the busboy down the street to pick it up and they’d make a $40 profit,” my friend wrote, adding that this kind of pricing made him “angry at wine.”

 

More important, this sort of pricing can keep people from drinking wine. That evening at Montmartre, I noticed that both of the couples on either side of our table were drinking, respectively, water and cocktails. And that’s not a scene that any wine director, winemaker or wine lover is ever happy to see.

 

 

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Five men in court for stealing Bordeaux ‘to order’

 

Source: Decanter

by Sophie Kevany in Bordeaux

Sunday 23 June 2013

 

Police in Bordeaux have taken five men into custody on suspicion of stealing and selling on high-end wines including Petrus, Cheval Blanc, Ausone, Le Pin and Yquem.

 

The wines were stolen to order, then resold by a network that also fenced expensive cars and jewellery, a police statement said.

 

The men appeared in court last weekend in Libourne. Three of them were remanded in prison, awaiting trail, while the other two were placed on probation.

 

The gang’s latest wine haul, found in a warehouse on Bordeaux’s right bank at the end of May, was worth an estimated ?300,000. The cases have now been returned to their owners.

 

‘One of the most important parts of this operation was identifying not only the robbers, but the fences they work with,’ a member of the investigative team, Colonel Frédéric Bonneval, told Decanter.com.

 

Two of the five men are suspected of stealing the wine, while the other three are suspected of fencing it, ie selling it on. One of the men was a former jeweller in Bordeaux.

 

Bonneval said that although there were no statistics to show wine robberies in Bordeaux were on the increase, rising prices for fine wines made trade in ‘parallel markets’ more attractive. ‘Fine wine robberies, however, remain a specialised business, it’s not just anyone that can do it,’ he said.

 

Earlier this month thieves stole 380 bottles of Chateau d’Yquem worth ?125,000 from the chateau cellars. Bonneval said the two cases were not linked.

 

 

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Aldi Australia to venture into online liquor sales business

 

Source: DBR

24 June 2013

 

Aldi Australia is all set to enter into online liquor sales business by offering consumers with a range of liquors through its online platform, www.aldiliquor.com.au, from 1 August 2013.

 

The online liquor store will carry over 200 products under two categories – Aldi’s everyday range of local and international beer, wine and spirits, and online only ‘special buys’ available while stocks last.

 

To purchase the beverages, customers must be at least 18 years of age and above, and will have to provide age proof during delivery.

 

Aldi Australia group managing director Tom Daunt was quoted by The Shout as saying that considering not all Aldi stores in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Victoria are able to stock liquor, and liquor licensing laws in Queensland do not currently allow sale at all, they wanted to extend this offering to all customers over 18 years of age to enjoy.

 

“Aldi has tapped into its international network to launch Aldi Liquor online,” Daunt added.

 

“Customers will find products not otherwise available in Australia – all at the click of a mouse. Backed by Aldi’s 100 per cent satisfaction guarantee, customers will be assured of great quality unique products at exceptional value.”

 

The Aldi Liquor online platform will soon be made available as an app for both iPhone and Android devices.

 

 

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Tesco chief’s basket of problems fills up

 

Source: FT

By Andrea Felsted, Senior Retail Correspondent

Jun 21st

 

When Philip Clarke, chief executive of Tesco, stood before shareholders at their annual meeting in Cardiff, the Welsh capital, last year, he was under pressure to pull out of the retailer’s US operations.

 

The Tesco veteran of almost 40 years has since heeded those calls, and pulled the plug on predecessor Sir Terry Leahy’s American dream – at a cost of £1bn.

 

But when Mr Clarke faces shareholders in London on Friday, he will do so with a plethora of other problems to contend with – and they will require him to reconnect not just with shareholders, but with the supermarket group’s other major stakeholders: its customers.

 

If a culture of success bred a reluctance to listen, then overcoming past failures will need a willingness to engage on both the shop floor and trading room floor, analysts now say.

 

Mr Clarke’s new management team – only one of the directors who ran the business under Sir Terry remains – already has a lengthy to-do list.

 

Agreement has not yet been struck to sell the US business, Fresh & Easy. Recovery in the UK, after Tesco’s profit warning in February 2012, is not yet a given. Meanwhile, in Tesco’s sprawling international empire, Mr Clarke continues to fight fires – from regulatory constraints in South Korea to economic malaise in central Europe.

 

“Obviously, the UK is now suffering, but everywhere else is as well,” says one top 10 shareholder.

 

Mr Clarke became chief executive in March 2011, in the company’s biggest management transition for 14 years. In taking over from Sir Terry, he was following a man who had transformed Tesco from a struggling domestic grocer into an assertive world-class brand.

 

Initially, Mr Clarke was enthusiastic about his inheritance. But in early 2012, after a £500m price cutting scheme failed to gain traction, he issued Tesco’s first profit warning in 20 years – which wiped £5bn off its market value.

 

Tesco UK, which still accounts for about two-thirds of group sales and profits, had been run too “hot”, he said, alluding to the way the group had been trying to squeeze out every last profit in the UK, to bolster operations elsewhere – including the US.

 

Having accumulated a large UK land bank over the preceding decade, Tesco had opened more big supermarkets – but appeared to have lost touch with its customers, who were increasingly shopping online or in convenience stores.

Mix is changing across Tesco outlets

 

Britain’s biggest retailer has about 850 large stores in the UK and revamped about 300 of them last year, representing about a quarter of its total domestic estate. It will refurbish another 300 this year, with a focus on its 1,500 convenience stores.

 

It is also changing the product mix in its supermarkets and revamping its larger hypermarkets, with a new-format store in Watford due to open in August. [Continue reading}

 

Clive Black, analyst at Shore Capital, says some of the issues Mr Clarke now faces were “undoubtedly” a legacy of past decisions. “To use rugby parlance, the ball was thrown somewhat faster and lower than he was expecting,” he says.

 

Nevertheless, Mr Clarke must now deal with the consequences.

 

Reconnecting with customers has meant changing Tesco’s culture. According to people familiar with the company’s management, a culture of success had led to a defensive arrogance. “I think he has tried to make Tesco listen again,” says Mr Black.

 

But Mr Clarke will need any change in attitude to deliver a quick turnround in his UK stores, where underlying sales fell 1 per cent year on year in the three months to May 25.

 

While sales are growing in convenience stores and online, analysts estimate that in the core store estate, they are going backwards.

 

He is spending £1bn making stores more inviting, putting food at the heart of the offer, and increasing staff numbers. But he also knows that the new shopfront is the internet. In a telling echo of a much-quoted statistic about Tesco’s share of high-street spending, research group Verdict now estimates that £1 in every £8 will be spent online.

 

Demand for many commodity items, such as consumer electronics, is migrating from supermarket shelves on to retail websites. Consequently, Tesco is ditching in-store sales of electricals, which will drag down sales.

 

It is also downsizing. A 120,000-sq ft store in Stockton-on-Tees, for example, is to be reduced to 80,000-sq ft – by installing a gym on the store’s mezzanine floor, and a children’s play area on the ground floor.

 

Philip Dorgan, analyst at Panmure Gordon, says Tesco is making strides online. He estimates that Tesco generated £2.4bn of UK grocery sales via the internet in the year to February, with another £281m of online groceries sales overseas.

 

By contrast, Mr Dorgan suggests Tesco Direct – which sells non-food items, such as clothing and entertainment online – generated online sales of just under £500m. He estimates UK and overseas grocery online made a profit of £225m, while Tesco Direct made a £60m loss.

 

But with the pressure on UK sales, concerns about Tesco’s profitability are emerging once more. Its shares have fallen 8.5 per cent since a disappointing first-quarter update.

 

“In an industry that keeps adding capacity faster than demand, Tesco is still losing market share, suffering like-for-like declines, and faces considerable profit pressures,” says Dave McCarthy, Investec Securities analyst.

 

If this were not enough, Mr Clarke faces challenges outside of Tesco’s domestic market. In the three months to May 25, like-for-like sales in Asia fell 3.8 per cent year on year, and 5.5 per cent in central Europe.

 

“What we can say beyond doubt, and according to Tesco’s accounts, is collectively, its international businesses are earning less than 6 per cent per annum, which is below the cost of capital,” notes Mr McCarthy. “They are destroying shareholder value.”

 

Mr Clarke, who ran Tesco’s international operations before becoming chief executive, has exited the US and Japan, and analysts believe further corporate activity is a possibility.

 

Tesco is already eyeing a joint venture in China, according to people familiar with the situation.

 

India also offers significant potential, although the global grocers want more clarity on retail liberalisation.

 

Either way, in the wake of the US debacle, any more bold global moves are unlikely. Any new ventures will be tested carefully. This approach is also being taken in the UK, where new formats are being refined before being rolled out. Tesco, it seems, is more willing to listen to customers. The question is: will shareholders be in a mood to listen on Friday.

 

 

——

Tim Martin tops list of pub industry’s most influential

 

Source: MA

By Rob Willock

21-Jun-2013

 

The chairman of JD Wetherspoon is back on the top of the PMA’s list of pub industry power players in 2013.

 

Every year, the PMA team compiles the definitive list of the sector’s power players – those who have helped to shape the trade in the past 12 months. And this year – as in 2010 and 2011 – it is headed by Tim Martin

 

Editor Rob Willock says: “It was hard to look far beyond Tim Martin in our search for the most influential person in the pub industry. He may even be our only true ‘personality’ in terms of public recognition – the Sir Richard Branson or Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou of the on-trade. Surely it can only be a matter of time before a knighthood comes Martin’s way.

 

“Martin is a big character, both literally (at 6ft 6ins tall) and instantly recognisable by his trademark mullet haircut. This qualified barrister is a man of conviction, if not high fashion, and has combined a canny flair for business (he built JD Wetherspoon from a single site in 1979 to a managed estate of 870+ pubs today) with an instinct for a popular campaign.”

 

Martin is a passionate campaigner for a reduction in VAT for hospitality businesses – to level the playing field with supermarkets – and an outspoken critic of minimum unit pricing for alcohol.

 

His late support for the campaign against the Beer Duty Escalator campaign guaranteed it column inches in the tabloid press, and arguably helped secure the historic tax reversal.

 

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/content/view/print/786487

 

——

Florida: Craft brewers clash with Big Beer lobby

 

Source: Tampa Bay Tribune

BY JAMES L. ROSICA

June 22, 2013

 

A battle is brewing between Florida’s craft beermakers, including Tampa’s popular Cigar City, and the Big Beer lobby, representing the state’s distributors.

 

It came to a head in this spring’s legislative session when the Florida Beer Wholesalers Association opposed a bill that would have allowed craft brewers to sell their suds direct to consumers by the half-gallon, in 64-ounce jugs known as “growlers.”

 

The law already allows bigger and smaller growlers, quart-size at 32 ounces and gallon-size at 128 ounces, but the 64-ounce is the most popular among craft beer aficionados and is considered the industry standard.

 

That bill didn’t pass, but Big Beer had already tucked what some privately called a “poison pill” into an amendment – one that goes far beyond the growler question to target how the state’s craft beer industry does business.

 

The battle ended in a stalemate – for now.

 

But the sides already are squaring off for next session in a conflict with its roots in the Prohibition era and the three-tiered alcohol distribution scheme that has emerged in Florida since then.

 

The wholesalers’ amendment would have changed an exception to Florida liquor law that enabled Tampa’s Busch Gardens, then owned by Anheuser-Busch, to serve beer at the theme park’s hospitality centers.

 

That exception allows smaller brewers like Cigar City’s Joey Redner to open tasting rooms next to their brewhouses, introducing visitors to their wares and letting them buy beer to take home.

 

“Tasting rooms are our marketing,” Redner said. “That’s our neon sign.”

 

After the country’s failed experiment with Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, states wanted to make sure no one – like mobsters – had monopoly control over booze.

 

They created a three-level system in which producers, including brewers, could sell only to wholesale distributors. The distributors then would sell to the retailers, and only retailers could sell to consumers. The idea was that nobody in one tier could unduly influence anyone in another, especially on pricing.

 

That system is what Mitch Rubin wants to preserve.

 

Rubin, executive director of the Florida Beer Wholesalers Association, disagrees that his group’s opposition is about protecting its own bottom line.

 

He points to a bill that passed this year, allowing the state’s craft liquor distillers to directly sell two bottles per customer per year, as “conscious policy making.”

 

“If you’re going to have an exception, the question becomes, what is the nature and extent of that exception?” he said. “This is a legitimate public policy debate.”

 

In 1963, Sen. Tom Whitaker Jr. of Tampa introduced a bill allowing beer manufacturers in Florida to get a “vendor’s license for the sale of alcoholic beverages.” It’s not apparent from historical legislative records that Anheuser-Busch, which had a brewery in Tampa, sought the change.

 

The bill was considered by the “Committee on Temperance,” eventually passed both chambers and then-Gov. Farris Bryant let it become law without his signature.

 

Over the years, the liquor law exception was changed to require beer makers to have “a single complex, which property shall include a brewery and such other structures which promote the brewery and the tourist industry of the state.”

 

The exception let Anheuser-Busch give away samples of its beer at an exotic-bird garden next to its Tampa brewery, which closed in 1995 and was torn down.

 

The bird garden evolved into what became the Busch Gardens theme park. In 2009, Anheuser-Busch’s new owners decided to sell off its theme parks.

 

The Florida Brewers Guild, which represents craft brewers and brewpubs, this year supported the half-gallon growler bill (HB 715/SB 1344).

 

In March, Sen. Maria Sachs, a Delray Beach Democrat, offered an amendment to the Senate bill. The Florida Beer Wholesalers Association had contributed $2,000 to Sachs’ 2012 campaign, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

 

The amendment would have allowed half-gallon growlers, as well as take-home sales by “startup breweries.”

 

But it also would have required breweries taking advantage of the exception to have “at least 25 enclosed acres of land,” “a controlled entrance and exit,” “permanent exhibitions and a variety of recreational activities” and “at least 1 million visitors annually (who) pay admission fees.”

 

In other words, the legal exception-which had never explicitly mentioned theme parks-would almost certainly apply only to them and not to craft brewers.

 

“I’m not saying every brewer has to do what Busch Gardens did; that’s a huge investment,” Rubin said. “But there have to be other tourism structures,” arguing that a brewery alone isn’t sufficient to promote tourism under the exception’s language.

 

Sachs did not respond to a request for an interview. Her amendment was never voted on, and the House and Senate versions of the growler bill died in committee.

 

The beer distributors “don’t like that we’re using that exception for our small brewers,” said Josh Aubuchon, the Florida Brewers Guild’s executive director and general counsel. “Beer tourism is becoming big, with the craft beer movement gaining speed.”

 

Cigar City’s beers, which have won national and global awards, have gained a national following since debuting in 2009, including its ‘Jai Alai’ India pale ale and ‘Maduro’ brown ale. About 1,500 people a week visit the Spruce Street brewery. Its yearly beer release party-Hunahpu’s Day, named after the Mayan god of chocolate-attracts thousands, and Redner now employs 52 people.

 

Both sides expect to butt heads again next session. And retail sales and tasting rooms at breweries will continue to be a sore point for Big Beer.

 

“That’s where we can tell our story,” Redner said. “And if our story wasn’t compelling – and our product wasn’t so good – we wouldn’t be here.”

 

 

——

Washington: Total Wine & More to construct store in Spokane Valley

 

Source: The Spokesman-Review

Tom Sowa

Jun 22nd

 

Total Wine & More, the nation’s largest liquor retailer, intends to build its second area liquor store in Spokane Valley, the company announced Friday.

 

The 25,000-square-foot, $1.7 million retail center will open in time for the holidays.

 

Company officials chose the location to compete with other liquor retailers along the Washington-Idaho border.

 

Based in Maryland, Total Wine opened its north Spokane store last year after voters passed Initiative 1183, pulling the state out of the business of selling spirits. More than 1,400 retailers now sell liquor across the state.

 

After opening the 25,000-square-foot store in north Spokane, company owner David Trone said Total Wine regarded a location near the Spokane Valley Mall as a key in gaining more liquor sales.

 

Because the initiative imposes a 10 percent fee on spirits distributors, liquor prices in Washington are generally higher than in Idaho or Oregon.

 

That new fee has resulted in Washington consumers frequenting stores at border locations such as Post Falls and Stateline.

 

“The Spokane Valley Mall site is aimed directly at the Idaho traffic” from Washington customers, Trone said in an interview last December.

 

Total Wine has volume-order advantages and discount promotions with spirits producers that allow it to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart, Costco and low-margin grocery stores selling spirits in Washington, he said.

 

Trone also predicted the new Valley Total Wine will win over Idaho liquor customers, especially once the distribution tax imposed by I-1183 is scaled back and no longer passed along to customers.

 

That reduction, however, is not a done deal. Budget-cautious state legislators in Olympia are considering extending the 10 percent distribution fee beyond the first two years, said Chris Marr, a member of the Washington state Liquor Control Board.

 

Even so, Trone is confident Total Wine’s huge inventory and competitive pricing will keep the store competitive with or without the distribution tax reduction.

 

The north Spokane store’s shelves carry about 8,000 wines, 3,000 spirits and 2,500 beers, according to Total Wine’s marketing department.

 

Rather than converting an existing building, Total Wine decided to build its own store in Spokane Valley. The new location, at 13802 E. Indiana Ave., is west of the Spokane Valley Mall, between Great Floors and Fred’s Appliance Design Center.

 

No opening date has been announced. Construction is expected to start within 30 days. Company officials say the store will hire 40 workers.

 

 

——

Pennsylvania: Prohibition: PA liquor board shuts down attorney’s booze column

 

Do public employees have different rights to free speech?

 

Source: Philly.com

Melissa Daniels

Friday, June 21, 2013

 

For two years, attorney Alan Kennedy-Shaffer has had an insider’s view of Pennsylvania liquor laws. He’s assistant counsel for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, the state agency that’s dominated headlines as the liquor privatization debate swells and sputters.

 

But the PLCB doesn’t want Kennedy-Shaffer writing about these laws in public, arguing it’s a conflict of interest.

 

Kennedy-Shaffer, no stranger to ruffling feathers, said that’s censorship.

 

“Public employees do not lose their right to free speech simply because their day job happens to be at the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, or any other agency,” he said.

 

Now he’s engaged in a debate with the state on that First Amendment right.

 

Proposed column on liquor laws

 

In late May, Kennedy-Shaffer approached the Philadelphia-based The Legal Intelligencer, the nation’s oldest law journal, about writing a column on Pennsylvania liquor laws. He wouldn’t get paid, but looked forward to seeing his name in the publication.

 

Given the widespread interest in state wine and spirit stores since Gov. Corbett made his privatization push earlier this year, Kennedy-Shaffer said he thought the column would be informative by explaining the history of how the PLCB developed since Prohibition, and answering reader questions about state laws.

 

“I felt honored to have the opportunity,” said Kennedy-Shaffer, who is also an active community organizer in Harrisburg. “I feel that I could provide a unique perspective on the issues that so many Pennsylvanians do care about.”

 

But before he started writing, he wanted to get permission from his employers. Kennedy-Shaffer filed a disclosure form – and found the PLCB was significantly less excited about one of their attorneys authoring columns about its laws.

 

They gave him two options – forgo the column, or resign from the PLCB.

 

“Any column authored by you regarding liquor law could be utilized to the Board’s disadvantage,” said the denial letter from PLCB human resources officials. “The Board does not give it consent to engage in this action.”

 

The letter said writing about liquor laws would conflict with Kennedy-Shaffer’s duties as an as attorney, and violate terms of the Liquor Code and the PLCB Code of Conduct.

 

By Kennedy-Shaffer’s own admission on the disclosure form, his position requires him to participate in contract, licensing and financial decisions. The PLCB told him they would not give him consent to disclose confidential information, and that his views could be interpreted as that of the agency.

 

“Given your current position, it would be difficult for readers of your article/column to differentiate and distinguish between your job duties and any opinions expressed in your column,” reads the letter.

 

Now Kennedy-Shaffer has appealed the decision to the Office of Administration, saying the PLCB is violating his right to free speech.

 

“Our First Amendment rights, especially freedom of speech, cannot be abridged by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board or any other government agency simply because the PLCB may disagree with our personal views or is fearful that we may say something they don’t like,” Kennedy-Shaffer wrote to Secretary of Administration Kelly Powell-Logan. “In this case, the PLCB has no right to censor my personal views on matters of public concern.”

 

This isn’t the first time that Kennedy-Shaffer’s extracurricular activities have raised concerns about conflicts of interest.

 

Kennedy-Shaffer went through a similar situation last year when he disclosed his creation of Harrisburg Hope, a community organization meant to engage city residents in Harrisburg’s debt recovery and local politics. Then, too, PLCB denied his request. But he appealed the case to the Office of Administration and won.

 

In this case, Kennedy-Shaffer said he thought the PLCB was heavy-handed in its denial.

 

“We need more government transparency, not less,” he said.

 

As for concerns about leaking proprietary information, Kennedy-Shaffer said no reputable attorney would violate their attorney-client privilege, or put their client at a disadvantage. He had also offered to allow the PLCB to review the column before submission, and include a disclaimer that his views didn’t represent those of the agency.

 

“My vision for the column was to encourage the readers to ask questions about liquor law or liquor issues, and then I would provide my views and any information I could,” he said.

 

The PLCB could not offer additional comment on the situation because it is a personnel matter, said press secretary Stacy Kriedeman.

 

Court rulings on the matter

 

The rights of public employees to share their views on issues involving their official duties has been tried and tested in the courts.

 

In May 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Garcetti v. Ceballos by a 5-4 majority that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect public employees from employer discipline regarding statements made pursuant to their official duties.

 

Interpreting this involves whether or not the public employee was speaking as “a citizen on a matter of public concern.” If not, the employee does not have First Amendment protections.

 

“The question becomes whether the government employer had an adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public,” the court found. “A government entity has broader discretion to restrict speech when it acts in its role as employer, but the restrictions it imposes must be directed at speech that has some potential to affect the entity’s operations.”

 

Rick Esenberg, founder of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, is a Marquette University Law School professor and lawyer with experience trying public employee free speech cases.

 

Pennsylvania law may provide Kennedy-Shaffer an avenue to argue free speech clauses, Esenberg said, if it has a broader interpretation than federal cases.

 

At a federal level, per Garcetti and other case law, if statements relate to a public employee’s job abilities, they do not have the same First Amendment rights, he said.

 

But again, it comes back to whether the speech is occurring under the responsibilities of begin a public employee.

 

“When you’re exercising your right to free speech as a public employee, you don’t have the same rights as someone else,” he said.

 

 

——

United Kingdom: Britain pays more for food and alcohol than most of Europe (but Norway is the most expensive place to shop)

 

Source: Daily Mail

Jun 21st

 

Alcohol in the UK 43% above the European Union average

Pub campaigners blame high taxes taken by the govermnment

Tobacco 94% more expensive than average across the EU

Norway most expensive for food and drink and Macedonia the cheapest

 

Alcohol prices costs in the UK are higher than most of Europe, new figures revealed today.

 

Families feeling the pinch will also be alarmed by research showing Brits pay on average more for milk, cheese and eggs than the European Union average.

 

And smokers face some of the highest prices in the whole of EU as taxes rise in an attempt to persuade cash-strapped addicts to quit.

 

The 2012 league table of food and drink costs reveals Norway is the most expensive place to shop, followed by Switzerland and Denmark, the Office for National Statistics said.

 

Across all food and non-alcoholic drinks, the UK pays four per cent above the EU27.

 

Norway has the highest prices at 86 per cent above the average while Macedonia is the lowest  on 42 per cent below.

 

But alcohol prices in the UK are some of the highest in Europe, some 43 per cent above the EU27 average, behind only high-cost Scandinavian countries like Norway, Finland and Sweden., and places like Iceland and Ireland.

 

Critics accused the government of driving up costs by increasing duty on beer, wine and spirits.

 

Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, said: ‘Huge tax rises are mostly to blame.

 

‘This is why the successful campaign to abolish the beer duty escalator was so vital. Up until the March Budget, we saw beer duty rise by 42 per cent over four years.

 

‘Huge amounts of red tape, and other taxes such as business rates, also push up prices.  The industry supports almost one million jobs – and we could be creating many more if tax and red tape weren’t so stifling.’

 

By comparison, in France alcohol costs are 12 per cent below the average and Germany 18 per cent lower.

 

The cheapest places to buy booze are Macedonia and Bulgaria, where prices are more than a third lower than Europe’s average.

 

The new figures show tobacco prices in the UK were 94 per cent above the average last year.

 

Only Norway (170 per cent higher) and Ireland (99 per cent above) were more expensive.

 

The form part of the Eurostat price survey on food, beverages and tobacco.

 

British shoppers also pay more for milk, cheese and egg prices with prices 7 per cent higher than the rest of Europe.

 

Once again, Norway is the most expensive at 114 per cent above while Poland is the cheapest at 37 per cent below the average.

 

Richard Lloyd, executive director of consumer watchdog Which?, said: ‘Our research shows that rising food prices is one of the top worries for financially squeezed consumers, with one in five households already saying they’re having to dip into their savings to pay for basics, such as food.’

 

According to latest Which? research, 9.8 million households are feeling the squeeze with 78 per cent of people now worried about food prices.

 

Four in ten people are likely to reduce their spending on groceries and food in the next few months.

 

According to the ONS study, the cost of meat in the UK was exactly in line with the average with Switzerland the most expensive and Albania least expensive.

 

The one glimmer of good news for Brits came on the cost of bread and cereals, which was 11 per cent below the EU average.

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Monday June 17th 2013

GO BRUINS!!

Diageo chief set to be next Compass chairman

 

Boss of Guinness and Smirnoff firm tipped for top job at Surrey-based services firm which made £1.1bn last year

 

Source: The Guardian

Sunday 16 June 2013

The long-serving boss of the Guinness and Smirnoff firm Diageo is reportedly in line to claim one of the top leadership jobs currently up for grabs in the FTSE 100.

 

Paul Walsh, who is stepping down at Diageo this summer after 13 years at the helm, is reported to be the next chairman of the catering and services multinational Compass.

 

The role, which is currently held by Sir Roy Gardner, is one of a number of top-flight vacancies that also include Lloyds Banking Group, WPP, Centrica and GlaxoSmithKline.

 

The Sunday Times said Walsh’s likely appointment at Compass would boost its international expansion prospects as he has overseen deals in Turkey, Brazil, India and China. Under his watch at Diageo, the firm’s market value has grown by about £30bn, helped by deals such as its acquisition of the Seagram drinks empire.

 

Ivan Menezes will take over as chief executive at Diageo from 1 July, though Walsh will remain for a year’s transition period.

 

Walsh began his career with Grand Metropolitan in 1982. The drinks firm merged with Guinness in 1997 to create Diageo.

 

The Surrey-based Compass, which handles catering at major sporting events such as Wimbledon and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, made profits of £1.1bn in the year to last September.

 

 

——

Bernard Arnault still wealthiest wine owner in France

 

Source: Decanter

by Jane Anson in Bordeaux

Saturday 15 June 2013

Bernard Arnault of LVMH – owner of Hennessy, Moët et Chandon and Chateau Yquem – continues to head up the list of wealthiest wine owners in France, according to the second annual roundup published in Challenges magazine this week.

 

His fortune is listed at ?1.5 billion, a slight rise from last year due to the appreciation in the value of his vines. Arnault (through LVMH) also owns half of Chateau Cheval Blanc with his friend and business associate Albert Frère, the wealthiest man in Belgium.

 

The Castel family, headed up by Pierre Castel and owners of Castel Freres and 50% of Chateau Beychevelle, Chateau Beaumont, négociant company Barrière Frères and wine merchants Nicolas is listed in second place, with a fortune of ?875 million.

 

Coming in third is Frédéric Rouzaud of Champagne Roederer, owner of Chateau Pichon Longueville among others, with an ?800 million fortune, just in front of Philippine de Rothschild of Mouton Rothschild with ?750 million.

 

Francois Pinault of Chateau Latour, Chateau Grillet and Domaine d’Eugénie comes in sixth at ?700 million, with fellow First Growth owner Corinne Mentzelopoulos of Chateau Margaux at number 6, with an estimated fortune of ?600 million.

 

The rest of the top 10 places go to Christian and Jean-Francois Moeuix (counted together, although their companies are in fact separate) with ?550 million, Bernard Magrez of Chateau Pape Clement with ?525 million, and Michel Reybier of Cos d’Estournel with Benjamin de Rothschild, of Chateau Clarke, each listed with a fortune of ?450 million.

 

Each owner within the top 10 has seen a rise in estimated net worth over the past 12 months, due to the rises in land values seen in their appellations.

 

The Challenges article lists the top 50 wine-related fortunes, and other notable figures include Gerard Perse of Chateau Pavie at 12 (?375 million), Jean-Hubert Delon of Léoville Las Cases at 14 (?320 million) and Jean-Michel Cazes of Lynch Bages in 20th spot (?260 million).

 

Baron Eric de Rothschild of Chateau Lafite Rothschild makes an appearance at number 24, alongside both Jean Merlaut of Gruaud Larose and Martin and Olivier Bouygues of Chateau Montrose, all with an estimated net worth of ?260 million.

 

At the lower reaches of the Top 50 come Daniel and Florence Cathiard of Smith Haut Lafitte at 45 with ?170 million, and Didier Cuvelier of Léoville Poyferré at number 50 with a mere ?145 million.

 

 

——

Total compensation for Constellation CEO exceeds $8 million in 2013

 

Source: Rochester Business Journal

By ANDREA DECKERT

June 14, 2013

 

Constellation Brands Inc.’s president and CEO saw a slight drop in his base salary in fiscal 2013 over fiscal 2012.

 

Robert Sands earned a base salary of $1.19 million in fiscal 2013, down from $1.20 million the previous year. Including other pay, such as stock awards and non-incentive equity plan compensation, Sands total compensation in fiscal 2013 was up to $8.01 million, from $7.71 million the prior year, filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission show.

 

Salaries of top executives at Victor-based Constellation Brands were included in a filing for the company’s annual meeting, which will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, July 24 at the Callahan Theater at the Nazareth College Arts Center.

 

Constellation Brands’ fiscal 2013 year ended Feb. 28.

 

Pay for other executives are below:

 

Richard Sands, chairman of the board: base salary of $1.16 million, down from $1.18 million the previous year. Including other compensation, total compensation was $6.36 million, down from $6.69 million in fiscal 2012;

 

Robert Ryder, executive vice president and chief financial officer: base salary for fiscal $582,442, down from $589,725 a year prior. Including other compensation, total compensation was $2.66 million, up from $2.57 million in fiscal 2012;

 

John Wright, executive vice president and chief operating officer: base salary of $578,962 in fiscal 2013, up from $570,702 in fiscal 2012. Including other compensation, total compensation was $2.66 million, up from $2.40 million in fiscal 2012;

 

Keith Wilson, executive vice president and chief human resources and administrative officer: base salary of $531,600 in fiscal 2013, down from $538,247 in fiscal 2012. Including other compensation, total compensation was $2.43 million up from $2.34 million the prior year.

 

 

——

Diageo boss under fire over drink sponsor row

 

Source: Irish Independent

Thomas Molloy

17 June 2013

 

THE country’s largest drinks company has warned that a ban on drinks sponsorship could ultimately lead to less investment here.

 

Diageo, which owns Guinness and controls 40pc of the market, said a clampdown on sponsorship might force the company to reduce spending in future.

 

A spokesman for the company insisted the drinks company “wants to be able to continue with further investments in the future, but to do so requires a sustainable environment in which to promote our Irish-manufactured products responsibly”.

 

Diageo is currently spending ?153m on new plant at the company’s headquarters in Dublin’s St James’s Gate.

 

The comments came after the head of Diageo’s Irish operations said that the company did not have to brew Guinness or make Baileys in Ireland.

 

David Smith dismissed proposals to ban alcohol companies from sponsoring sport and cultural events as “political headlines” that could lead the company to scale back spending here.

 

“If our Irish business is diminished by this, there is less need to invest,” Mr Smith told a Sunday newspaper.

 

The comments were sharply criticised by communications specialist Terry Prone, who said it was “outrageous” for Diageo to suggest that the ban on drinks sponsorship was a “political headline”.

 

“I find that frankly outrageous,” she told RTE’s Marian Finucane show.

 

“For a drinks company to suggest that this is a political issue is very clever spinning…”

 

Director general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, called on the Government to insist that visiting dignitaries are not photographed with a pint of Guinness, which generates free publicity for the company.

 

“One political thing that could be done in relation to Diageo is the next time a head of state comes, they should not be photographed for the world’s media in the greatest PR (public relations) coup ever,” he said.

 

“Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at 10 in the morning had to stand and admire a pint of Guinness.”

 

The company rejected proposals from Junior Health Minister Alex White to ban drinks sponsorship, but said it remained committed to working with the Government to “find the effective solutions to reduce alcohol misuse further”.

 

The comments come as opposition to the drink sponsorship ban continues to mount.

 

Some health campaigners say a ban would help reduce underage drinking and break the link in people’s minds between sport and alcohol.

 

Opponents say there is little evidence that a ban works, and claim that many sporting events would have to be cancelled if sponsorships were removed.

 

A draft report by an Oireachtas committee says the ban is not merited, and the country’s main sporting organisations would suffer financially.

 

Diageo is one of the country’s biggest advertisers and employs around 1,500 people in Ireland.

 

A ban on sponsorship would come at a difficult time for the company, which is struggling with falling sales in Ireland and the rest of Europe as drinking habits change, the recession bites and people become more worried about their health.

 

 

——

Beer Bellies Are a Myth

 

Source: TIME

By Matt Peckham

June 13, 2013

 

Consider the cliché: a darkened room, a bleary-eyed middle-aged man collapsed into a couch, beer in hand, TV-flicker illuminating his sallow stubbled face, and a stomach threatening to escape from his pants like a giant mutant amoeba.

 

Blame that belly on the beer? Not so fast. According to University of California Davis food science professor Charles Bamforth, the colloquial notion of the beer belly – that beer somehow uniquely targets the gut – doesn’t jibe with medical science.

 

“The beer belly is a complete myth. The main source of calories in any alcoholic beverage is alcohol,” Bamforth told Popular Science. “There’s nothing magical about the alcohol in beer, it’s just alcohol.”

 

Alcohol doesn’t have V.I.P. dibs on abdominal fat in other words (any more than spot exercises like sit-ups burn stomach chub), it’s just another ingredient in your caloric regimen, though Bamforth notes that in cases of excessive alcohol consumption (read: abuse) you can develop something called ascites: a buildup of fluid around your abdomen that can cause distension of a sort, though in that case it’s likely related to actual liver damage.

 

So where did this idea that beer consumption spawns belly fat come from anyway?

 

Massachusetts General Hospital alcohol researcher Dr. Aliyah Sohani suggests it may have to do with serving sizes: Both cans and bottles of beer average 12 ounces, while your average glass of wine contains five and your average shot glass is just 1.5 ounces.

 

“You are drinking it in more quantities than wine or liquor, so you tend to have more caloric intake,” says Sohani. “You are talking about a difference between several hundred calories a night and a couple hundred.” Follow the logic here and if the average lush consumed wine in greater quantities than beer, the colloquialism would be “wine belly” (though hello alliterative fizzle).

 

No, that doesn’t mean anyone’s green-lighting your nightly keg stands – alcohol is a calorie-dense compound, after all – it’s just that those extra belly rolls are as likely to come from any calorie-dense source as your favorite brew.

 

 

——

Alcohol ads push underage girls to drink more, research finds (Excerpt)

 

Source: Globe and Mail

SUSAN KRASHINSKY

Thursday, Jun. 13 2013

 

A woman in a tight T-shirt holds a cup in front of her chest as she pours a beer in a TV ad. Her face is cut out of the shot. In another beer commercial, there is a closeup on a woman’s torso from behind as she dances at a party. Next to a bottle of tequila, a man embraces a woman, lifting her up with a smile on his face.

 

These images of sexually attractive, popular women associated with alcoholic beverages are not meant for women as young as 13. But underage girls see them, and the exposure to advertising is having an adverse effect on their health. That’s the argument made in an editorial published on the Canadian Medical Association Journal website on Monday by senior associate editor Dr. Ken Flegel.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/alcohol-ads-push-underage-girls-to-drink-more-research-finds/article12536741/

 

——

NABCA Legislative Update: May 11, 2013-June 14, 2013

 

Source: NABCA

Jun 14th

 

Click Here to View Legislative Update by State

www.nabca.org/News/Files/130614%20Legislation%20and%20Regulation%20State%20Update.pdf

 

Click Here to View Legislative Update by Category

www.nabca.org/News/Files/130614%20Legislation%20and%20Regulation%20Category%20Update.pdf

 

Click Here to View Update on Regulations

www.nabca.org/News/Files/130614%20Regulatory%20Update.pdf

 

——

Wine fund market brought to its knees

 

Source: FT

By Ellen Kelleher

Jun 16th

 

It is difficult to turn a profit on bottles of bordeaux and burgundy when the outlook for sought-after vintages looks bleak at best. And it is more challenging still if you run an open-ended wine fund, as evidence emerges that this niche investment sector is floundering.

 

Just ask Andrew Davison, founder of the Vintage Wine fund, a Cayman-based investment vehicle once boasting as much as ?110m in assets at its 2008 peak. It is to be wound down at the end of the month after being hit by dismal performance, forced sales and a spate of redemptions.

 

“The wine market is dead. It could take years for this market to recover,” says Mr Davison. “I think you have to ask whether open-ended structures are suitable for these sorts of illiquid investments. There’s also a danger that wine funds can get too big. When you allow investors to come in and exit on a regular basis, you get huge outflows when things go bad.”

 

The closure of one of Europe’s oldest wine funds is not a lone example of why gaining exposure to this sector can turn into a cautionary tale.

 

The industry took another hit this month when the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority announced that wine funds listed in London – which are unregulated collective investment schemes – must not be marketed to retail investors of limited means.

 

The demise of the Vintage Wine fund also comes as the Luxembourg financial regulator is forcing Nobles Crus, once the world’s largest registered wine fund worth as much as ?109m, to bar its investors from withdrawing their money. It can no longer sell its shares after running out of cash.

 

The decision by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier to “temporarily suspend all redemptions and subscriptions” in Nobles Crus came late last month after Elite Advisers, the fund’s managers, admitted they did not have enough cash to meet redemptions.

 

The fund revealed the news in a letter sent to investors.

 

“Nobles Crus now finds itself confronted with a few requests from large institutional investors for redemptions involving considerable sums of money,” wrote Miriam Wilson and Michel Tamisier, general partners at Elite Advisers in a letter dated May 31. “Currently, Nobles Crus does not have the necessary liquidity to honour these requests.”

 

The gating of the fund follows a long spell of criticism of its practices. The valuation system Nobles Crus employs continues to come under attack from other wine fund managers, who tend to rely on Liv-ex prices as a benchmark for their portfolios, but have not reported consistently strong returns.

 

Rather controversially, the managers of Nobles Crus opt not to use Liv-ex. Their reasoning is that its coverage of the rarer vintages in which they invest is “patchy and inconsistent”.

 

Andrew della Casa, director of the $55m Wine Investment fund, which only invests in bordeaux, adamantly disagrees with the decision: “We do believe the best practice is to use Liv-ex. If Liv-ex isn’t covering your stocks, then they aren’t liquid enough to be considered in the portfolio.”

 

While many wine funds took a beating in recent years, especially after the Chinese pulled out of bordeaux in 2011, the Nobles Crus fund, which launched with just ?2m in assets at the start of 2008, did not. In 2008, the fund returned 20.4 per cent; in 2010, 13.4 per cent; And in 2012, the fund returned 8 per cent despite meeting millions of euros in redemptions.

 

Envious rivals argue that most of the fund’s profits have come from unrealised accounting gains on inventory, not from actual sales of wine. They say that a number of the bottles in the Nobles Crus portfolio are freely available at cheaper prices elsewhere.

 

Mr Tamisier vigorously defends the fund’s valuation methods.

 

“Our 2001 valuation of Cheval Blanc 2000 included observed market prices from the UK of ?789 per bottle, but up to ?1,525 per bottle from a Hong Kong auction house,” he told FTfm.

 

Wine funds remain exclusive. There are no more than 20 registered, with most concentrated in Europe and a select few in Asia and the US. Even the most established have not been in existence for more than 10 years.

 

Justin Gibbs, co-founder of Liv-ex, says: “Wine funds are still a game in their infancy.”

 

But the market holds appeal, especially for wealthy Chinese, who just a few years ago were responsible for driving the price of fine French wines to record highs.

 

According to Mr Gibbs, the performance of wine, which is worth about £6bn per year as a global market, has been “very lacklustre” since June 2011, when the market turned after a strong two-year run. The best bordeaux vintages tend to fare better than burgundy, but on the whole the market remains weak.

 

In a note to investors, Mr della Casa, described last year’s en primeur season, which involves purchasing wine while a vintage is still in a barrel, as “generally disappointing”.

 

He blamed poor sales on the high release prices French chateaux demand.

 

Mouton Rothschild emerged as the strongest of the young wines, with price increases of around 1.5 per cent on average across vintages. Château Margaux was up a bit as well, while Château Lafite was broadly flat.

 

 

——

Attack on Chinese students overshadows Vinexpo opening

 

Source: Decanter

by Jane Anson

Sunday 16 June 2013

Stéphane le Foll, French agicultral minister, called an attack on six Chinese students, on the eve of the Vinexpo opening, ‘inadmissable’ and ‘xenophobic’.

 

The attack came in the early hours of Saturday morning, on six Chinese oenology students studying at Chateau La Tour Blanche in Sauternes.

 

They were in their apartment, in the village of Hostens when a small group of French men who had earlier received a warning from police to quieten down a party forced their way in.

 

One student was taken to hospital with facial injuries from a bottle being thown at her.

 

The attack is assumed to have been because the men believed the Chinese students had reported the party to the police.

 

Speaking at the opening of Vinexpo, Le Foll condemned the attack, joining demands from the Chinese embassy in Paris to bring the perpetrators to justice to ensure the safety of Chinese students in the country.

 

The timing is particularly unfortunate as the wine industry focuses its attention on Bordeaux for the 17th edition of Vinexpo, the biannual fair started in 1990 by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, and now grown to the world’s largest wine trade fair, with 2400 exhibitors and 46,000 visitors from 120 countries.

 

 

——

Vinexpo opens its doors to 48,000 visitors

 

Source: Harpers

Written by Erin Smith

Sunday, 16 June 2013

 

The international global event Vinexpo 2013 opened its doors today, for the next five days, exhibiting over 2,400 wine and spirit producers, representing 45 different countries and attracting over 145 different nationalities to Bordeaux, France.

 

The international global event Vinexpo 2013 opened its doors today, for the next five days, exhibiting over 2,400 producers, representing 45 different countries of the wine and spirits world and attracting over145 different nationalities in Bordeaux, France.The bi-annual event is anticipating over 48,000 visitors this year. The venue’s focus this year appears to be a great opportunity for producers to showcase new packaging concepts, including innovative closures and smaller single serving containers, such as 20-cl wine bottles or cans.

 

The exhibition is expected to connect producers with global distributors, wine stores, merchants and importers with an anticipated high volume of Asian visitors at this year’s show.

 

Vinexpo also has an extended spirits section this year with designated areas dedicated to Cognac, vodka, rum, whisky, gin, sake, grappa and tequila.

 

Key themes to be discussed this year include online wine sales, global wine distribution, the potential of the Chinese and Asian wine markets as well as decode the latest trends including low alcohol wines and lighter styles of wine and a key focus on rose wines.

 

“Tasting by Vinexpo” which attracted one in four visitors when launched in 2011 will again be a highlight of the show.  The events will take place in several rooms in the Halls 1,2 and 3 hosting over 80 meetings, tastings, and conferences throughout the five-day affair.

 

Stéphane Le Foll, the French Minister of Agriculture, officially opened Vinexpo today at 14:30pm.

 

 

——

New dating site launched for wine lovers

 

VineaLove, which was founded by a French former wine journalist, may help you find your vino-sipping soulmate.

 

Source: NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

By Victoria Taylor

Sunday, June 16, 2013

 

Wine aficionados seeking a special someone to split a bottle with now have their own online dating website.

 

VineaLove, the brainchild of former wine journalist Françoise Pauly, officially launched on Sunday at Vinexpo in Bordeaux, France.

 

“About two months ago, I just woke up with this thought that there wasn’t a dating website for wine lovers,” she said in an interview with the Daily News. “I know there are dating websites for everybody else from geeks to heavy metal fans, so obviously there’s a need for a one for wine lovers.”

 

So Pauly, who founded a wine-related job site in 2003, and her 25-year-old daughter Roxane Brooke started working on VineaLove, which will eventually transition into a paid networking site for wine enthusiasts looking for love or companionship.

 

The first 1,000 users who register on the new site will get a free membership. Pauly said they haven’t nailed down a monthly membership fee for those who sign up after that, but it will likely be about $20 in the U.S. and vary by country.

 

Pauly said subscriptions were coming in from all over the world before the site even launched, with men and women of a range of ages registering from places like India, New Zealand and Morocco.

 

“When people like wine, they love wine,” she said. “It’s a real passion.”

 

English, French, Japanese, Italian and Turkish versions of the site are currently online, and editions in other languages are forthcoming.

 

Pauly said she would like the site to also be an international platform for oenophiles. In your profile, you reveal whether you are looking for a relationship, friendship or business connection, and whether you are single or in a relationship. Users can contact each other individually, or discuss their favorite vineyards and kinds of grapes with other wine connoisseurs on the forum. There will also be VineaLove meet ups and events in major U.S. cities.

 

“What wine people love more than drinking wine is talking about it,” Pauly said.

 

 

——

Constellation Brands’ Chris Fehrnstrom Elected as Board Chairman of Wine Institute

 

Source: WSJ

Jun 14th

 

Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE: STZ and STZ.B), a leading beverage alcohol company, announced today that Chris Fehrnstrom, chief marketing officer, Wine and Spirits division, has been named Chairperson of Wine Institute’s Board of Directors.

 

“The California wine industry is exciting, and rapidly evolving,” said Fehrnstrom. “Our passion for this industry is unwavering and Wine Institute represents California’s wine interests to policymakers with the goal of increasing exports. We take great pride in the quality of our California wine, which is a great example of the best American-made products.”

 

“Our high quality grapes and production of world-class wines is a signature California industry that contributes billions of dollars to the local, regional and national economies,” said Jay Wright, Constellation’s president, Wine and Spirits division.  “We are proud that Chris has been chosen by his peers to work on behalf of Wine Institute with wineries, communities, partners and elected officials throughout the state to positively impact this important industry.”

 

“Chris is widely respected because of his hard work and dedication to the California wine industry,” said Robert P. (Bobby) Koch, president and chief executive officer of Wine Institute.  “His passion, strong industry relationships and understanding of the legislative, regulatory and economic challenges that our members face make him a natural leader. He will continue to drive Wine Institute’s mission to initiate and advocate for public policies that enhance the ability to responsibly produce, promote and enjoy wine.”

 

Fehrnstrom also praised outgoing Chairperson Kathleen Heitz Meyers. “Kathleen exemplifies all that is good about the California wine industry and I would like to congratulate her on her steadfast service.”

 

California is the nation’s top winemaking state, producing 90 percent of U.S. wine, and the 4th largest producer worldwide after France, Italy and Spain. Constellation has a strong presence in this important region including our Robert Mondavi, Clos du Bois, Ravenswood, Simi, Franciscan Estate, Wild Horse and Woodbridge wineries. Because of this presence, Constellation has had a longstanding relationship with Wine Institute.

 

Fehrnstrom has been with Constellation since 2002, first serving as senior vice president of marketing and then president for the company’s former luxury division, Icon Estates.  He then became president of Constellation’s super-premium business before advancing to chief marketing officer for Constellation Brands worldwide in 2009.  Prior to joining the company, Fehrnstrom held key roles at the former Wine.com as well as Domaine Chandon and E. & J. Gallo Winery.

 

 

——

Sweden rejected wine for being ‘better’ than samples

 

Source: UPI

June 14, 2013

 

A Swedish alcohol supplier said the country’s state-run liquor monopoly sent back 6,000 bottles of a Spanish wine because it tasted better than the samples.

 

Kare Hallden, chief executive officer of alcohol supplier Spruce Up, said state-run liquor store monopoly Systembolaget chose to stock Spanish albarino wine Fulget after choosing its samples over 50 competitors in March, The Local.se reported Friday.

 

However, Hallden said the store sent the 6,000 bottles back to the company in May because the wine delivered was “clearly better” than the March samples.

 

“I believe that taste-wise it is exactly the same wine,” Hallden told the Livets Goda wine magazine. “Systembolaget, on the other hand, believes that the wine that has been delivered to the stores is much better than that which won the tender in the beginning of the year.”

 

Systembolaget spokesman Lennart Agen said Hallden’s statements aren’t entirely true.

 

“We never said it tasted better. We’ve said it tasted different. It is simply a different wine,” Agen said. “Whether the wine that was delivered tasted better or not is his value judgment.”

 

Spruce Up said it is being forced to pay the cost of returning the bottles, losing tens of thousands of dollars in the process.

 

 

——

Rolland: En primeur is a ‘game’

 

Source: the drinks business

by Lucy Shaw

14th June, 2013

 

Bordeaux’s leading consultant, Michel Rolland, has admitted that the process of en primeur tastings and the resulting scores is a risky “game” for consumers.

 

Michel Rolland has admitted that the en primeur tasting and rating process is a risky “game” for consumers

 

Speaking to the drinks business this week at the UK launch of his new Spanish wine project, R&G, Rolland said: “You only get to the truth of a wine when it’s in the bottle, before that it’s a sort of game where the consumer can win or lose.”

 

Rolland was scathing about wine writers’ ability to accurately access en primeur samples, claiming that 99% of professional tasters get it wrong.

 

“Saying you know what a wine is going to end up like when you taste it after six months in barrel is like having baby twins and saying one is going to be a lawyer and the other a doctor – it’s impossible to know at such an early stage,” he said.

 

Despite this, Rolland doesn’t believe the en primeur tastings take place too early, as he doesn’t feel critics’ scores carry much weight.

 

“I don’t think scores are that important – if you look at the world’s top tasters, most of their scores are in alignment and people only care about the first, second and third growths anyway,” he told db.

 

Rolland praised Robert Parker’s provisional in barrel scores as he feels the truth of a wine can only be known after it’s been bottled

 

He did however concede that US critic Robert Parker got it right by offering a provisional score while the wines are in barrel and a definitive score when they’re bottled.

 

“Giving a range, such as 89-92 points, while a wine is in barrel helps account for the element of doubt that remains until the wine is bottled – you can never know the truth until then,” he said.

 

As Jean-Michel Laporte of La Conseillante explained to db earlier this week, Rolland said that the only difference between his en primeur samples and the final wines is the fact that he doesn’t add any pressed wines (as opposed to free run juice) to the samples.

 

“Most wines end up with around 10% of pressed wine in the final blend but we can’t put this into the en primeur samples as it’s too harsh and tannic and we have to show a drinkable wine that people are able to understand,” he said.

 

“You have to take care of some of the details without changing the fundamental character of the wine,” he added.

 

Rolland, who recently sold his family-owned Pomerol estate Le Bon Pasteur to Chinese businessman Sutong Pan, consults for wineries all over the world.

 

In terms of China’s winemaking potential, Rolland, who consults for the country’s biggest food manufacturer – Cofco – on its local and imported wines, believes China’s biggest handicap is its climate.

 

“From what I’ve seen, China’s climate is too prone to extremes ­- it gets too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and when it rains it pours but I believe the greatest terroirs in China are yet to be discovered,” he said.

 

 

——

Stalking a Wine for All Seasons

 

Source: WSJ

By WILL LYONS

Jun 13th

 

WHETHER IT’S RAISING an umbrella to avoid a midsummer soaking, braving unseasonal wind in August or enjoying a late-summer heat wave, Europe’s unpredictable weather never fails to fascinate.

 

Of course, one of the advantages of living in a climate constantly on the move is that it lends itself to interesting wines. Such is the diversity of the weather here that the growth cycle of the vine changes every year, giving each vintage its own particular characteristics.

 

So it follows that when it comes to stocking up the cellar for the summer months, an eclectic choice of wines is required to cope with every eventuality. One could argue that during June, July and August it is best to turn to the Northern Hemisphere, where wines are naturally more taut, high in acidity and low in alcohol, rather than the Southern Hemisphere, where they possess more lively and riper fruit.

 

As the temperature rises, our taste buds crave crisp, dry white wines whose acidity sends a dance of electricity across the palate. This is where Germany excels, producing truly great wine made from the Riesling grape variety that offers a vast array of flavors. It’s a common misconception that Germany only produces sweet Riesling. In fact, it also produces some of the best dry white wine in the world-frequently sold at very affordable prices.

 

Out of the country’s many regions, my favorite three are the Mosel, Rheingau and Pfalz, which all produce their own distinctive styles.

 

Riesling from the steep sides of the Mosel Valley can smell of fresh apple, peach, apricot, elderberry, aniseed and quince. These are some of the most elegant and well-made wines in the world. Producers to look out for include Fritz Haag, Joh. Jos. Prüm, Dr. Loosen, Willi Schaefer, Egon Müller and Dr. H. Thanisch.

 

Further east, in the Rheingau, Pinot Noir-or Spätburgunder, as it is known locally-also thrives. Producers such as August Kesseler make world-class examples that can smell of damson and spice, with a refreshing, mineral length. These pair well with heavy, barbecued meats or lamb cutlets and couscous salad. Producers to hunt down include Schloss Johannisberg, Künstler, Robert Weil and Josef Leitz.

 

Austria, too, is starting to export some interesting Pinot Noirs, one of which I have highlighted in Drinking Now (below).

 

The Pfalz covers an enormous area to the east of the Rhine. Here, the Rieslings tend to have strong aromatics and more body, and can be aged for many years. Dr. Wehrheim, Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan, Josef Biffar and Reichsrat von Buhl are among the highlights. Reichsrat von Buhl also produces a sparkling wine known in Germany as sekt. It has a scintillating aroma of green apple, lemon and lime, and a sherberty acidity that makes it a razor-sharp, invigorating aperitif. But don’t be afraid to serve it with food; its attractive acidity makes it an ideal pairing with oily fish such as salmon, mild cheeses like Gouda or mozzarella or vegetarian pasta dishes.

 

No summer selection is complete without mentioning Beaujolais, the red wine made from the Gamay variety that is perfect for summer drinking. In France’s Beaujolais region, the 10 cru villages (St.-Amour, Juliénas, Moulin-à Vent, Chénas, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly) produce wines that have the complexity and nuanced character of the Old World, but whose prices haven’t risen too far yet.

 

These fragrant wines can be anything from light and fruity to something a little more complex. They all share one thing in common: They are eminently drinkable. Perfect for the home rack, they can pair with pretty much anything. Slightly chilled with fish dishes, decanted with roasted poultry, as an accompaniment to steak or cold meats and salad. A trio of outstanding vintages (2009, ’10, ’11) has produced wines that are perfumed, ripe and wonderfully easy to drink. Alain Chatoux’s wines are immediately attractive. Thibault Liger-Belair, Jean-Paul Dubost, Olivier Merlin and Bernard Métrat are all wines to look out for.

 

 

——

Safeway: rump stake

 

Disposals leave US grocer ripe to be taken private

 

Source: FT

Jun 13th

 

Tidy shelves make for easy shopping. This helps explain why Safeway, the supermarket chain, sold its Canadian stores. The US business that remains is that much easier for would-be acquirers to drop into their basket. If the deal also maximises the value of Safeway’s parts, so much the better.

 

On Wednesday, Safeway announced the sale of operations in the frozen north to Empire Company, parent of the Sobeys chain, for C$5.8bn. It is a transformative deal for Sobeys, its aggregate valuation doubling and its store base in western Canada fortified. Empire investors have cheered, sending its shares up more than a tenth. For its part, Safeway shares are up just under a tenth to $25 per share.

 

The sum-of-the-parts arbitrage for Safeway is straightforward. The sale price represents 11 times cash flow, while Safeway as a whole trades at just 5 times. Even after taxes, the effective multiple paid still exceeds 7 times (do not worry, Empire shareholders – with synergies your effective multiple slips to under 8). And earlier this year, Safeway floated a portion of its Blackhawk subsidiary, a gift card network, in an IPO. With interest in alternative payments running high, it trades at 13 times cash flow. Both of these divestitures establish real market values for valuable subsidiaries – value the market ignores when trapped within the US grocery operation.

 

There is the worry that with its crown jewels stripped, what remains of Safeway, in all its ugliness, will be laid bare. Yet, while it is a rump, Safeway is at least a simplified rump – basically just a US-based grocer. And it is perfectly moulded to be taken private. If the US portion of Safeway could be acquired at 6 times cash flow, then that, along with the proceeds from the Canadian divestiture and its share of Blackhawk, could be worth above $35 per share – a level Safeway shares have not touched since early 2007.

 

 

——

Hypermarkets suffer midlife crisis

 

Source: FT

By Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris and Andrea Felsted in London

Jun 16th

 

Miniskirts and the beehive were all the rage, The Beatles topped the charts, push-button telephones were launched – and the first hypermarket was born.

 

“The Times They Are a-Changin’,” sang Bob Dylan in 1963, the year that Carrefour’s new “everything under one roof” concept opened the doors to a revolutionary new way of shopping.

 

An excited crowd of 2,500 people poured into the store at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, 20km south of Paris on June 15 to experience the novelty of buying groceries, fresh food, DIY and clothes in a shop three times bigger than the norm.

 

Self-service, free parking and an on-site petrol station – at the height of the car-buying boom – proved enormously popular and the shelves had to be restocked several times a day.

 

“I was immediately struck, and even intimidated, by the size of the shop – there were thousands of products everywhere,” recalls Alice, one of the shop’s early cashiers, in a set of anecdotes collected by Carrefour for the anniversary. “Moreover, it was the big store everyone was talking about; people came from all over Île-de-France by car to do their shopping here.”

 

According to Andrew Seth, author of The Grocers and Supermarket Wars, the early hypermarkets “satisfied a very primary need, which was one-stop shopping. It was just marvellous because people had been used to having to run round six stores, and suddenly there was this wonderful advantage of being able to do everything at one till.”

 

However, like many 50-year-olds, the hypermarket is going through “a midlife crisis” in the words of Georges Plassat, Carrefour’s chairman and chief executive, who has been battling poor performance at the world’s second -largest retailer by sales after Walmart of the US.

 

When petrol prices were low in the 1960s and early 1970s, families thought nothing of driving 40km for the convenience of stocking up on everything from tomatoes to tennis rackets. Today, shoppers have many more alternatives to the vast stores on the edge of town, and industry figures show that many are moving to other formats.

 

Competition has also intensified. Many of the hypermarkets staples, such as consumer electronics, have migrated from supermarket shelves on to shoppers’ laptops, with online transactions now accounting for about 10 per cent of total retail sales in the US and UK. In France, other groups such as Leclerc, Auchan and Casino have been snapping at Carrefour’s heels.

 

Leclerc, which has smaller hypermarkets than Carrefour and consistently low prices, overtook Carrefour in France for the first time in May in terms of market share, according to Kantar, the market research group.

 

The economic downturn has also transformed shopping habits. In an effort to avoid temptation, many with strict budgets are staying away from the big stores altogether and so-called hard discounters, such as Aldi and Lidl, which tend to have smaller stores often closer to town centres, have proved a more attractive alternative. In the year to May 12, Aldi’s sales rose 30 per cent year-on-year, while Tesco’s rose just 2.4 per cent, according to Kantar.

 

Clive Black, analyst at Shore Capital in the UK says hypermarkets have to “find a new relevance. That is something that retail managements all over the world are trying to grapple with”.

 

The problem is most pronounced in the US and continental Europe where hypermarkets can exceed 200,000 sq ft – the size of two-and-a-half football pitches. Some groups have reduced space by selling it off or renting it out; others have tried to “reinvent” the hypermarket as Carrefour tried and failed to do three years ago with its Planet concept, adding beauty areas, crèches and sushi stands to the mix. In the UK, Tesco has acquired Giraffe, the family-friendly restaurant group, and bought a stake in the Harris + Hoole coffee chain, in an effort to make its stores more inviting.

 

Though hypermarkets in developed markets are struggling, the story is different in Asia and Latin America where sales are growing at a rapid pace, helped by emerging middle classes, rising car ownership and bigger families than those in the west.

 

According to Planet Retail, sales at superstores and hypermarkets are set to increase by 4 per cent in North America between 2011 and 2016, with just 2 per cent growth in western Europe. But, they are forecast to rise 7.5 per cent in Latin America and 9 per cent in Asia.

 

However, even in France, 1m people visit a Carrefour store a day and 90 per cent of the population go to one of the country’s 1,900 hypermarkets at least once a month.

 

At Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, the Carrefour is three times bigger than it was in 1963 – 8,000 sq m – and receives 1.7m customers a year.

 

Nevertheless, the golden age of the hypermarket in advanced economies is over, as it struggles to find a place in a world where an iPad mini is more fashionable than a miniskirt.

 

While talk of the death of supercentres and large hypermarkets invoked by critics may be premature, they “undoubtedly have got a health warning hanging over them”, says Mr Black.

 

 

——

New York introduces legislation to ban use of polystyrene

 

Source: NRA

June 14, 2013

 

Local lawmakers in New York City have introduced legislation that would effectively ban the use of polystyrene packaging at restaurants and other foodservice outlets in the area.

 

The legislation, introduced June 12 into the City Council by members Lewis A. Fidler, Vincent J. Gentile and Letitia James in conjunction with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would prevent operators from using the plastic foam packaging at fullservice and quickservice restaurants, cafes, delicatessens, coffee shops, grocery stores, vending trucks or carts and cafeterias.

 

Mayor Bloomberg initially proposed the ban during his State of the City address in February.

 

If passed, the regulation, which would be enforced by the city’s departments of health and consumer affairs, would take effect July 1, 2015. According to the proposed bill, operators who do not comply with the rule would face fines of $250 for the first violation, $500 for the second and $1,000 for the third. Manufacturers of polystyrene packaging also would be subject to financial penalties.

 

City Councilman Peter Vallone urged the city to reconsider the proposed ban, saying it would “cost businesses, consumers and taxpayers millions of dollars as well as threaten jobs in the restaurant industry” and other businesses.

 

He asked the mayor to work with the council on other options, including recycling. “Foam can and should be recycled,” he said. “I urge the mayor to work with the council to explore this option instead of a ban.”

 

The National Restaurant Association, which supports the increased use of sustainable packaging, said it would appreciate the opportunity to work with the city on developing a plan that is feasible and cost-effective for the industry and consumers.

 

“It is important to note that in some cases, a suitable supply of alternatives to polystyrene foam packaging does not exist or is prohibitively expensive,” said Scott DeFife, the NRA’s executive vice president of policy and government affairs. “This ban could create a great burden for restaurants, more than 90 percent of which are small businesses, if those concerns are not addressed.”

 

DeFife pointed out that some alternative packaging sources have their own impact on the environment due to the energy and resources required to make them. In other cases, he said the infrastructure for recycling or composting doesn’t exist or can’t meet the demand.

 

“This is an area where incentives may work better than prohibitions,” he said.

 

A recent study conducted by MB Public Affairs on behalf of the American Chemistry Council found that a polystyrene ban would likely increase the operating costs of the city’s restaurants and other small businesses since alternative packaging is often more expensive. It also is not as effective in keeping food hot or cold, the study found.

 

“For a restaurant – especially a small, neighborhood business – mandating a switch to a higher-priced alternative for basic supplies can have a serious effect,” said Andrew Moesel, spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association, when the report was issued in March. “These are businesses that are absorbing higher food and energy costs, and are under pressure from a struggling economy that leaves less money in people’s paychecks. It’s one more thing to add to the headwinds they are facing.”

 

The study said a polystyrene ban, if enacted, could end up costing businesses, consumers and tax payers nearly $100 million a year.

 

Lynn Dyer, president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute said government limits on packaging options is not good public policy.

 

“Businesses should be allowed to select packaging based on its own merits of product performance, suitability, price competitiveness and impact on the environment,” she said. “A free marketplace helps to keep costs down and drive innovation.”

 

Dyer added that she hoped the city would “refocus its efforts on increasing recovery of all foodservice packaging instead of decreasing packaging options for foodservice operators.”

 

 

——

Pennsylvania: Corbett to nominate former Congressman Tim Holden to LCB

 

Source: Lebanon Daily News

06/13/2013

 

A Schuylkill County Democrat who represented Lebanon County in Congress may find a seat on the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

 

Gov. Tom Corbett announced Thursday he will nominate Tim Holden to post.

 

The governor also said he will nominate Pennsylvania Superior Court President Judge Correale F. Stevens to fill the vacancy on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Sean Logan to the Turnpike Commission and Gladys M. Brown to the Public Utility Commission.

 

Nominations for the Supreme Court, Liquor Control Board and Turnpike Commission require a two-thirds vote in the state Senate. The Public Utility Commission requires a majority vote by the state Senate. Corbett plans to submit the nominations to the state Senate on Friday. Holden, of St. Clair, served 10 years in Congress representing Lebanon, Berks and Schuylkill counties, as well as parts of Perry and Dauphin counties, but his political career was cut short by the redistricting after the 2010 U.S. Census. Gone was the 17th U.S. Congressional District and, Holden, who had represented Lebanon County since 2003.

 

Put in its place were the 6th Congressional District represented by Jim Gerlach and the 15th Congressional District represented by Charlie Dent.

 

Holden then lost in the 2012 primary to Scranton attorney Matt Cartwright in his new district, where he was a virtual unknown to 80 percent of the population. A graduate of Bloomsburg University, Holden worked as a probation officer, real estate agent and insurance broker before becoming sheriff of Schuylkill County for seven years, all prior to his election to Congress. During his tenure in Congress, Holden was a member of various agriculture, transportation and infrastructure committees.

 

“These four individuals reflect the qualities and qualifications that transcend political labels and uniquely suit each one for the positions of public trust for which they have been selected,” Corbett said in a news release.

 

Stevens, of Sugarloaf, Luzerne County, has served as president judge of the state Superior Court since 2011. He has been a member of the Superior Court since 1998.

 

A graduate of Penn State University and the Dickinson School of Law, Stevens served as a judge of Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, district attorney of Luzerne County, as well as serving four terms as a member of the House of Representatives and solicitor for Hazleton City and Hazleton Authority. Stevens teaches criminal justice and government courses at Penn State-Hazleton, as well as continuing legal education for state and local bar associations. He has received numerous civic awards and was honored by the Dickinson Law School Alumni Association for his service in the judiciary.

 

The Supreme Court seat became vacant with the resignation of Joan Orie Melvin in May. Stevens, if confirmed, will serve until January 2016, with the election to fill the vacancy permanently taking place in November 2015.

 

Logan, of Monroeville, Allegheny County, is a former state senator and currently serves as the director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Monroeville.

 

Prior to joining the visitors bureau in 2013, Logan was vice president of community relations at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Logan also served as mayor of Monroeville. During his tenure with the state Senate, representing Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, Logan served as minority chairman of the Law and Justice Committee and as a member of the Appropriations Committee.

 

Brown, of Harrisburg, has served with the Democratic caucus of the state Senate since 1991 and presently holds the position of deputy chief counsel. After earning her bachelor’s degree and law degree from the University of Pittsburgh, Brown served as a law clerk to retired U.S. District Court Judge Paul A. Simmons in the Western District of Pennsylvania. She has also served as assistant counsel for the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs in the Department of State.

 

Among her areas of legal experience, Brown has worked on public utility law, helping to draft major pieces of legislation, including electric competition, telephone and natural gas deregulation.

 

 

——

Maine: Hospital debt payment bill heads to Gov. LePage

 

Source: AP

Jun 14th

 

Maine lawmakers gave final approval on Thursday to a plan to renegotiate the state’s liquor contract to pay its hospitals’ years-old debt of hundreds of millions of dollars for Medicaid services – one of Gov. Paul LePage’s top priorities.

 

Lawmakers in the House and Senate unanimously approved the bill, which no longer is tied to a proposal to expand Medicaid to 70,000 Mainers. Its passage is a major victory for the Republican governor working with Democratic majorities in both chambers.

 

“Our hospitals are key to the health of our community, and this final payment makes good on the lifesaving work that our nurses and doctors do for Maine families,” said Rep. Margaret Rotundo, a Lewiston Democrat. “Paying back the hospitals is not a partisan issue, and I strongly suspect that all of us are very pleased to be able to vote affirmatively in support of our hospitals today,” she said.

 

Under the proposal, sponsored by Republican Sen. Patrick Flood of Winthrop, the state’s share of $183.5 million would be covered using bonds, which would be paid off with anticipated revenues from a restructured, 10-year liquor contract. That would trigger a federal match to complete the payment.

 

LePage’s previous effort to pay back the hospitals fell short last month after Democrats tied it to a proposal to expand Medicaid under the federal health care overhaul, which the governor opposes.

 

Democrats said the two bills belonged together because accepting federal funding to cover more Maine families would help reduce hospital charity care costs, which are passed on to all Maine taxpayers.

 

But LePage, who campaigned on the hospital debt issue when he ran for governor in 2010 and has made repayment a top priority since taking office, vetoed the measure and re-introduced the hospital bill on its own.

 

Lawmakers approved a separate bill Thursday night to expand Medicaid, also sending that measure to LePage.

 

Hospital officials said being paid what they’re owed will allow them to invest in equipment and their facilities, pay off loans, replenish savings and pay vendors on time.

 

“I’m not sure I thought today would ever happen, but I am very, very pleased and thankful it is here today,” said Sylvia Getman, CEO of the Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle, which is owed about $12 million.

 

Not being paid by the state has forced hospitals to put off buying new equipment, restrict travel and hiring, freeze salaries and borrow money for equipment and projects.

 

They’ve also had to pay higher interest rates on loans because their credit ratings were downgraded by credit rating agencies, said Derrick Holland, chief financial officer for Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, whose seven hospitals serving the northern two-thirds of the state are collectively owed $111 million.

 

“This is not a windfall for the hospitals,” Hollings said. “Quite frankly, there’s a lot of mopping up cleanup work that needs to be done to repair the damage that was a caused as a result of not being paid.”

 

Lawmakers on Thursday emphasized the bipartisan support behind the liquor contract proposal, which includes the renegotiation of the prices of some brands to compete more aggressively with New Hampshire liquor sales.

 

“It’s really good to see the hard work of both side of the aisle working together on this bill bringing this forward and bringing really good, strong support to this bill in a bipartisan fashion,” House Republican Leader Kenneth Fredette of Newport said before Thursday’s vote.

 

The bill’s passage also could mean the release of some unissued bonds that already have been approved by lawmakers and voters. LePage has said he won’t sign off on $105 million in public improvement bonds until lawmakers agree on how to pay back the state’s hospitals. Democrats say the governor is holding the bonds hostage, putting jobcreating road construction projects on hold.

 

Lawmakers say the state will save $5 million if it completes the payments before Oct. 1.

 

 

——

Nevada: Billboard for alcohol not funny to some

 

Source: News 3

by: Sandra Gonzalez

6/15

 

A billboard that was probably meant as a joke turns out is no laughing matter to some. It’s an ad for alcohol from a popular liquor company, but the attempt at humor isn’t very funny to some people.

 

The billboard is for Lee’s Discount Liquor, and its message is: “Alcohol is cheaper than therapy”.

 

Mother, Lourdes Mansouri’s mouth dropped when she read this billboard.

 

“Putting a sign that alcohol is cheaper than therapy. Unbelievable that’s what I say. It’s unbelievable,” Mansouri said.

 

She says close friend of hers died as a result of a drunk driver.

 

“She was a mother of three and she died in a crash accident and she was on her way to work at three in the morning, and she got killed by a drunk driver, so i don’t think alcohol is cheaper than therapy, I don’t think so,” Mansouri said.

 

Public relations consultant Ira David Sternberg drove past the billboard and found himself doing a double take. Sternberg tells us the billboard probably wasn’t intended to make light of the situation, but the message fell short. Perhaps he says another set of eyes should have been called in before it went on the billboard.

 

“It shouldn’t come from a retail operator kind of product. It really should come from someone else, a comedian talking about his history in therapy for example. That could be funny. But not when you’re selling the product,” Sternberg said.

 

So many people were outraged, that a national petition was started on Change.org. The petition urged the owners of Lee’s Discount Liquor to remove the billboard saying it’s a socially irresponsible message model to everyone.

 

But not everyone was offended.

 

“I think it’s entertaining and humorous. I do believe it to some degree, because therapy is very expensive now and alcohol is very cheap,” said Jonathan Sims.

 

“It’s way cheaper. Go buy me a bottle. Ain’t got to worry about no damn therapy, especially dealing with my crazy kids,” said Booker Payne.

 

One woman says the sign while not humorous is sadly true.

 

“It’s sad because a lot of people are addicted to alcohol and it takes an awful lot of treatment to try to get them off it, and often you can’t get them off it,” said Elspeth Fyfe.

 

News 3 spoke to the company’s owner, who told us the billboard will be taken down next week.

 

 

——

Wisconsin: Green Bay liquor store owners get jail time in fraud

 

Source: PostCrescent

Jun. 14, 2013

 

The former owners of a liquor store on Green Bay’s northeast side will serve jail time as well as probation for running a food stamp fraud operation out of their store.

 

“The system was designed to help people, and you were entrusted with this,” Brown County Judge Tammy Jo Hock told Gurnek and Gurdeep Basanti, owners of the former Beach Road Liquor, 1020 N. Irwin Ave. “This was a complete violation of that trust.”

 

The Basantis let customers buy liquor and cigarettes with their county-issued “Quest” cards, which is a forbidden use under the food stamp rules, court records say. They also would, with the cooperation of some of their food stamp customers, double-charge them and then pocket the extra cash, and use their customers’ cards to make purchases for the store.

 

Gurnek Basanti, 56, directed his wife to do the deeds, mostly because he was seldom in the store because of a separate job he had as an independent contractor dump truck driver, said Basanti’s lawyer, Michael Hart.

 

That made Gurnek Basanti more culpable, but the operation still shouldn’t result in jail time, Hart argued.

 

“On the street, this is an acceptable way of doing business,” Hart said. “Customers seem to expect it; they come to a business and ask if they do business this way, and I don’t know whether they were afraid of losing that customer’s business or hoped to score, but they engaged in the practice and it gained steam.”

 

Gurdeep Basanti may have done most of the illegal transactions, but it was at her husband’s directive, said her lawyer, David Garaghty.

 

“Hypothetically, if he had said no, I think it wouldn’t have happened,” said Garaghty, also asking for no jail time.

 

Hock rejected both arguments.

 

“They were an arm of this (food stamp) program,” Hock said. “There were numerous transactions . When the search warrant was executed, 15 Quest cards were recovered, one on Mrs. Basanti’s person and 14 in the store. He (Gurnek Basanti) admits they continued out of pure greed.”

 

In sentencing Gurnek Basanti, Hock ignored Hart’s request for no jail time and also a prosecution recommendation for 90 days in jail and instead gave him six months in jail, along with two years probation.

 

Hock also rejected a joint recommendation of no jail time, just community service, plus probation for Gurdeep Basanti and gave her the same sentence as her husband’s.

 

The couple already paid restitution of $825, the only figure assessors could come up with without guessing, according to Assistant District Attorney Beau Liegeois, so Hock ordered no restitution but observed the fraud amount likely was much higher.

 

The couple’s daughter, Simarjot Basanti, 26, was implicated in the scheme but was only charged with a single misdemeanor count of fraudulently using someone else’s card to make a $27 purchase. This time Hock followed the joint recommendation and issued a sentence of one year probation and 50 hours of community service.

 

The Basantis have since been running a Dollar Store out of their previous liquor store, having lost their liquor license following their August arrest. They aren’t authorized to accept Quest cards at that store and are forbidden, as condition of their probation, from possessing another person’s card.

 

 

——

Edelman issued a corrected version of this release

 

FLORIDA GOVERNOR SIGNS INTO LAW A BILL THAT REDEFINES BUSINESS FOR FLORIDA ALCOHOL MANUFACTURERS

 

Craft distillers celebrate new opportunities for growth

 

Source: Edelman

June 13, 2013

 

Florida Governor Rick Scott has signed into law a bill that redefines business for state alcohol manufacturers. HB 347/SB 642 set a precedent for the alcohol industry that has not been seen in the state since the days of prohibition. GrayRobinson government relations attorney Jason Unger and alcohol industry attorney Richard Blau represented the Florida Craft Distillers Guild in amending outdated legislation.

 

“There are several sets of interests that have to be taken into account when drafting alcohol legislation, which makes it one of the trickiest industries to represent from a legal perspective,” said Blau, the chair of GrayRobinson’s national alcohol beverage and food law practice. “You have stakeholders with concerns in the public safety and health and wellness sectors, while also having to consider implications at a political and economic level. The fact that this bill was able to pass in its first session, with little to no opposition on the voting floor, is truly extraordinary.”

 

“From a legislative standpoint, we were able to work with key legislators and leaders in the alcohol industry to pass a bill that everyone could support,” said Unger, the lead lobbyist on the effort out of GrayRobinson’s Tallahassee office.

 

In recent years the state has seen a growing number of craft distilleries that invite the public to tour their facilities and sample their product. However, unlike wineries and breweries, Florida law prohibited these distilleries from selling manufactured products on site. The product would have to be shipped off to a wholesaler or distributor for purchase. With the passage of HB 347/SB 642, championed by Representative Ronald Renuart and Senator Alan Hays, these distilleries can now sell products as part of this offering.

 

Philip McDaniel, chairman of the Florida Craft Distillers Guild and owner of the St. Augustine Distillery currently under construction in St. Augustine, Fla., predicts that the number of distilleries across the state could grow from 15 to anywhere between 35 and 50 over the next decade as a direct result of this new legislation.

 

“For us, the most exciting part of this is that we can now complete the customer experience,” said McDaniel. “When customers tour our distilleries they build up anticipation to try the product and want to take home a memory of the experience.  When we’d have to say ‘I’m sorry, we can’t sell you a bottle’ at the very moment they’re eager to purchase, well, it’s just creates a negative customer experience.”

 

McDaniel has plans for the future of St. Augustine Distillery now that the law will take effect July 1. In addition to a gift shop that sells bottles of the artisan crafted bourbon, gin, vodka and rum, there will be a small screening room that shows a documentary about the distiller’s relationship with local farms. The distillery is located just off of the trolley route located in the heart of St. Augustine’s historical tourist district and McDaniel is hopeful that a vast majority of these patrons will enter his doors.

 

“Florida has some of the best agriculture in the world, especially when used as a value added component for alcohol manufacturing. We have one of the largest sugar cane crops in the nation and a variety of fresh fruits to flavor our liquors, wines and beers,” said McDaniel. “This legislation will allow Florida distillers to capitalize on our unique location and build a global reputation bringing new visitors to the state because, quite simply, they can’t find this experience anywhere else.”

 

JoAnn Elardo, owner of Cape Spirits in Cape Coral, Fla., can finally hire the help she needs to offer tours due to the added revenue the distillery will bring in from alcohol sales. Cape Spirits manufactures Wicked Dolphin Rum.

US Spirits: NABCA Conference Call – Spirits growth solid, but moderating

 

Source: UBS

Jun 13th

 

NABCA expects c3% volume growth and c5% value growth for 2013E

UBS hosted a conf call with NABCA (Control States cover 22% of US volumes). 2013 outlook remains solid with NABCA expecting c3% volume growth and c5% US$ value growth for US spirits. However, this is a moderation from the current 12 month rolling trend of +3.2% volume and +6.1% value growth up to April. The moderation in volume growth of the last 3-4 months could be linked to the economy and tough y/y comparables. NABCA expects May volumes to increase by +1.9-2.0% y/y against a very tough comparable of +11%.

 

Premiumisation and price increases remain a focus for the industry

Ultra premium continues to drive the fastest growth in the market of +10% (though moderating from +12% two years ago), with Super Premium and Premium picking up from +5% to +6% and Value slowing from +4% to +3%. NABCA believes that most spirits companies are looking to take price where they can.

 

Innovation expected to remain a focus, across all beverage alcohol

NABCA expects continued momentum for bourbon flavour innovation (though not to the extent of vodka). New vodka launches continue maintaining high competition in the category (Burnett’s Vodka by Heaven Hill is a #4 brand in the Control States, New Amsterdam vodka by Gallo is one of the fastest growing brands). NABCA sees the spirits industry embracing craft distillers more than in beer. Beer innovation is expected to continue to pick up, even though NABCA has seen only minor impact from hybrid products on spirits to date.

 

Comfortable with 2013E forecasts for US spirits, though upside unlikely

We estimate 2013 US spirits volume and value growth of +2.0% and +4.5% y/y.

 

 

——

MillerCoors boss welcomes beer battle with Constellation Brands (Excerpt)

 

Source: Just-Drinks

By James Wilmore

13 June 2013

 

MillerCoors’ boss has revealed he is “looking forward” to competing with Constellation Brands in the US beer market and does not fear new rivals.

 

Tom Long, president & CEO of the Molson Coors and SABMiller JV, admitted that brands such as Corona, which Constellation now has the sole US rights to, are “very powerful in certain parts of the country”.  “I’m sure they (Constellation) will be seeking to be more aggressive,” Long told Bloomberg TV today (13 June).

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/millercoors-ceo-long-on-brand-growth-competition-5rvj5Xm~Rw~nMR1ZmuahMA.html

 

 

——

Ill. law to force Busch to sell beer distributor stake by 2015

 

Source: Chicago Tribune

By Emily Bryson York

June 13, 2013

 

It’s official: Anheuser-Busch will have to sell its stake in City Beverage, the brewer’s largest local distributor.

 

Gov. Pat Quinn signed HB2606 into law Thursday afternoon. The legislation reinforces the state’s three-tier system, which requires the manufacture, distribution and retail sale of alcohol be split among  three business interests. Most states have had similar systems in place since Prohibition.

 

Anheuser-Busch, owned by Leuven, Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev, has until Jan 1, 2015, to sell the stake.

 

BDT Capital, an investment firm owned by Byron Trott, owns the remainder of City Beverage.

 

 

——

ULTIMATE WINE CHALLENGE 2013 ANNOUNCES COMPETITION RESULTS

 

Thirty-nine Wines Receive Highest Accolade and Are Awarded The Chairman’s Trophy

Source: SAVONA COMMUNICATIONS

June 13, 2013

 

Ultimate Beverage Challenge® (UBC), is proud to announce the results of the annual Ultimate Wine Challenge® (UWC) held at Astor Center in New York City on June 3-7, 2013. With a record 800+ wine entries this year – up 10% over last year – 39 superior wines received the highest score in their category and were awarded the Chairman’s Trophy. Scores of wines were named Finalists and many rated “Great Values” based on their score-to-price relationship, which shows that a great tasting wine doesn’t have to cost a fortune. All wines rated 80+ are listed in the results and all wines rated 85+ include tasting notes.

 

Full results available at www.ultimate-beverage.com/UWC2013Results

 

UBC founder/Judging Chairman F. Paul Pacult, UBC partner/Judging Co-Chairman Sean Ludford and 15 of the world’s foremost wine buyers, authors, journalists and sommeliers, including six Masters of Wine, tasted, assessed, debated, reviewed and scored the entries using UWC’s innovative multi-round judging system and the consumer-friendly 100-point rating scale. In accordance with UWC service policy, all wines were judged in appropriate fine crystal glassware and grouped in small flights of 3 to 7 wines according to grape type, region and price. The judges did not know the identity of any of the entered wines in order to ensure unbiased evaluations.

 

UWC 2013 judges were: Christy Canterbury, MW; James Conley; Mary Ewing-Mulligan, MW; Doug Frost, MS, MW; Debbie Gioquindo; Mary Gorman-MacAdams, MW; Ed McCarthy; John McClement; Jean K. Reilly, MW; Jack Robertiello; Patricia Savoie; Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, MW and Tara Q. Thomas.

 

Said Pacult of UWC 2013, “The dramatic increase in participation again this year from wine producers from five continents serves as a clear affirmation of Ultimate Beverage Challenge’s meticulous detail to methodology, recognized authority and uncompromising integrity. In short, everything we do, every system we’ve created, is geared to showcase each wine’s virtues.”

 

Top scoring wines will be published in the Ultimate Beverage Challenge 2013 Guide to the World’s Best Wine & Spirits in Beverage Media (October 2013 issue), which goes out to 60,000+ beverage alcohol buyers in the United States.

 

For downloadable, behind-the-scenes images of UWC, go to: www.ultimate-beverage.com/2013UWCpics

 

 

——

New York wine collectors sue Charlie Trotter, accusing him of selling a counterfeit bottle of wine

 

Source: Chicago Tribune

By P.J. Huffstutter

June 13, 2013

 

The famed Chicago chef Charlie Trotter has been sued for allegedly selling two wine collectors from New York a big, bogus bottle of wine.

 

According to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Chicago, Bekim and Ilir Frrokaj paid more than $46,200 last June for what they thought was a magnum of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from Trotter’s Michelin-starred restaurant.

 

Trotter closed his restaurant last August, citing a desire to travel and to study philosophy, and as part of the closure made plans to sell thousands of bottles from his restaurant’s wine collection. This drew interest from wine aficionados who admired the restaurant’s collection of Bordeaux and cabernets.

Ads by Google

 

“During dinner, Charlie Trotter and the sommelier explained the rarity and value of the DRC magnum to Benn and Ilir,” according to the court filing. “Charlie Trotter and the sommelier also spoke about wines from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti estate and how those wines are some of the rarest and most valuable in the world.”

 

But the Frrokajs contend this was not true, and that it was only when they tried to have the bottle insured that they learned from a consultant that it was counterfeit.

 

Trotter could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear whether he hired a lawyer for his defense.

 

According to the complaint, when consultant Maureen Downey met with estate co-owner Aubert de Villain, he stated “Domaine de la Romanee-Conti only produced small yields in 1945 and as a result did not produce any large format magnum-size bottles.”

 

The lawsuit accuses Trotter and his former restaurant of violating federal and state consumer laws, and seeks $75,000 in damages. Efforts to recover without going to court proved unsuccessful, the plaintiffs’ lawyer John Auchter said Thursday.

 

 

——

Will More Collectors Turn Wine Into Cash?

 

Source: Forbes

Jun 12th

 

Selling art is pretty hard and pretty expensive. Finding buyers can be tough, particularly for expensive works, and US collectors that do sell works pay a higher rate of capital gains tax than they would on most assets.

 

So it’s understandable that more collectors today use their art collection as collateral for loans instead. In fact, 41% of  collectors surveyed in Deloitte’s 2013 Art and Finance Report say they’d consider art-secured lending.

 

But what about wine? Yesterday, Bloomberg’s Miles Wiess reported that Goldman Sachs had advanced a loan to a former senior director, Andrew Cader, backed by 15,000 bottles of fine wine, mostly first growth Bordeaux and grand cru and premier cru Burgundies.

 

It has already spawned a lot of groan-worthy headlines about wines and liquid assets, but will this news encourage more wine collectors to follow in Cader’s footsteps?

 

Although individuals can get already loans using a wide range of esoteric assets from jewellery to antiques as collateral, as Bloomberg reports, speciality lenders have been less keen on wine-secured loans, allegedly because of concerns about fakes.

 

Nevertheless, there seems to be decent interest from borrowers, which is why some lenders do it. Bordeaux Cellars, a specialist wine lender in London, currently charges borrowers 15% per year for loans of 12 to 18 months secured against wine collateral. However, Bordeaux Cellars will only lend up to 35% of the value of the wine used as collateral. That’s considerably less than the amount of cash that lenders are typically prepared to advance against art collateral, usually up to 50% of the value.

 

Borro will also give you a short-term loan on your wine collection, but for a price -over 35% on an annualized basis.

 

However, art-secured loans don’t come cheap either. There are private banks that will advance loans at reasonable rates if clients can also show that they have top-notch credit and other assets at their disposal. However, there are plenty of other lenders that will advance smaller amounts to anyone with the right collateral, as long as they’re prepared to pay eye-watering interest rates.

 

On some levels, wine should be a more compelling form of collateral compared to things such as art or antiques or jewelry, where valuation is even more subjective. You can actually find a market price for many top-tier Bordeaux, for example, on the Liv-Ex wine exchange in London. And there are plenty of concerns about forgeries and fraud in the art market too.

 

So it will be interesting to see if, and how, opportunities for collectors to take out wine-secured loans actually grow.

 

 

——

Had enough of the stock market? Try investing in wine

 

Source: Fox News

By Tracy Byrnes

June 12, 2013

 

More and more people are buying wine, not just for pleasure, but as an investment.

 

Even Goldman Sachs was willing to accept almost 15,000 bottles of fine wine as loan collateral from a former high-ranking executive, according to a regulatory filing last month.

 

Wine lovers and Wall Street pros see the value and want to invest. So it’s no surprise a wine investment fund would surface. The Bottled Asset Fund (BAF), launched in 2010, is the world’s first Italian-focused fine wine investment fund.

 

The market for Italian wine is growing globally, with export markets, like Asia, driving up value. Hence, the BAF currently is projected to return profits to its investors, net of fees, of over 30 percent. Can’t even get close to that investing in the stock market these days.

 

Most recently the fund bought the historic collection of Biondi-Santi Brunello di Montalcino valued at $5 million. The Biondi-Santi estate is widely recognized as the creator of Italy’s most important wine, Brunello di Montalcino, and, more importantly, it introduced wines for long-term aging to the Italian wine culture.

 

This 7,000-bottle acquisition spans 1945 to 1975 and includes hundreds of bottles of the cult 1955 and 1964 vintages, representing a unique addition to the BAF portfolio.

 

And with so much interest from investors, the fund’s management company, Vino Management Corporation, plans to launch another fund by the end of 2013, with the goal to commit $25 million.

 

So you want a piece? Current minimum investment is about $50,000, according to Sergio Esposito, the fund’s director who has been in the Italian wine business for over 30 years.

 

He is also the founder of Italian Wine Merchants in Manhattan, one of the most thorough Italian wine stores in the country.

 

So if the stock market volatility is keeping you up at night, maybe investing in the BAF would be a better option.

 

Don’t have the money? Then just have a glass of wine before bed.

 

Cent’ Anni

 

 

——

Buyers out in force for 2013 coastal varieties

 

Source: Western Farm Press

Greg Northcutt

Jun. 12, 2013

 

More 2013 wine grapes from California’s coastal regions are trading hands in the spot market than from the interior valleys.

 

“That’s mildly surprising,” says Jeff Bitter, vice-president of operations for Allied Grape Growers, Fresno, Calif., a marketing cooperative with nearly 600 grower-members in the state’s major grape regions “Last year Central Coast and North Coast growers harvested such a huge crop that demand for their grapes this year wasn’t expected be so strong so early in the season, but it is.”

 

One reason for the increased interest in Coastal grapes is the limited availability of Central Valley grapes. Much of this year’s production there is still covered by multi-year contracts negotiated when recession-battered consumers drove up demand for the lower-priced wines made from interior-grown grapes.

 

Now, with the economic outlook beginning to improve, consumers are beginning to trade up when they go wine shopping.

 

“The real hot spot in the wine market right now are bottles priced in the $13 to $18 range,” Bitter says. “That seems to be generating interest in grapes from most Coastal areas except for the ultra-premium regions. Higher-priced Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and Sonoma County Pinot Noir are still in strong demand, too. However, buyers seem more interested in purchasing great quality coastal fruit so they can average down the grape cost of their higher-end programs, rather than purchasing additional high-end fruit.”

 

While the prices growers are getting for their 2013 grapes are below historical highs in many cases, they’re still at economically sustainable levels for most varieties grown in the state, not just the Coastal regions, he reports.

 

Red varieties, in general, have maintained the strong prices they commanded last year, Bitter notes. “Across the board, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Petite Syrah, at least as a blender, seem to be doing very well,” he says. “Growers with any or all of those varieties have plenty of buyers knocking at their doors.”

 

Multi-year contracts are common in the Coastal areas. That includes the white varieties, with the highest prices being offered for Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, Bitter adds.

 

Given last year’s high-tonnage Chardonnay production, he wasn’t expecting the strong interest in the variety this year. In the past, a big Chardonnay crop one year, typically, has been followed by a steep price decline the next. In fact, the Chardonnay market did soften at the end of last year’s harvest. “Since then, it’s bounced back and is now healthy and stable,” Bitter says.

 

Last year’s big crush in the Lodi-Clarksburg area of the San Joaquin Valley has observers guessing about the likely size of this year’s harvest. Most expect production to drop.as the vines use this season to recover. However, good bunch counts and vine growth early this season show promise of another sizeable crop, he reports.

 

Meanwhile, vineyards in the Central Valley south of Lodi could be poised for a jump in production this year.

 

In 2012, while growers in other part of the start saw double-digit increases in production, the Central Valley crop was only about four percent bigger than an average crop

 

“So, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that we’ll see a good strong increase in the size of  the Central Valley crop this year, while production elsewhere is down due to a large crop last year,” Bitter says.

 

The unseasonably warm weather that has characterized this season and advanced development of the 2013 crop throughout California’s wine grape areas could be setting the stage for strong production next year. As he points out, fruit bud differentiation for one year’s crop occurs during the previous May and June. By that measure, this year’s weather is favoring a good bunch count for the 2014 crop.

 

In the meantime, though, forecasts are calling for a hot summer. High temperatures combined with reduced deliveries of surface water this year and the costs of pumping water from the ground could force growers to cut back on their irrigations. And that, Bitter says, coul result in growers harvesting a smaller crop than the one now developing on their vines.

 

 

——

2013 ‘a vintage to remember’ say New Zealand winemakers

 

Source: Decanter

by Richard Woodard

Thursday 13 June 2013

Winemakers in New Zealand are hailing the 2013 vintage as ‘one of the best in history’, with a record harvest 28% bigger than last year’s crop.

 

New Zealand Winegrowers CEO Philip Gregan described the summer as ‘outstanding’ with ‘near-perfect conditions for growing grapes’.

 

‘The result is that we expect the 2013 wines to be vibrant, fruit-driven and complex expressions of our diverse grape-growing regions – 2013 looks set to be a vintage to remember.’

 

Nearly 350,000 tonnes of grapes were harvested in 2013, a record volume up 5% on 2011 and 28% bigger than last year’s small crop, which left New Zealand short of wine to feed its expansion plans.

 

Key region Marlborough and key grape variety Sauvignon Blanc both had good years, with volumes up 33% and 26% respectively, while the Pinot Noir crop was 36% bigger than in 2012.

 

‘The small 2012 grape crop left the industry unable to meet continuing strong consumer demand in established and new markets,’ said Gregan.

 

‘Winemakers will welcome the more normal 2013 harvest as the better balanced supply will facilitate renewed export growth in the year ahead.’

 

Premium winery Villa Maria described the quality of Marlborough fruit as ‘exceptional’ with Chardonnay an early highlight, but reserved its highest praise for Hawke’s Bay.

 

Claiming that the area’s 2013 harvest was ‘remarkable’ and would ‘go down in history’, the company said: ‘We have never seen everything look so pristine and the flavours were amazing.’

 

Flavours were so pure and clean that variations between soil types and individual clones were apparent, with Merlot described as ‘a real stand-out’.

 

 

——

Bordeaux 2012 hamstrung by ‘insufficient price cuts’

 

Source: Decanter

by Sophie Kevany in Bordeaux

Thursday 13 June 2013

An official summary of Bordeaux’s 2012 en primeur campaign shows the average price cut on all 344 wines released was 7.6%, compared to the 2011 vintage.
Despite early hopes that sales would be spurred by significantly lower pricing from Bordeaux’s five first growths, which were down 33% on the previous year and sold well, overall public demand was generally very poor.

 

The new figures, produced by Bordeaux-based wine brokerage house Tastet Lawton – which is widely respected for its hard data on primeur campaigns – also show 2012’s pricing was an average of 30% higher than the most recently affordable vintage of 2008.

 

‘The two big problems for the 2012 campaign were insufficient price cuts and too many wines on the market,’ Tastet Lawton’s managing director Erik Samazeuilh toldDecanter.com.

 

Samazeuilh said the number of brands released as en primeur should be closer to the 1995 figure of 235 and that wines with little resale margin, such as the Cru Bourgeois, were crowding the market. ‘Only the Grands Crus and their like should be on the market as en primeur,’ he said.

 

He added that Bordeaux’s negociants were now carrying unwieldy amounts of stock, made up of about two thirds of the unsold 2012 vintage, large quantities of unsold 2011 and some unsold 2010.

 

On a slightly more upbeat note, Samazeuilh said next week’s Vinexpo wine trade fair might bring some demand for the 2012s, especially with 2013 vintage currently mired in bad weather, and at least three weeks behind schedule.

 

Some commentators believe traditional en primeur buyers in the US and UK have lost interest in buying Bordeaux’s primeurs following price inflation for the 2009 and 2010 vintages, driven by demand from new buyers in China and Hong Kong.

 

 

——

Burgundy’s Les Saint Georges applies for promotion to Grand Cru

 

Source: Decanter

by Panos Kakaviatos

Thursday 13 June 2013

 

A group of vintners from Burgundy’s renowned Nuit Saint Georges appellation is applying to have its Les Saint Georges vineyard promoted from premier cru to grand cru status.

 

Thibault Liger-Belair, who owns more than 2ha of the 7ha vineyard, is one of a team of producers preparing the application to France’s appellations authority, the INAO.

 

The INAO now needs a ‘cahier de charges’ specifying terroir and soil characteristics, yields, planting conditions, harvesting methods and historical justifications for such a promotion.

 

INAO office manager Eric Vincent told Decanter.com that after detailed examinations of the terroir, the application would be forwarded to INAO headquarters in Paris.

 

Les Saint Georges is one of 41 premiers crus of Nuits Saint Georges but has long been considered the very best terroir of the region, which has no grand crus.

 

Liger-Belair, who has teamed up with Gregory Gouges of Domaine Henri Gouges, Erwan Faiveley of Domaine Faiveley and Philippe Chezeaux of Domaine Chevillon-Chezeaux, among others, told Decanter.com the promotion would ‘repair a historical anomaly’ in that the original decision was taken in a specific economic and political environment.

 

He said Les Saint Georges could have been classified as grand cru, but its candidacy was not submitted because the then owners, ‘in a time of economic crisis’, wanted to avoid paying the higher taxes that grand cru vineyards were liable to.

 

Liger-Belair is ‘aware’ of doubts about the initiative, including those of his cousin Louis Michel Liger-Belair, who is president of Burgundy’s grand cru union and who runs Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair in Vosne Romanée.

 

One concern, according to Thibault Liger-Belair, is that such a promotion may lead to further promotions and open a Pandora’s Box, ‘diluting’ the meaning of grand cru.

 

Frederic Mugnier of Jacques Frederic Mugnier, who owns Clos de la Marechale vineyard in Nuits Saint Georges, said that the end result would be creating possibly a new ‘super grand cru classification for the original grands crus.’

 

But Thibault Liger-Belair does not share such concerns. ‘Burgundy has evolved and nothing is fixed,’ he said. ‘We must remember that the Cote de Nuits gets its name from Nuits Saint Georges.’

 

 

——

DSWE Appoints Francesco Giovannetti Director of Strategic Sales and Branding

 

Source: DSWE

Jun 13th

 

Domaine Select Wine Estates, a Manhattan based wine & spirits import and distribution company, announces the appointment of Francesco Giovannetti as Director of Strategic Sales and Branding.  Mr. Giovannetti joined DSWE as Portfolio & Key Account Development Specialist in 2012 and has worked with closely with both the DSWE producers and sales teams in account and brand development.  As Director of Strategic Sales and Branding, Mr. Giovannetti will continue to report to Founder & CEO Paolo Domeneghetti and will work directly with Executive Vice President Joseph LoSardo relative to sales planning & execution for the portfolio on a national level.

 

 

——

American Beverage Licensees Elects New Officers

 

On-Premise Retailer Harry Klock of Montana Elected 6th ABL President

 

Source: ABL

Jun 13th

 

The Board of Directors of American Beverage Licensees (ABL) elected Harry Klock, owner and operator of Stockman Bar in Harlowton, Montana, as ABL President at its meeting on June 9, 2013. Klock will represent the trade association’s nearly 20,000 members for a two-year term, leading the national beverage alcohol retail community and working with ABL’s staff on issues affecting its membership.

 

Previously an ABL Vice President, Klock served Montana as an assemblyman in the Montana House of Representatives from 2005-2012, where he sponsored bills concerning small business and healthcare regulations.  A former President of the Montana Tavern Association, Mr. Klock and his family operate Klock Land and Livestock.

 

“I am proud and excited to serve as President of American Beverage Licensees,” said Klock. “We face new and ongoing challenges as independent beverage retailers.  I hope to be a strong voice for the interests of on- and off-premise licensees and small business owners.”

 

“Harry’s experience as a state legislator will be invaluable as ABL and our members continue to navigate the complex world of beverage alcohol politics and policy,” said ABL Executive Director John Bodnovich.  “I’m looking forward to working closely with him the next two years, as well as with all of our newly-elected and continuing officers.”

 

Klock is joined in his new role by the officers who comprise ABL’s executive committee. The 2013-2014 ABL Executive Committee includes: Vice President Don Diserens of Alton Sports Tap in Godfrey, IL; Vice President Steve Morris of Jorgenson’s Restaurant & Lounge in Helena, MT; Vice President Paul Santelle of Garden State Discount Liquor in Perth Amboy, NJ; Vice President Warren Scheidt of The Cork in Columbus, IN; Treasurer Ray Cox of Elite Beverages in Indianapolis, IN; and Representative At-Large Bob Sprenger of Bubba’s in Marion, WI.  Outgoing President Chuck Ferrar of Bay Ridge Wine and Spirits in Annapolis, MD remains on the Executive Committee as Immediate Past-President.

 

 

——

Ron Burkle Said in Talks to Buy Tesco’s Fresh & Easy

 

Source: Bloomberg

By Lauren Coleman-Lochner, Mark Clothier & Leslie Patton

Jun 12, 2013

 

Billionaire Ron Burkle is in talks to buy Tesco Plc (TSCO)’s unprofitable Fresh & Easy chain in the U.S., according to people familiar with the discussions.

 

Burkle would use the stores to relaunch the Wild Oats brand, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the process isn’t public. Jim Keyes, the former CEO of 7-Eleven Inc. and Blockbuster Inc., owns the Wild Oats name and will serve as chief executive officer of a new grocery retail venture with the billionaire, said one of the people. Burkle founded private-equity company Yucaipa Cos.

 

Frank Quintero, a spokesman for Yucaipa, declined to comment. A Tesco official declined to comment.

 

Tesco fell 0.4 percent to 342.55 pence at the close of trading in London today.

 

Fresh & Easy marks Tesco’s second failed international venture after it paid to exit Japan last year. The chain, with about 200 shops in Nevada, California and Arizona, hasn’t made a profit since it was built up from scratch in 2007. Tesco invested about 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) in the country before deciding the chain, which targeted urban areas with private-label food, was a drain on earnings and management time.

 

Chief Financial Officer Laurie McIlwee told journalists on June 5 that Tesco was “in advanced discussions with a number of parties interested in taking over Fresh & Easy in its entirety.” The decision to dump the chain cut Tesco’s profit by 1.2 billion pounds in its last fiscal year, leading to the company’s first annual drop in almost 20 years.

Burkle Investments

 

Burkle has sought investments and stakes in troubled companies, including a partnership to take over Barneys New York last year. He was also interested in buying part of grocery chain Supervalu Inc. (SVU), people familiar with the matter have said. Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu sold some of its banners, including Jewel-Osco and Acme, to a Cerberus Capital Management LP-led team in March.

 

An entity with Yucaipa’s address has applied to open grocery retail stores, according to the trademark application that was published for opposition on May 21. The owner of the filing is listed as Wild Oats Marketing LLC with Yucaipa’s address of 9130 West Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

 

Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI) bought Wild Oats in 2007. At the time, Wild Oats had 109 locations and annual sales of about $1.2 billion, according to a statement from Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods. Wild Oats, which opened its first retail stores in 1987, is planning a comeback to grocery-store shelves, according to the company’s website. This year, it will sell branded cereals, coffee, dry beans, pretzels and other foods at U.S. supermarkets.

 

 

——

Economist’s Notebook: May restaurant sales dip from record-high volume

 

Source: NRA

June 13, 2013

 

In his latest commentary, the National Restaurant Association’s Chief Economist Bruce Grindy analyzes the latest sales results.  Restaurant sales dipped in May from April’s record high volume, but still remain above year-ago levels.  Looking ahead, economic fundamentals continue to point toward a generally positive sales environment in the second half of the year.

 

Restaurant sales edged down in May from April’s record high volume, according to preliminary figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.  Eating and drinking place sales totaled $45.9 billion in May on a seasonally-adjusted basis, down 0.4 percent from April’s upwardly-revised sales volume of $46.1 billion, which represented a record high.

 

Despite the May downtick, combined restaurant sales in April and May were nearly $1.4 billion more than the volume registered during the first two months of 2013, when restaurant spending was dampened by the payroll tax hike.

 

The restaurant industry underperformed in May relative the overall retail sector (excluding foodservice), where sales rose a solid 0.7 percent above its April level.  However, restaurant sales in May stood 4.4 percent above their May 2012 level, which was essentially on par with the 4.3 percent 12-month gain in overall retail sales.

 

Looking forward, economic fundamentals continue to point toward a generally positive sales environment in the second half of the year.  Job growth – a key driver of restaurant sales – continues to follow a moderately upward trajectory, with monthly gains averaging 175,000 jobs during the past year.

 

At the same time, consumer sentiment appears to be on the mend, with The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index rising in May to its highest level in more than five years.

 

For their part, restaurant operators are generally optimistic that sales levels will improve in the coming months.  In the National Restaurant Association’s May 2013 Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey, 41 percent of operators said they expect to have higher sales in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year), while just 10 percent expect their sales to decline.

 

The 10 percent of operators who think their sales will decline is the lowest reading in 11 months, which suggests that some of the downside risk to the outlook is dissipating.

 

 

——

Lending to Restaurants Picks Up, but Mostly for Big Players

 

Source: WSJ

By Annie Gasparro

Jun 13th

 

Banks are lending money at a faster pace to large restaurant franchisees, but mom-and-pop shops with an appetite to expand are still struggling to get the cash.

 

Loans to franchisees–a key source of funding that helped the likes of Pizza Hut and Applebee’s spread nationwide–fell dramatically during the recession. “Now the credit markets are very active again. It’s a depth and breadth that we haven’t seen in the last few years,” said Dave Farwell, head of franchise financing for RBS Citizens.

 

Sales are rebounding in the restaurant industry, and interest rates are at historic lows, making both bankers and restaurant operators feel like it’s a good time to grow.

 

For instance, Border Foods Inc., a top Taco Bell franchisee with roughly 180 total restaurants, recently secured a $17 million line of credit to fund remodels, new site development or acquisitions. The loan is part of a $98 million seven-year senior credit facility.

 

However, veteran small franchisees are still struggling to raise enough cash just to meet the renovation demands of their parent brands, said Brad Swanson, managing director of KeyBanc’s consumer & retail group.

 

Whether its remodeling their restaurants, like Wendy’s is asking, or investing in a menu overhaul, like Burger King recently required, its a lot to ask of small businesses.

 

“There is a population of franchisees who got on board in the ’70s and ’80s when quick-serve and casual dining were really expanding, and they have a handful of units now,” Mr. Swanson said. “For small franchisees like that, a $600,000 to $800,000 remodel is a significant investment.”

 

Justin Trouard, a single-unit franchisee who opened his first restaurant earlier this year, said he was shocked at how difficult it is for small business owners to even be considered for a modest loan.

 

“The big banks’ requirements are ridiculous. You have to have 50% of the loan in cash and 50% in collateral,” he said. “At that point, you don’t even really need a loan.”

 

For a while, all he could find were offers for unsecured loans at interest rates of 15% to 20%. Mr. Trouard eventually received an offer from a local bank using an online matching service called BoeFly, and he recently opened his Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchise in the D.C. area.

 

The International Franchise Association says lending to franchisees in general–not just restaurants–will reach its highest level this year since the recession, lending $23.9 billion. However, there’s still an expected shortfall of $2.6 billion between franchisees’ appetite for growth and banks’ ability to meet the demand, the association said.

 

“We’re seeing definite improvement, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” said IFA President and Chief Executive Steve Caldeira. “Their already thin margins are being squeezed by things like health-care regulations and commodity costs, and it’s making it extremely difficult for small business owners to turn a profit.”

 

As a result, underperforming locations are selling out to bigger franchisees or being bought back by the parent brands, since they can afford to invest in improvements. Last week, a 40-unit Applebee’s franchisee, RMH Franchise Corp., bid $8.6 million in a bankruptcy auction for 15 Applebee’s locations owned by a smaller Illinois franchisee. The deal needs approval from a bankruptcy judge.

 

Mr. Farwell, of RBS Citizens, said the parent chains aren’t sorry to see some of the smaller players exit, as they prefer to have more professional franchisees that tend to uphold brand standards better.

 

“It takes a higher level of sophistication to run these chains than it did a few years ago, so I think the consolidation will continue,” he said.

 

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD), which is returning to new-store growth in the U.S. after a decade-long lull, said it’s looking for multi-brand, experienced franchisees to lead its expansion. “You still may see some smaller players, but we’re looking more for people with more flags in their hat,” said Chief Financial Officer Doug Muir.

 

However, other brands, like Subway, whose sandwich shops are all franchised, still see an opportunity among new and smaller operators.

 

Subway tends to attract smaller franchisees since its menu is relatively simple and it requires less capital to open a store. They are even helping franchisees expand. “In 2008, lending tightened up, and it got harder to get access to capital,” Chief Development Officer Donald Fertman said.

 

To help, Subway began hosting forums for potential lenders, to instill confidence in the brand. “We just held another one recently, and I think it’s helped our franchisees have more success at continuing development than other chains,” he said.

 

The chain even surpassed McDonald’s in the number of locations it has, now boasting 39,500 worldwide compared to McDonald’s “more than 34,000.”

 

 

——

Illinois: WIRTZ BEVERAGE ILLINOIS UNVEILS CENTRAL ILLINOIS HUB

 

Heartland distribution center to service company’s central & southern Illinois customers

 

Source: Respublica

June 13, 2013

 

Wirtz Beverage Illinois and Wirtz Realty Group, joined by Mayor John Mohr and local elected officials, unveiled the vision of a 50,000-square-foot Heartland headquarters for the beverage company in Lexington, Ill. Standing on 14 acres, the distribution center will serve the central and southern Illinois regions and consolidate smaller facilities throughout the state.

 

“This marks an important day for Wirtz Beverage as we expand upon the investments we have made in our home state of Illinois,” said Rocky Wirtz, President of Wirtz Beverage Group. “We have been operating statewide for a number of years however these new facilities allow us to better coordinate our logistics, service customers and ultimately be more efficient in growing our business.”

 

The facility will include 15,000-square-feet of office space and a 35,000-square-foot warehouse, along with 20 truck docks. In addition, the site will serve as the hub for the company’s Heartland sales force, drawing team members from across the region.

 

“It’s a huge project for the city and it may be the single largest private investment that we’ve seen in many, many years,” Mayor Mohr said. “The folks at Wirtz Realty and Wirtz Beverage have been great to work with and it is no doubt they will be a great benefit to McLean County.  Wirtz Beverage has a strong history of being a community partner, and we welcome its team to Lexington.”

 

Among those also in attendance at the groundbreaking were Julian Burzynski, Executive Vice President of Wirtz Beverage Group, Anthony Iatarola, Senior Vice President, Wirtz Realty Group, Illinois State Senator Jason Barickman and State Representative Dan Brady.

 

The Heartland facility is expected to be fully operational by early 2014.

 

 

——

Florida: FLORIDA GOVERNOR SIGNS INTO LAW A BILL THAT REDEFINES BUSINESS FOR FLORIDA ALCOHOL MANUFACTURERS

 

Craft distillers celebrate new opportunities for growth

 

Source: Edelman

Jun 13th

 

Florida Governor Rick Scott has signed into law two bills that redefine business for state alcohol manufacturers.  HB 347/SB 642 set a precedent for the alcohol industry that has not been seen in the state since the days of prohibition. GrayRobinson government relations attorney Jason Unger and alcohol industry attorney Richard Blau represented the Florida Craft Distillers Guild in amending outdated legislation.

 

“There are several sets of interests that have to be taken into account when drafting alcohol legislation, which makes it one of the trickiest industries to represent from a legal perspective,” said Blau, the chair of GrayRobinson’s national alcohol beverage and food law practice. “You have stakeholders with concerns in the public safety and health and wellness sectors, while also having to consider implications at a political and economic level. The fact that this bill was able to pass in its first session, with little to no opposition on the voting floor, is truly extraordinary.”

 

“From a legislative standpoint, we were able to work with key legislators and leaders in the alcohol industry to pass a bill that everyone could support,” said Unger, the lead lobbyist on the effort out of GrayRobinson’s Tallahassee office.

 

In recent years the state has seen a growing number of craft distilleries that invite the public to tour their facilities and sample their product. However, unlike wineries and breweries, Florida law prohibited these distilleries from selling manufactured products on site. The product would have to be shipped off to a wholesaler or distributor for purchase. With the passage of HB 347/SB 642, championed by Representative Ronald Renuart and Senator Alan Hays, these distilleries can now sell products as part of this offering.

 

Philip McDaniel, chairman of the Florida Craft Distillers Guild and owner of the St. Augustine Distillery currently under construction in St. Augustine, Fla., predicts that the number of distilleries across the state could grow from 15 to anywhere between 35 and 50 over the next decade as a direct result of this new legislation.

 

“For us, the most exciting part of this is that we can now complete the customer experience,” said McDaniel. “When customers tour our distilleries they build up anticipation to try the product and want to take home a memory of the experience.  When we’d have to say ‘I’m sorry, we can’t sell you a bottle’ at the very moment they’re eager to purchase, well, it’s just creates a negative customer experience.”

 

McDaniel has plans for the future of St. Augustine Distillery now that the law will take effect July 1. In addition to a gift shop that sells bottles of the artisan crafted bourbon, gin, vodka and rum, there will be a small screening room that shows a documentary about the distiller’s relationship with local farms. The distillery is located just off of the trolley route located in the heart of St. Augustine’s historical tourist district and McDaniel is hopeful that a vast majority of these patrons will enter his doors.

 

“Florida has some of the best agriculture in the world, especially when used as a value added component for alcohol manufacturing. We have one of the largest sugar cane crops in the nation and a variety of fresh fruits to flavor our liquors, wines and beers,” said McDaniel. “This legislation will allow Florida distillers to capitalize on our unique location and build a global reputation bringing new visitors to the state because, quite simply, they can’t find this experience anywhere else.”

 

JoAnn Elardo, owner of Cape Spirits in Cape Coral, Fla., can finally hire the help she needs to offer tours due to the added revenue the distillery will bring in from alcohol sales. Cape Spirits manufactures Wicked Dolphin Rum.

 

“Before we were just a name on a shelf,” said Elardo. “Now we have marketing capability. We can make our distillery a destination and put our stamp on our product.”

Rémy Cointreau remains upbeat in the face of China sales slowdown

 

Source: FT

By Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris

Jun 11th

 

Rémy Cointreau said it expected flat China sales of cognac in the first half of this year, followed by a “significant improvement” in the second half.

 

Jean-Marie Laborde, chief executive of the French spirits group, said on Tuesday: “I can confirm that the start of the year is soft in China?.?.?.?We expect a lacklustre first half in China and its impact will be felt by the company.”

 

Mr Laborde was speaking as the Paris-based group reported an 18 per cent rise in full-year net profit to ?130m in its financial year to end-March – slightly below analysts’ expectations.

 

Sales of ?1.2bn were 16 per cent higher than in the same period the year before, or 9 per cent higher on a like-for-like basis.

 

Sales to China in the first half of the year were 40 per cent higher than in the same period of the previous year.

 

Mr Laborde said there had been a sharp slowdown in Chinese demand over the past six months in restaurants and bars for its most prestigious cognacs, including Louis XIII, which retails from about $2,500 a bottle and is often consumed by high-ranking Chinese officials.

 

Demand from younger Chinese drinkers, who drink less expensive cognac, remained robust, he said. Wholesalers’ cognac inventory levels in China were high after the weaker-than-expected lunar new year, he said, and would take time to run down. He was confident about the medium-term growth outlook for premium spirits.

 

Premium drinks companies and luxury goods groups have almost all been hit by the country’s economic slowdown and by the new Chinese government’s austerity campaign, which has led to the giving of less expensive gifts and lower spending by state officials.

Rémy, controlled by the Hériard Dubreuil family, makes 40 per cent of its operating profits from cognac sales in China, but said the slowdown was cyclical, not structural.

 

“Our good results today are, among other things, due to having anticipated the recovery in the US,” said François Hériard Dubreuil, chairman,

 

Mr Laborde said Rémy was raising its presence and investment in Africa, initially focused on a handful of countries, including South Africa and Nigeria, which he said was a promising market.

 

Rémy also took an impairment charge of ?15.9m on the value of its 27 per cent stake in Dynasty Fine Wines, the listed Chinese group. Dynasty, which warned in February that it made a loss in 2012 but has yet to publish its results, is valued at ?43m in Rémy’s accounts.

 

Last month, Pernod Ricard, France’s largest spirits group by sales and maker of Martell cognac, also forecast weaker sales growth in China due to the country’s economic slowdown.

 

 

——

Rémy Cointreau: Consolidated Preliminary Results for the Year Ended 31 March 2013

 

Source: Herald Online

June 11, 2013

 

Rémy Cointreau’s (Paris:RCO) sales for the financial year ended 31 March 2013 increased by 16.3% to ?1,193.3 million. Current operating profit was ?245.4 million, a rise of 18.1%, which was a very strong performance given that it was achieved on the back of double-digit growth the previous year. The current operating margin rose to 20.6% despite a further increase in marketing investment.

 

These results reflect the sales momentum of the Group’s brands in all regions of the world with double-digit growth in Asia and the US. Europe, despite a mixed economic environment, also contributed to this performance.

 

Net profit rose by 17.7% to ?130.4 million.

 

The Group’s net financial debt was ?265.5 million even though two acquisitions were completed during the year, and the Net debt to EBITDA ratio remained below 1.

 

The 2012/13 financial year was marked by:

 

a strong increase in current operating profit,

double-digit growth in Rémy Martin sales, which went hand-in-hand with strong profitability,

sustained, strong growth in Asia,

a remarkable performance in the US,

the strategic acquisition of Bruichladdich, a single malt Scotch whisky, and

a sound financial position: the Group has ?600 million available in long-term funding

 

Rémy Martin – Once again, the brand reported a remarkable performance: a 21.5% increase in sales to ?719.8 million and a 25.2% rise in current operating profit to ?216.6 million, under the combined effect of price increases and very high quality innovations, particularly in Asia, as well as in the US where consumer demand was strong. Russia contributed to this substantial growth, as did some Western European countries which are seeing positive trends.

 

There was a further improvement in the operating margin to 30.1% (29.2% the previous year), despite another increase in marketing investment.

 

Liqueurs & Spirits – Overall sales in this division were ?239.1 million, an increase of 10.8% compared with the previous year. This performance was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that Europe is the division’s primary market. Cointreau also performed well, not only thanks to the US but also to Western Europe. Despite the continued challenging economic situation in Greece, Metaxa reported growth thanks to Eastern European markets. Bruichladdich, added to this division’s portfolio since 1 September 2012, did not have a significant impact during the period.

 

Current operating profit declined to ?45.2 million due, as anticipated, to a substantial increase in sales and marketing investment in the divisional brands overall. The operating margin was 18.9%.

 

Partner Brands – Sales grew by 7.6% to ?234.4 million, together with operating profit of ?3.8 million.

 

Consolidated results

 

Sales of ?1,193.3 million represented an increase of 16.3% (up 8.8% organically, with 10.3% organic growth for Group brands).

 

Current operating profit rose by 18.1% to ?245.4 million (+12.3% organically), with an increase of 20.6% in operating margin compared with the previous year. This performance was achieved thanks to a further significant improvement in gross profit, accompanied by increased advertising and marketing investment to support the brands.

 

Operating profit was ?237.9 million, after deducting a ?7.5 million charge that primarily included expenses related to the two acquisitions.

 

Net financial expenses amounted to ?20 million, a significant decline of ?15.3 million which was primarily due to movements in the value of interest rate and foreign exchange hedging instruments.

 

The income tax charge of ?72 million reflected an effective tax rate of 33.1%, higher than the rate of 27.9% applicable in the previous year.

 

The share in the loss of associates primarily originated from Dynasty. The Chinese group, Dynasty Fine Wines Ltd, in which Rémy Cointreau holds a 27% stake, issued a profit warning in February 2013 flagging a loss for the 2012 financial year after several years of declining results. Since Dynasty’s annual financial statements were still pending publication at Rémy Cointreau’s balance sheet date, the Group carried out an impairment test on the value of its equity investment, on the basis of which an impairment charge of ?15.9 million was recognised.

 

The Group’s share of net profit, excluding non-recurring items, was ?151.5 million, an increase of 22.3% compared with the previous year.

 

The Group’s share of net profit rose by ?20 million to ?130.4 million, an increase of 17.7% after the Dynasty provision.

 

Net financial debt was ?265.5 million, an increase of ?76.9 million after taking into account the ?167.4 million impact of the two acquisitions completed during the year. The net debt to EBITDA ratio was 0.99. At 31 March 2013, Rémy Cointreau had confirmed financial resources of ?600 million.

 

Shareholders’ equity was ?1,094.8 million with a stronger balance sheet. Following implementation of the share buyback programme in December 2011 and May 2012, the Group holds 1.4 million treasury shares, accounting for 2.8% of its share capital and valued at ?96.1 million.

 

During the 2012/13 financial year, the Euro/US Dollar rate was very close to that of the previous year, at USD 1.35/?1 versus USD 1.34/?1. Foreign exchange movements had a positive effect of ?12 million on net profit.

 

On 10 June 2013, Rémy Cointreau announced that it had signed an agreement with the Nordic group, Altia, in respect of the transfer of Larsen Cognac including the brand, industrial and commercial assets and inventories, to enable the entity to operate as a going concern.

 

A cash dividend of ?1.40 per share will be put to a shareholders’ vote at the Annual General Meeting to be held on 24 September 2013.

 

Outlook

 

In a worldwide economic environment which lacks visibility, particularly in Europe, but nevertheless remains favourable for the premium spirits industry, Rémy Cointreau remains true to its long-term high value strategy.

 

The Group will continue to rely on its very high quality brands, its innovation policy, the dynamism of its distribution network and its strict cost control, and remains confident in its capacity to continue to generate profitable growth over the medium to long term.

 

 

——

Rémy Cointreau: Chinese conundrum

 

French spirits group needs Chinese cognac drinkers to keep imbibing

 

Source: FT / LEX

Jun 11th

 

So how much do you know about the state of mind of Chinese cognac drinkers? And are you confident enough to back your view with cash? If the answers are “plenty” and “yes”, then go ahead and buy shares in Rémy Cointreau, which reported results on Tuesday. Exposure to China’s wealthier consumers has been a boon to Rémy, which specialises in high-end cognac. Profit growth has averaged 20 per cent for the past four years. That is better than rivals have managed, so Rémy’s shares, which were rated in line with Diageo and Pernod Ricard four years ago, now enjoy a premium. They trade on 23 times forecast earnings, against 18 times for the other two.

 

To maintain that premium – let alone expand it – Rémy has to keep growing. Yet the trend is not encouraging. The change in Chinese leadership, and efforts to rein in gifting, have dented the enthusiasm of buyers of the more expensive cognac brands. Organic sales growth was 9 per cent in the year to March, against 16 per cent the previous year. This year may not be much easier. In April the company told analysts that wholesale inventories were higher than normal. Rémy is confident that demand will return, particularly for drinks bought in bars and restaurants. Still, earnings forecasts for the year to March 2014 have been drifting down, from ?4.30 a share last October to ?3.70 now.

 

One way to shore things up would be to grow the group’s other brands, which include Mount Gay rum and Cointreau. Profits from these brands fell 14 per cent last year, as the company put money into marketing and absorbed raw material price increases. But it plans to invest. It bought Bruichladdich whisky for £58m last July – its first foray into scotch – and it has the balance sheet capacity for more deals. But all that will take time to show through on the bottom line. For now, it is all about the Chinese cognac.

 

 

——

Edrington Group Ends US Contract with Remy Cointreau (Excerpt)

 

Source: Wine & Spirits Daily

Jun 11th

 

Glasgow-based Edrington Group has ended its US distribution contract with Remy Cointreau, effective March 31, 2014, said Remy Cointreau ceo Jean-Marie Laborde in the company’s full year results. Subsequently Edrington, which owns brands such as The Macallan, The Famous Grouse and Cutty Sark, will be setting up its own distribution network in the US. You may recall Remy Cointreau and Edrington Group have been distribution partners in the US since 1999. “It’s an old story, thus, of hatred and love and participation between Remy Cointreau and Edrington,” said Jean-Marie.

 

He went on to say that he’s not sure whether Edrington’s decision had anything to do with Remy Cointreau’s purchase of Bruichladdich Distillery Company, “but in the US market in any case, the Edrington brands are going to be immediately replaced by our own brands that we bought out within our distillery.”

 

 

——

Diageo plc – Special Call

 

Source: Seeking Alpha

Jun 10 2013

 

Operator

 

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to today’s Brunch-time Call with the Presidents. [Operator Instructions] Just to remind you, the call is being recorded.

 

I’m now pleased to hand over to the President, Diageo Latin America & Caribbean, Randy Millian. Over to you, sir.

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1491422-diageo-plc-special-call?source=google_news

 

 

——

Diageo Facing Raki Trouble in Turkey After Booze-Ad Ban

 

Source: Bloomberg

By Kristen Schweizer & Selcan Hacaoglu

Jun 11, 2013

 

The latest ad for Turkey’s Efes beer features an unmarked brown bottle and the cryptic message: “Even if we don’t see each other, we’ll know.”

 

The slogan refers to a law signed Tuesday by President Abdullah Gul that bans alcohol ads, limits sales, and would even stop TV viewers from watching Homer Simpson enjoy a Duff beer in Moe’s Tavern, as depictions of drinking on television programs are to be blurred out.

 

Diageo Plc (DGE) called the law “disappointing” in a statement, and Turkish spirits producer Yeni Raki ran a newspaper ad showing a hand shaking a glass of the drink with the words: “Ads are over. Excuse us.” Turkish winemakers have published notices with text in the shape of a wine bottle condemning the curbs.

 

The law forbids the sale of alcohol at night and near schools and mosques, going against the secular traditions of the Muslim-majority country of 74 million, where many people drink and women often choose not to cover their hair. Protesters who’ve taken to the streets in recent weeks calling for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s resignation have denounced the alcohol restrictions, among other grievances.

 

Erdogan, who has dismissed the protests as the work of extremists, says the law is aimed at improving the nation’s health. As a substitute for the traditional anise-flavored spirit raki, last month he declared ayran, a salty yogurt drink, to be the national beverage.

‘Healthy Generation’

 

“We did not ban alcohol; we just introduced a new framework,” Erdogan said in Istanbul last month at a conference on tobacco, which he has also targeted. Bans on smoking in coffee houses and restaurants date to 2008, and on May 31, he extended the restrictions to drivers of private cars. “We want to raise a healthy generation,” Erdogan said.

 

Diageo, the world’s largest distiller of alcoholic beverages, paid $2.1 billion for raki-maker Mey Icki two years ago. The London-based company’s shares fell 5.3 percent through yesterday from May 23, when Turkey’s parliament passed the alcohol-ad ban.

 

As protests have rocked Istanbul in recent weeks, the Borsa Istanbul National 100 Index has dropped almost 18 percent since May 23. Anadolu Efes Biracilik & Malt Sanayii AS, which produces Efes beer, declined 27 percent in the same period. Turk Tuborg Bira ve Malt Sanayii AS (TBORG), which also produces beer, is down 14 percent.

 

Turks consume 3.4 liters (0.9 gallons) of pure alcohol per capita annually, or just more than half the global average, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S, consumption is 9.4 liters; in Britain it’s 13.4 liters. In Moldova, the global leader, it’s 19.2 liters.

 

Russian Crackdown

 

A year ago, Russia — with annual consumption of 15.7 liters per capita — began a similar crackdown with higher taxes, limits on where liquor can be sold, and ad restrictions.

 

Industry regulations in the U.S. only allow ads for spirits when 70 percent of the audience is over the legal drinking age – – TV shows airing after 11 p.m., for instance, or in high-end magazines. Rules for beer are looser.

 

In India, where alcohol ads have been prohibited for decades, producers have found a way around the ban by promoting other products like soda and bottled water under the same name. Kingfisher beer and Bagpiper’s Scotch Ale, for instance, both sell soda water with logos very similar to their alcohol brands.

 

“Ad bans are not the way to make people drink less,” said Dominic Lyle, director general of the European Association of Communications Agencies in Brussels. The restrictions are “very much a political move and linked to the views of the government. It’s more about secular versus religious.”

 

Shifting Tastes

 

Turkish imports of European liquor declined from 9 million cases in 2002 to 8 million cases last year, although their value more than doubled to 129 million euros ($171 million) as tastes shifted to pricier booze, according to SpiritsEurope, a trade association for distillers. The ban will prevent new products from entering Turkey since they won’t be able to build their brands with ads, according to Paul Skehan, the group’s director general.

 

“There’s a lot of industry disappointment that this law was rushed through at supersonic speed and there was no consultation of any of the industries affected,” Skehan said.

 

In a statement, Diageo — home to brands such as Johnnie Walker whiskey and Captain Morgan rum — said it believes a “collaborative approach among the industry, government, and third parties would lead to a better outcome.” The Turkish Association of Advertising Agencies, citing “deep tension” with the government, declined to comment on the new law.

 

While the curbs will hurt them, liquor producers still have high expectations for Turkey, said Spiros Malandrakis, a drinks analyst at Euromonitor International in London.

 

“The potential for the market is massive,” he said. “It’s one of the few countries in the region that’s growing, so everyone wants in.”

 

 

——

Beer taxes: Why six-packs are pricier in some states

 

Source: CNN Money

By Melanie Hicken

June 11, 2013

 

Every state imposes a tax on beer, but the amount each state charges varies widely.

 

Buy a six-pack of beer in Tennessee and you’ll pay 66 cents towards state beer taxes. Yet, right across the border in Missouri, the tax drops to mere pennies.

 

With a state excise tax of 6 cents per gallon of beer, or three cents per six pack, Missouri — home to Anheuser-Busch (BUD) — has one of the lowest beer taxes in the nation.

 

Tennessee, which happens to be the heart of whiskey country, claims the top spot, due to combined excise and wholesale taxes that push the tax burden for consumers to $1.17 per gallon, or 66 cents per six pack, according to the Tax Foundation’s analysis of beer-specific statewide taxes. In contrast, the state’s taxes on spirits — including whiskey — rank 30th in the nation.

 

Other states with the highest beer taxes include Alaska ($1.07 per gallon), Alabama ($1.05) and Georgia ($1.01), which charge more than 50 cents in taxes on a six-pack.

 

Meanwhile, the lowest taxes are in Wyoming, a generally tax-friendly state which levies only two cents in taxes on a gallon of beer or one cent per six pack. Other low beer-tax states include Wisconsin and Colorado, the respective birthplaces of Miller and Coors brews.

 

Sometimes dubbed “sin taxes,” excise taxes are selective taxes on specific goods and activities, such as cigarettes, gasoline and indoor tanning services. Beyond raising revenue, excise taxes are often aimed at decreasing consumption and paying for government services related to the product. For example, gasoline taxes help fund road and highway repairs.

 

Beer lovers not only indirectly pay a state beer tax, but they may also face a local excise tax as well as a federal excise tax of about 58 cents per gallon (for large brewers), or about 33 cents per six-pack. All of this is in addition to any state and local sales tax that is charged whether the beer is bought at a grocery store or a favorite pub. And some states tack on case or bottle fees and other special sales taxes specifically targeting alcoholic beverages.

 

Excise taxes are typically paid by brewers and distributors before the beer reaches store shelves so they won’t show up on a receipt like a sales tax, but consumers still feel their effects.

 

“A higher tax on beer is going to make for a higher price on beer,” said Scott Drenkard, an economist at the Tax Foundation.

 

The difference adds up. Buy a six-pack once a week for a year in Tennessee and your purchases will have included around $34 for state taxes. In Missouri, less than $2 in state beer taxes would be included in the same purchases.

 

While the way Tennessee’s wholesale beer tax is charged is slated to change in July, the tax rate will remain among the country’s highest.

 

Anti-drunk driving groups and other advocacy groups argue that other states should raise outdated beer tax rates to help reduce consumption and pay for prevention and healthcare programs.

 

Wyoming, for instance, hasn’t raised its beer excise tax since 1935, two years after the end of Prohibition, while Pennsylvania’s dates back to 1947, according to Alcohol Justice, a self-proclaimed industry watchdog that argues that all state beer taxes are too low.

 

The brewing industry counters that beer is already one of the country’s most heavily-taxed goods. Including federal and state business taxes, taxes make up 40% of beer’s retail price tag, according to The Beer Institute, an industry trade group. Similar to sales taxes, beer taxes are regressive, meaning that they hit lower and middle-class consumers the hardest, the institute argues.

 

“This is an invisible tax that consumers don’t know they’re paying,” Beer Institute President Joe McClain said in a March 2013 audio interview posted on the group’s website. “The people who enjoy beer the most, those middle-class Americans, are feeling the bite of that tax more.”

 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/pf/taxes/beer-taxes/

 

 

——

6 Anheuser-Busch Watered-Down Beer Suits Grouped In MDL

 

Source: Law 360

June 11, 2013

 

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on Monday centralized in Ohio six putative class actions accusing Anheuser-Busch Cos. LLC of deliberately overstating the alcohol content of its beers by watering them down, overriding the malt beverage giant’s objections.

 

The panel sent the litigation to the Northern District of Ohio to be handled by U.S. District Judge Donald C. Nugent, who is already presiding over one of the suits at issue. The five other suits have been pending in California, Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas federal courts.

 

AB had fought against grouping the suits into an MDL, arguing that the factual issues in the suits were not complex or numerous enough to warrant centralization because any variance in their products’ actual alcohol conduct from what their labels say is within the range allowed by federal regulation.

 

But the panel sided with the plaintiffs, saying that “notwithstanding defendant’s apparent acknowledgment of some variance for unspecified products, the alleged conduct primarily at issue – systematic overstatement of the alcohol content – will remain in dispute and will involve complex discovery concerning the calibration of the involved equipment and corporate policy with respect to labeling.”

 

AB had also argued that centralization wasn’t warranted because there were a limited number of lawsuits and lawyers involved, so they could voluntarily coordinate. The panel wrote, however, that the lawsuits were pending in six geographically dispersed districts and that the overlap in counsel was minimal.

 

The panel held that the six lawsuits share factual questions arising from AB’s alleged deliberate and systematic practice of overstating the alcohol content on the labels of 11 of its malt beverage products, and that centralization will eliminate duplicative discovery, prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings and conserve resources.

 

Robert Mills of The Mills Law Firm, who represents some of the plaintiffs, told Law360 on Tuesday that he was pleased the cases had been consolidated and that “an experienced, distinguished judge has been assigned to oversee this important consumer litigation.”

 

Attorneys for AB did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

 

The proposed class actions all allege that AB deliberately overstates the alcohol content in its Budweiser, Bud Ice, Bud Light Platinum, Michelob, Michelob Ultra, Hurricane High Gravity Lager, King Cobra, Busch Ice, Natural Ice, Black Crown and Bud Light Lime beverages.

 

The complaints lodged in California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in February asserted that AB has the means to precisely control the exact alcohol content of its malt beverages to within hundredths of a percent, but it chooses to water down those products in order to churn out more units of beer from the same starting batch of ingredients.

 

Peter Kraemer, AB’s vice president of brewing and supply, said in February that the claims were completely false and that the lawsuits were groundless.

 

“Our beers are in full compliance with all alcohol labeling laws,” Kraemer said at the time in an emailed statement. “We proudly adhere to the highest standards in brewing our beers, which have made them the best-selling in the U.S. and the world.”

 

The plaintiffs are represented by The Mills Law Firm, Bramson Plutzik Mahler & Birkhaeuser LLP, Caroselli Beachler McTiernan & Conboy, and Ronald Frederick & Associates Co. LPA, among others.

 

AB is represented by Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP and Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman LLP, among others.

 

The case is In Re: Anheuser-Busch Beer Labeling Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, MDL Number 2448, in the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

 

 

——

Big Food, Big Soda And Big Alcohol Pose ‘Serious Challenge’ To Health Promotion Says WHO

 

Source: Newsroom America

10 Jun

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) says efforts to promote good health are more vital than ever given that non-communicable diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading cause of death, but also warning that they face daunting challenges, including from ‘big business’.

 

“Today, the tables are turned. Instead of diseases vanishing as living conditions improve, socio-economic progress is actually creating the conditions that favour the rise of non-communicable diseases,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan in an address to the 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion, held in Helsinki, Finland.

 

“Economic growth, modernization, and urbanization have opened wide the entry point for the spread of unhealthy lifestyles,” she stated.

 

Dr Chan told participants that today, getting people to lead healthy lifestyles and adopt healthy behaviours faces opposition from forces that are “not so friendly.”

 

“Efforts to prevent non-communicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators. In my view, this is one of the biggest challenges facing health promotion,” she stated.

 

“It is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.”

 

She said these tactics include front groups, lobbies, promises of self-regulation, lawsuits, and industry-funded research that “confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt.”

 

They also include gifts, grants, and contributions to worthy causes that cast these industries as respectable corporate citizens in the eyes of politicians and the public, she added. They include arguments that place the responsibility for harm to health on individuals, and portray Government actions as interference in personal liberties and free choice.

 

“This is formidable opposition. Market power readily translates into political power. Few Governments prioritize health over big business. As we learned from experience with the tobacco industry, a powerful corporation can sell the public just about anything,” said Dr. Chan.

 

“Let me remind you. Not one single country has managed to turn around its obesity epidemic in all age groups. This is not a failure of individual will-power. This is a failure of political will to take on big business.”

 

Dr Chan also voiced concern about two recent and related trends. “The first relates to trade agreements. Governments introducing measures to protect the health of their citizens are being taken to court, and challenged in litigation. This is dangerous,” she stated.

 

“The second is efforts by industry to shape the public health policies and strategies that affect their products. When industry is involved in policy-making, rest assured that the most effective control measures will be downplayed or left out entirely. This, too, is well documented, and dangerous.

 

“In the view of WHO, the formulation of health policies must be protected from distortion by commercial or vested interests,” said Dr Chan.

 

The week-long conference, co-hosted by WHO and Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, will assess achievements and aims for health promotion globally. It aims to address what works and how, identifying options for action, available processes, mechanisms and tools.

 

 

——

Australia: Alcohol Advertising Review Board Releases List of Shame Target Alcohol Ads

 

Source: Top News

by Prakash Sharma

06/11/2013

 

Alcohol Advertising Review Board has compiled a report listing top 10 shockers. In bid to monitor alcohol advertising, health campaign groups urged the board last year to make a list of nation’s most irresponsible alcohol ads.

 

The review board listed the advertisements for Budweiser beer on a telephone box outside a school and a range of Jim Beam Racing children’s clothing as the nation’s most irresponsible ads.

 

The board received nearly 200 complaints in its first year and more than double the complaints were received by the alcohol and advertising industries’ voluntary complaints system.

 

The board released its first annual report on Tuesday. It revealed fully upheld 104 of the complaints and partly upheld 32. An advertisement for VB is among other advertisements that have been named in the list. The ad shows an image on a Thirsty Camel Facebook page that read, “I wish I could trade in my heart for another liver. Then I could drink more and care less”.

 

Fiona Stanley, Chairwoman of the Alcohol Advertising Review Board, said it is clear from the findings that the system of self-regulation was a failure.

 

Professor Stanley said alcohol industry is using creativity as a weapon to disguise people to promote their products. It is shocking and concerning as children and young people should not feel tempted to consume alcoholic beverages because of entangling alcohol advertisements.

 

 

——

Is alcohol advertising harming girls?

 

Source: The Globe and Mail

SUSAN KRASHINSKY

Jun. 10 2013

 

Are the companies who sell alcoholic drinks comparable to cigarette marketers? One doctor thinks so, and is taking the industry to task for the way it advertises to young girls.

 

In an upcoming editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, released online Monday, senior associate editor Dr. Ken Flegel makes the argument that like tobacco companies, the alcoholic beverage industry has recognized that a good way to increase profits is to target young female consumers – but that this has left adolescent girls, who also see the ads, particularly vulnerable.

 

“The advertising industry knows very well how to secure new, lifelong clients: Most current smokers began smoking before age 18. The type of alcohol advertising being directed at young women suggests that an attractive body and a successful, trendy life will be the result of using any particular product,” wrote Dr. Flegel, who is also an associate professor of medicine at McGill University and attending physician at the McGill University Health Centre. “.Exposure to advertising on television and in magazines, and use of alcohol have also been shown to have distinctive social and emotional effects on girls compared with boys.”

 

To illustrate this, Dr. Flegel points to research showing that young girls – at ages as early as 13 – are drinking as much alcohol as young boys are (while suffering, in some cases, worse health effects as a result). He also cites further studies, which have found that adolescent girls are exposed to more alcohol advertising, and that this exposure can be associated with increased consumption.

 

“Adults, both male and female, should know what they are doing. But adolescents need guidance as to what alcohol is and what it does. They need to be taught that the purpose of advertising is to create a demand where there is no need,” Dr. Flegel writes. “When advertising reaches a vulnerable group, such as adolescent girls, they need to understand what it means to be duped by an adult influence that does not have their interest at heart.”

 

In addition to putting the onus on parents and doctors to inform young girls about their choices, Dr. Flegel argues that as with tobacco products, health warnings should be required on the packaging of alcoholic drinks. Warnings should also be included in advertising, he wrote.

 

 

——

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO REDUCING ALCOHOL IMPAIRED DRIVING

 

Source: Public Action Management

By Pamela S. Erickson

Jun 11th

 

Everyone has a stake in reducing the large number of people who die or are injured on our highways due to alcohol involved crashes.   Almost 10,000 people die every single year from drunk driving.  This is far more than the 6,700 total deaths we have suffered in the two recent wars.  But, to achieve any kind of significant reduction, we must work together with passion and dedication.  My fear is that arguing over the value of a single measure will deter progress that can clearly be made on all the aspects of this issue.

 

“Please use door at rear of building.”

The site of a recent DUI in Portland, Oregon involving two drunk drivers, one death, serious injuries and substantial property damage.

 

Here’s the background:

In May of this year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended that we drop the Blood Alcohol Content assumption for alcohol impaired driving from .08 to .05.  They cite the fact that there were 9,878 alcohol-related traffic deaths in 2011 and that progress on DUI has plateaued since the mid 1990’s.  To be clear, the number of deaths due to alcohol related crashes has continued to decline, but the percentage of all traffic deaths due to alcohol has remained around 31% since the mid 1990’s.

 

Click here to continue article.

 

http://healthyalcoholmarket.com/

 

 

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New Zealand: Outstanding summer produces best wine vintage yet

 

Source: NBR

Wednesday June 12, 2013

 

Winemakers say the long hot summer has produced one of the country’s best vintages yet.

 

Grape harvesting has just been completed and the crop is up 28% on 2012 at 345,000 tonnes.

 

New Zealand Winegrowers chief executive Philip Gregan says the outstanding summer provided near perfect conditions for growing grapes nationwide.

 

“The result is that we expect the 2013 wines to be vibrant, fruit driven and complex expressions of our diverse grape growing regions,” Mr Gregan says in a statement.

 

The small 2012 grape crop left the industry unable to meet continuing strong consumer demand in established and new markets.

 

“Winemakers will welcome the more normal 2013 harvest as the better balanced supply will facilitate renewed export growth in the year ahead,” he says.

 

Of the key varieties, sauvignon blanc produced the biggest crop with 228,781 tonnes, up 26% on last year, followed by pinot noir with 23, 285 tonnes, up 36% on last year.

 

Marlborough produced the biggest crop, with 251,680 tonnes harvested, up 33% on the last year.

 

There is already been a record number of wine shipments made in May.

 

New Zealand wine is exported to more than 90 countries and annual wine exports are valued at $1.2 billion.

 

 

——

Chinese hygiene department, not tax, is main concern for fine wine shippers

 

Source: Decanter

by Sophie Kevany in Bordeaux

Tuesday 11 June 2013

 

Fine wine exporters are unfazed by China’s recent threat to impose an anti-dumping tax on European wine – the real threat, they say, is the Chinese hygiene department.

 

The department has the right to remove two bottles per case for tests, to determine if it is fit for human consumption. This is a bigger headache for importers of small-volume, high-end wines than a tax that may not materialise.

 

Exports of fine wine to China are worth millions for merchants and producers, mainly in Bordeaux. However, because the Chinese government already imposes a 48% tax on wine imports, most fine wine shipments destined for China are sent to Hong Kong, a tax-free zone for wines.

 

The wines then make their way into China via various routes, often circumventing customs altogether.

 

‘The threats of an anti-dumping tax aren’t a big worry for us,’ Jo Purcell, director of wine merchant Farr Vintners in Hong Kong, told Decanter.com. ‘Partly, because it appears to be a bit of political muscle flexing, and partly because the tax, if it materialises, really seems to be aimed at the [lower cost] volume imports that compete with China’s domestic wine industry.’

 

The real issue, she said, for fine wine shippers is the two bottle per case testing rule, which is, conversely, less of a worry for volume importers and much more of a concern for someone shipping, for example, 12 bottles of Petrus.

 

Gary Boom, director of London fine wine merchant Bordeaux Index, said the hygiene department rule was the reason his company avoids exporting to China. Instead, Bordeaux Index ships to Hong Kong and the company’s Chinese clients take care of logistics from there.

 

Boom also said the tax threat was probably only ‘a bit of posturing’ because ‘there are too many people with an interest in importing wine’ in China for it to happen.

 

 

——

Precept Wine buys Yakima Valley ‘Skyfall’ vineyard (Excerpt)

 

Precept Wine recently acquired a Yakima Valley vineyard, which it named Skyfall, and plans to grow grapes for red wines on the property.

 

Source: Puget Sounds BJ

By Rachel Lerman

Jun 10th

 

Precept Wine has acquired 174 acres in the Yakima Valley that it will convert from a partial orchard to a vineyard planted with red-wine grapes.

 

Seattle-based Precept, a wine producer that operates vineyards across Washington, Oregon and Idaho, bought the land for an undisclosed sum from two brothers named Malli who live in California, said David Minick, Precept vice president of vineyard operations. The brothers owned it for three years, but found it difficult to be absentee owners, he said.

 

The property is located near Benton City, just south of Red Mountain, and is currently planted with 32 acres of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, Syrah, sauvignon blanc and Riesling grapes. The land also has 66 acres of sweet cherries and 22 acres of other fruit.

 

During the next three years, Precept will convert the land to more than 100 vineyard acres, keeping about 20 acres of sweet cherries. The company says it will focus on planting and replanting the red wine grapes and also plans to add Chardonnay lots.

 

“As a company, we have a lot of whites in the ground, so we were looking for more places to do reds,” Minick said.

 

The land is in a warm spot of the valley, he said, on a bluff above the Yakima River and gets a lot of sun reflection from Horse Heaven Hills on the south edge.

 

“It will give us the nice acidity the Yakima Valley is known for with the nice tannin structure that the warmer sites will give you,” he said.

 

The vineyard will be named Skyfall, Minick reports, though he can’t take the credit for the daring name. CEO Andrew Browne thought it up while discussing the many hang gliders who drop off the cliffs above the vineyard to take advantage of the thermal winds.

 

 

——

Naked Wines appoints former Treasury chief winemaker

 

Source: Harpers

Written by Carol Emmas

Tuesday, 11 June 2013

 

Naked Wines has appointed former vice-president and chief winemaker for the Americas at Treasury Wine Estates, Matt Parish, as chief winemaker.

 

His new role will involve advising the company’s increasing number of funded international winemakers and overseeing its new customer-funded winery in Sonoma.

 

Parish has over 18 years and 25 vintages of global winemaking experience, and has produced a string of 90+ point wines.

 

Before he joined Treasury Wine Estates he worked in various viticulture and winemaking roles in the US, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and his home country of New Zealand.

 

 

——

HEINEKEN : announces departure of Chief HR Officer

 

Source: 4-Traders

06/11/2013

 

Heineken N.V. (‘HEINEKEN’) today announced that Michael O’Hare, Chief HR Officer, will leave HEINEKEN and return to the USA in late summer 2013.

 

Commenting on the change, Jean-François van Boxmeer, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of Heineken N.V. said, “This has been a difficult decision for Michael. However personal considerations have led Michael and the family to conclude it is right for them to return to the USA. In the last four years, Michael has played a major role in accelerating our transition to a more performance driven and people-focused company.   Along the way he has evolved our understanding of how the growth of our business is linked to the growth of our people and our culture. We have all benefited from his professional, collaborative approach and it has been a pleasure to work with him.”

 

Michael will take up a role with a US-based multinational later in the year.

 

The process of selecting a new Chief HR Officer is underway and an announcement will be made once concluded.

 

 

——

Ruby Tuesday Hires Ex-Darden Executive Burrowes to Head Ruby Tuesday Concept

 

Source: Dow Jones

By Melodie Warner

Jun 11th

 

Ruby Tuesday Inc. (RT) named former Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI) executive Todd Burrowes its chief operations officer and president of the Ruby Tuesday concept as the casual-dining company looks to improve its sales and profitability.

 

The restaurant operator said Mr. Burrowes has more than 25 years of industry experience and spent the past five years as executive vice president of operations for Darden’s LongHorn Steakhouse brand.

 

“Todd will be instrumental in leading our efforts to reposition the Ruby Tuesday brand, creating a more lively and approachable guest experience which we believe will provide opportunities to increase our sales and profitability,” said President and Chief Executive JJ Buettgen.

 

After Ruby Tuesday named a new chief executive late last year, the company sought to refocus on turning around sales at its namesake brand. The company decided in January to close 13 Marlin & Ray’s restaurants, its one Wok Hay location–exiting from both concepts–and also two company-developed Lime Fresh restaurants.

 

Ruby Tuesday also opted to shut its two Truffles Grill locations in April instead of continuing to market them for sale.

 

The company in April reported fiscal third-quarter earnings fell 52% as the casual-dining chain was hampered by restaurant closure costs and weaker same-store sales.

 

Shares closed Monday at $9.61 and were inactive premarket. The stock has climbed 22% so far this year.

 

 

——

It’s time to contact Congress on immigration reform

 

Source: NRA

June 11, 2013

 

The immigration debate has hit a critical phase — and restaurateurs are gearing up to make a difference as a bipartisan reform bill moves to the Senate floor for debate.

 

Debate began in the Senate this week on a comprehensive reform bill authored by the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators.

 

The bill contains three key National Restaurant Association priorities: a clear path to legalization, national implementation of the E-Verify employee verification system, and increased border security that won’t harm legal travel and tourism. A vote on the bill could come before the Senate recesses on June 28.

 

With a vote imminent — and the nation bordering on its first real opportunity in decades to make  meaningful, bipartisan reforms to a broken system — the NRA is ramping up its efforts to support comprehensive immigration reform.

 

The NRA is calling on its members to meet, write, or call their lawmakers this month to urge support for bipartisan changes that meet the needs of American businesses and the people they employ. The NRA’s campaign includes a dedicated online resource to keep members informed about the latest developments and put them in touch with members of Congress so they can voice their support for immigration reform. The site iswww.AmericaWorksHere.org/Immigration.

 

Restaurateurs are also organizing at the state level. In South Carolina, the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association will hold a press conference Thursday that will focus on the business community’s support for and economic benefits of comprehensive immigration reform. Ruben Montalvo, an immigrant from Mexico who owns Cantinflas Restaurant and Bar in Greenville, S.C., will be a featured speaker. Montalvo came to Boston from Mexico in 1986 on a work visa when he was employed by Gillette. After earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, he left his engineering job and decided to become an entrepreneur. He opened Cantinflas, which currently employs 20 people, in 1994.

 

“At the time, I thought I’d be here for a year,” Montalvo said. “I want to show what can happen when immigrants are given the same opportunities as everyone else. I see challenges in other industries as well as in the hospitality industry.”

 

The Greenville News published a lengthy profile of Montalvo last year.

 

“If we did not have the job openings and the demand for labor, these employees would go to Canada or somewhere else,” Montalvo said. “It’s important for employers to be heard on this issue, because we are the ones who see that need for workers.”

 

The NRA has advocated for comprehensive immigration reform for years. Over the course of the current debate, the NRA has remained in close contact with the senators who authored the bill and the White House. The Association will continue working to strengthen its key legislative priorities, which are:

 

A pathway to permanent legalization. The NRA believes that productive members of society must be able to work and live in the U.S. in a manner that de-criminalizes and de-politicizes the process and the people.

A national employment verification system. The current patchwork of state and local immigration laws — sometimes inconsistent with each other — exposes employers to unfair liability and an untenable regulatory structure. A more workable E-Verify system would allow restaurant operators to treat prospective employees with respect and manage the application process in a timely and efficient manner. Many in the restaurant industry supported the “Legal Workforce Act” in the last Congress as a model employment verification system. The Legal Workforce Act has recently been re-introduced in the House of Representatives.

Improved border security that encourages legal travel and tourism. Immigration reform must include measures to improve both border security and opportunities for U.S. businesses to encourage legitimate travel and tourism.

 

“The restaurant industry is an industry of tremendous opportunity, with a workforce of more than 13 million employees that is reflective of America’s diversity,” said Scott DeFife, the Association’s executive vice president for policy and government affairs. “The National Restaurant Association has worked with the Senate’s bipartisan ‘Gang of Eight,’ the Administration, and key House stakeholders on sensible reforms to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. We urge both chambers to continue to move forward and address these important issues.”

 

 

——

The REAL reason middle-class mums love Aldi (and it’s nothing to do with award-winning tea bags and bacon… but everything to do with the booze aisle)

 

Source: Daily Mail

By Claudia Connell

11 June 2013

 

Strawberries and cream… bread and butter… tea and biscuits… some things just go together. But cheese and compression bandages? Yoghurt and head torches? Not so much.

 

Of course, this hasn’t deterred staff at the Walton-on-Thames branch of Aldi from displaying them proudly, side-by-side.

 

It’s fair to say the shop’s displays don’t make much sense – but then there’s not much about the German discount supermarket that does.

 

From the bizarre items they stock (‘Would you like a bicycle saddle with your baguette, Madam?’) to the chaotic layout and infuriating lack of assistants, Aldi seems, at first glance, to offer a gruelling shopping experience.

 

It is certainly a far cry from the glossy Waitrose store I usually frequent.

 

Yet now seems the time to sweep supermarket snobbery aside and give Aldi a chance.

 

For last week it emerged as the overall winner in a taste test of own-brand foods conducted by trade magazine The Grocer.

 

Aldi came out top in 16 categories – more than Waitrose and M&S combined – with gold medals for everything from its bacon to its brioche.

 

With praise such as this, not to mention bargain prices, it’s no wonder the middle classes are hot-footing it there in droves and that Aldi, which originally targeted more socially deprived areas, is now opening up in Newbury, Winchester, Ely and Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

 

With no branches near my home in South London, I head off to a store in Walton-on-Thames, the sort of town where ladies lunch and gents play golf.

 

There, standing out like a sore thumb beneath the shadow of 12th-century St Mary’s church, lies Aldi. It looks like the sort of council-run place where you’d go to get a verruca removed.

 

The inside isn’t much better, with strip lighting that fails to lift the gloom and piles of stock in the middle of aisles making it hard to navigate my wobbly trolley.

 

At 9.30am, the twinset and pearl shoppers are nowhere to be seen. Instead, the store is full of pensioners all making a beeline for the famous ‘special buy’ section, where you can get all sorts of strange stuff (such as the aforementioned compression bandages and head torches).

 

But I have to admit the food is impressive. A 200g punnet of cherries – a fruit that usually costs more than gold – is £1.79, and they look impossibly juicy.

 

As well as the cherries, there’s English rhubarb for 69p, a pack of four avocados at £1.49 and on-the-vine tomatoes for 69p.

 

Bagged salad is also good value. A generous bag of baby leaf salad is just 79p, as is the rocket.

 

There are plenty more middle-class staples available too: brie, Parma ham, chorizo, houmous and fresh pesto are all present and correct in the chiller cabinet.

 

In most cases, there’s only one type of each – but there’s actually something quite liberating about not having to dither over 16 different varieties.

 

The choice of teas, coffees and breakfast cereals is similarly limited but includes Diplomat teabags – one of the lines Aldi has just won an award for.

 

At £1.39 for 60, they’re nearly half the price of the Twinings Everyday Tea I usually drink.

 

Aldi has also been much praised for its bread and baked goods, and I have to say the range is not only impressive but crazily cheap.

 

Four delicious-looking all-butter croissants are only 55p, while the gold medal-winning French Marble brioche looks irresistibly fluffy.

 

All shoppers have their items that they are just not prepared to skimp on – and for me it’s chicken and loo rolls.

 

At £3.99 for four breast fillets, the chicken is the cheapest I’ve seen for a long time – but it just doesn’t look very nice.

 

It’s not free-range, and I suspect that by the time it comes out of the oven the pumped-up breast will have shrunk to a bite-size dog treat.

 

As for the loo roll, well let’s just say I’ve seen sandpaper that looked softer.

 

I try to remind myself that beggars can’t be choosers, and that while I’m not exactly on the breadline, I could do with trimming back my food bill.

 

Although I live alone, I spend around £85 on my weekly shop at Waitrose – and that rarely includes red meat or alcohol.

 

Aldi has been found to be 40 per cent cheaper than Waitrose – and an annual saving of £1,700 isn’t to be sniffed at. That’s two weeks in Spain.

 

An hour into my Aldi shop, I am beginning to spy the odd well-heeled Surrey wife: their immaculately blow-dried hair, J Brand jeans and Tod’s loafers are a dead giveaway.

 

However, rather than buying their entire weekly shop at Aldi, they are nipping in for one item. Booze.

 

Heading to an aisle stacked high with wines, beers and spirits, I feel I’ve uncorked the secret to Aldi’s success.

 

Alcohol is something that Aldi does well. When their £3.69 Spanish red wine Toro Loco Tempranillo was voted one of the best in the world last year, you couldn’t get it for love nor money. Today they have a supply in but it’s going fast.

 

I grab a bottle and get chatting to 66-year-old Gillian Jones, who has come straight from her tennis lesson and is still dressed in her whites.

 

‘I only come in for the gin,’ she tells me. ‘It’s the best I’ve ever tasted, and so much cheaper than brands like Gordon’s.’

 

She’s right about the gin. In blind taste-tests, Aldi’s Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin (£9.65) was rated better than brands like Hendricks and Bombay Sapphire, which are twice the price.

 

For the most part, Aldi sells their own ranges, interspersed with a handful of famous brands such as Haribo and Marmite. They’re also notorious for doing ‘lookalike’ ranges – products cunningly designed to look like well-known brands but at a fraction at the price.

 

But as I’m not currently in the market for a two-man tent, a catering-sized jar of pickled eggs or a 35-piece set of spanners, I leave the bargain hunters to it and make my way to the tills.

 

There are only three checkouts and the shortest queue has 14 people in it. When I finally reach the front, the assistant scans my food so fast his hands are a blur.

 

He stacks it in a huge tower, and even though it’s apparent I’m struggling to keep up, he doesn’t slow down and several items fall to the floor.

 

Back home, and with my blood pressure restored to its normal rate, I’m keen to see if the taste of these gold medal winning foods makes up for the hassle of buying them.

 

Things don’t start well with the Diplomat teabags, which produce a weak and tasteless cuppa, although the Belmont Jaffa Cakes are indistinguishable from McVitie’s ones, which are double the price.

 

The brioche is as delicious as it looks, but I’m disappointed in both the chocolate and the lemon and mascarpone cheesecake that were singled out for praise. To my palate, they taste processed, not homemade.

 

Just as I am reaching the conclusion that shiny Waitrose is still my true love, I remember the wine and cherries.

 

I almost want the cherries to be dry and bitter, but they’re sweet and juicy – and the perfect accompaniment to my large glass of Toro Loco Tempranillo, which must be smoothest wine I’ve ever tasted. How on earth can it have cost just £3.69?

 

Suddenly I’m regretting not having snapped up a whole box of the stuff – and a load of that award-winning gin to boot.

 

Aldi, I have a feeling I’ll be joining the Surrey housewives and weaving my way – perhaps a little unsteadily – down your aisles once more.

 

 

——

Pennsylvania: Nutter Makes Last-Ditch Push For Increased Liquor Tax To Fund Schools

 

Source: CBS Philly

By Mike Dunn

June 11, 2013

 

Mayor Nutter is making a last-ditch effort to get City Council to go along with his plan to hike the liquor tax, as part of the city’s latest school district bailout.

 

City Council members on Wednesday are expected to give initial approval to the operating budget, and they’ve already approved a new cigarette tax. But they appear unlikely to move on a proposal to hike the liquor-by-the-drink tax from ten to fifteen percent.

 

Mayor Nutter is still pushing for it. “This week really primarily is the week of action, the week we need actions to be taken,” Nutter says.

 

Council President Darrell Clarke indicates that the lawmakers are likely to meet the District’s request simply through cigarette and increased revenue collection – not liquor.

 

“Council is on track to pass legislation that will ensure the $60 million number,” Clarke says.

 

But that doesn’t satisfy the mayor, who wants the liquor tax hike as well, saying, “The responsible thing to do is provide as much funding to invest in the education of children.”

 

Clarke believes Council is acting responsibly, and doesn’t appreciate the mayor’s public chiding,

 

“Council will manage its business internally.”

 

The mayor, though, isn’t throwing in the towel on his liquor tax proposal. “There’s a lot of time between Wednesday/Thursday,” he says.

 

Both the cigarette and liquor proposals also require approval of state lawmakers, and the prospects there remain unclear at best.

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Monday June 10th 2013

Constellation Brands buys beer business for $4.75 billion

 

Source: News 10

06/07/2013

 

Corona beer and others will now be imported and sold by a local company. Constellation Brands announced it has officially purchased Groupo Modelo’s U.S. Beer Business from Anheuser-Busch InBev. The total sale is just under $5 billion.

 

In addition to Corona, Constellation will import, market and sell Corona Light in the U.S. It will do the same with three additional Mexican beers and one beer from China.

 

The sales means Constellation will have two operations, a beer division and a wine and spirits division.

 

 

——

Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania liquor bill not a certainty

 

Source: PhillyNow

Jun 7th

 

The liquor issue in Pennsylvania looked like a shoe-in for Republicans this year.

 

Until it didn’t.

 

After years of fights in the Capitol between governmental, union, nonprofit and private groups, many believed the House passage of a GOP-favored vote to privatize the liquor industry was finally ready to sail through the full Legislature.

 

A confusing piece of legislation, much of the House debate came across as partisan and rushed. There were questions like: What would happen to the 5,000 UFCW state store employees? The revenue the booze business brings into the state? Would an increase in liquor sales put “booze on every block” as some politicians fear? Much of that was overlooked as the bill passed largely along party lines and went to the Senate.

 

Now, it seems as though an even newer bill will be written and introduced in the Senate, making the Big Change to the PLCB anything but a certainty this year.

 

That new bill is being written by state Sen. Charles McIlhinney (R-Bucks). As the chairman of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, he’s a key vote on the liquor issue, and many Republicans in favor of privatization believed he’d be a holdout vote. His plan, he said, would be ready in two weeks and less confusing than the current House-approved plan lawmakers are wrestling with. Unlike the current plan, he says, his would give current all license-holders, like bars, restaurants, grocery stores with a restaurant license and beer distributors, the option to expand on the type of liquor they can sell.

 

McIlhinney’s bill would require a new push, including debates and votes, from the Senate and House. It’s unclear whether Republicans would be able to get that done before the Legislature retreats for its summer recess.

 

And with any form of privatization, McIlhinney is unlikely to get the 23 Senate Democrats on board with his idea. Democrats have been opposed to the bill since the beginning, being as it would eliminate 5,000 union jobs and obliterate a large source of income from the state government. Like many ideas pushed by Republicans, both in Pennsylvania and nationally, part of the motivation behind liquor privatization seems to be to bleed the government of resources so it can, so to speak, drown in a bathtub.

 

All polling on this issue for the past 11 years has shown the public ready and willing to privatize the system. That is, until a recent Franklin and Marshall poll released a poll in April showing-for the first time ever-a majority of Pennsylvanians no longer support privatizing the liquor industry.

 

“When times are tough, it’s hard for anyone to hate on somebody else that’s trying to earn a living,” says State Rep. Brian Sims (D-Philadelphia). “And I think what people realized is that part of this bill is meant to be a union buster . I think people saw there was malice in this bill.”

 

In the past, Sims has told PW and others that if we were writing the Pennsylvania constitution today, of course we wouldn’t have the state controlling the alcohol business. But here we are-and, he says, the system works.

 

On the Senate side, members of the Philadelphia delegation agree. “No new people will get hired,” says State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia). “And at the same time, the 5,000 [UFCW workers], the tax-paying citizens getting benefits, they’re done. They’re out. What happens to them is, they lose a job.”

 

Oddly, Susquehanna Polling and Research, the Republican-affiliated firm which embarrassed itself with ridiculous Pennsylvania polling numbers during the 2012 election, often showing Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama, released their own poll this week. And-surprise!-they found a majority (55 percent) want to privatize the system.

 

The Pennsylvania Democratic party released a damning and hilarious statement about the poll.

 

“Susquehanna Polling & Research is one of America’s worst polling firms and any poll from them should not just be viewed skeptically but laughed off entirely. Their work in 2012 made them a laughingstock and any news outlet that print the results of these polls are doing a great disservice to their audience,” they said.

 

(Sorry, audience.)

 

Rather than privatization, Democrats have put their focus on what they call “modernization,” which would allow residents to get liquor shipped directly to their homes, among other things. As state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) noted at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference this year, though, Republicans should view any call for modernization as one for the status quo.

 

Other than the jobs, legislators in less well-to-do parts of the state worry expanding and privatizing liquor sales could have detrimental effects on their communities.

 

“I’m very fearful of booze on every corner in every community,” adds Hughes. “That would be, for a city that is distressed as Philadelphia is, that has some of the highest levels of poverty of any city in the nation, to have more alcohol available in these distressed communities, that is not what people are looking for.”

 

 

——

Pennsylvania: Pa. liquor privatization drive hits wholesale snag

 

Source: NJ Herald

By MARC LEVY

Jun 08, 2013

 

What may end up derailing the Republicans’ drive to privatize Pennsylvania’s sale of wine and liquor is not who gets to sell it – but who gets to deliver it.

 

Both a four-month-old plan by Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, and a bill that passed the GOP-controlled House in March would dismantle the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s less-seen but lucrative business of buying and delivering wine and liquor.

 

However, a state senator who will play a key role in drafting that chamber’s plan has sent strong signals that he does not think now is the right time to privatize the wholesale system, even as a top House Republican takes the hard position that no privatization bill could pass his chamber without it. That disagreement is emerging as a key sticking point as top Republican lawmakers try to reach a compromise in a quickly shrinking amount of time before the July 1 deadline that Corbett has pressed them to finalize a plan.

 

Complicating their efforts is opposition to privatization from Democratic lawmakers and the union that represents state wine and liquor store employees, who warn that it could simply empower a few big wholesalers that profit handsomely from their control of top-selling brands in Pennsylvania. In the meantime, distillers and wholesalers – the companies that ship and market wine and liquor – are vying for the upper hand in whatever regulatory structure fills the vacuum if the Liquor Control Board is banned from the wholesale business.

 

Sen. Charles McIlhinney, who heads the Senate committee that is handling the matter, said he is leaning toward writing legislation that would break state control of wine and liquor sales at the retail level, albeit under a different format than those envisioned by the governor’s plan or the House bill.

 

But McIlhinney, R-Bucks, also argued that selling the wholesale system right now would be unwise. Doing so would ignore the potential that it would be much more valuable once retail privatization legislation allows more stores to sell wine and liquor, McIlhinney said. And getting as much bang for the state’s privatization buck will be especially important since the state stands to lose a revenue stream of more than $100 million a year in profits from the state’s liquor business, McIlhinney said.

 

“It might be a better choice to find some sort of a lease program or some sort of an avenue where maybe we do keep the wholesale for the time being until we can guarantee some revenue without having the price go up,” McIlhinney told reporters after his third and final hearing on the subject Tuesday.

 

It is a valuable business: The architects of Corbett’s plan and the House bill each estimated the wholesale side would account for more than 50% of the overall value to the state if newly created licenses are sold to private companies that want to transport or sell alcoholic beverages.

 

And right now, it is what gives the Liquor Control Board substantial negotiating power. The agency’s status as a single large buyer allows it to cut out many middlemen brokers that exist in other states and negotiate favorable prices directly with distillers and vintners. That leverage helps produces profits for the state treasury, proponents say.

 

A substantial retail expansion could demand tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build warehouses, hire workers and buy trucks and inventory systems, whether it is carried out by the Liquor Control Board or by private-sector wholesalers, said Dawson Hobbs of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association.

 

But privatizing the wholesale system could potentially create what some warn would be an oligarchy of a few private wholesalers to the detriment of consumers.

 

To that end, a trade association for liquor companies, the Washington, D.C.-based Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, asked the Senate to reject parts of the governor’s and House plans that would allow wholesalers to have “franchise protection” rights. Such legal protection, which exists in about a dozen other states, would give wholesalers exclusive control over the distribution and marketing of liquor brands with virtually no fear of losing the contract to a competitor, council official Mark Gorman said.

 

That, he suggested, could hurt consumers on the key elements that could otherwise benefit them: price, availability and selection.

 

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, an ally of Corbett’s in the crusade to privatize the state’s wine and liquor business, said any Senate bill that does not immediately sell off the wholesale end of the business will not pass the House. It is, he said, “an essential component.”

 

Turzai, R-Allegheny, also played down the influence that McIlhinney will have over any bill that ultimately comes to the Senate floor.

 

“There will be a full body of the Senate that takes this up,” Turzai said. “It’s not going to be limited to a singular member.”

 

 

——

Australia: Alcohol spilling into young minds

 

Source: The Australian

by: Madonna King

June 08, 2013

 

SOMETIMES it’s the things that creep up on us that pose the most danger: our weight, a nagging health issue we ignore, a problem we look past with a child.

 

Our use of alcohol has now fallen firmly into that camp too.

 

But just as the grassroots revolt over how accepted gambling had become in our lives saw Tom Waterhouse pull his head in, perhaps a crackdown on the “normalisation” of alcohol is next.

 

In Coles, alongside the soft drink, you can buy a four-pack of Coopers Ultra Light.

 

It looks like a beer, it’s in a can like a beer, and it’s brewed by Coopers Brewery in South Australia.

 

The alcohol content is small, at 0.5 per cent.

 

Coles is not breaking any law. Under the Liquor Act 1992, you don’t need a liquor licence to sell drinks unless the alcohol content creeps above 0.5 per cent.

 

Coopers Ultra Light is wedged in with the lemonade and ginger beer in the drinks aisle.

 

You are expected to see it as a soft drink, and no doubt children do.

 

My eight and nine-year-old daughters purchased a four-pack with money I gave them.

 

I was wanting to see if any staff, including those at the checkout, would raise an eyebrow? No one did.

 

That worries federal AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton who says we are now “grooming the next generation of drinkers”.

 

Hambleton doesn’t think something masquerading as a soft drink should carry any alcoholic content – but his bigger concern is that the Ultra Light is placed with other drinks.

 

That approach “de-sensitised” children to the shapes and brands of alcohol and defied widespread research which showed that the earlier you expose a child to advertising, the earlier they will test drinks.

 

And the earlier a child test drinks, the heavier they will later drink.

 

My beef is not whether supermarkets sell alcohol or not, as long as they follow the law. But surely alcohol should be seen as alcohol, not something else.

 

It should be labelled, placed separate from other drinks, and off-limits to children.

 

Late this week we saw one Queensland high school ban its students from consuming energy drinks because of health fears.

 

Isn’t this as – or even more – dangerous?

 

But as one reader of this column found, no one in authority could be bothered showing interest.

 

After seeing the drinks for sale at her local Coles, Pam phoned the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to determine whether they needed a permit.

 

There she was told it was not in their jurisdiction and that she needed to go to a state authority.

 

Pam called the state office of fair trading, which she said told her they would need all the details in writing.

 

Next stop was the office of her local MP, who promised they would look into it – but that it could take a while.

 

“The retailers are attempting to normalise the sale of alcohol by associating it with groceries and other everyday purchases,” Pam wrote.

 

“I consider this to be a deliberate, deceitful attempt to introduce children and young people to alcohol, similar to the practice of handing out free cigarettes in the shopping malls years ago.”

 

She’s right.

 

But it could be something as simple as Coopers Ultra Light being sold in your supermarket that turns alcohol advertising on its head.

 

Tom Waterhouse’s recent retreat was prompted by a public backlash which targeted him as the gambling pin-up boy.

 

Such was the outrage that any support for his position reached the indefensible.

 

All of a sudden, it was clear that gambling had seeped too far into our everyday lives.

 

Perhaps it’s time to look at alcohol that way too, because it has now become a “normal” part of everyday living – from television advertising to sporting sponsorship to our home, where the witching hour has us reaching for a glass.

 

The problem is not the alcohol content; it’s the priority we are granting it.

 

And selling it with soft drink to children is just plain wrong.

 

 

——

Pernod Ricard takes pregnancy logo scheme global

 

Source: Marketing Week

By Sebastian Joseph

Fri, 7 Jun 2013

 

Pernod Ricard is to expand the use of its European on-pack health warning system for pregnant women to the rest of the world as part of ongoing efforts to promote responsible drinking.

 

Pernod Ricard will inform women worldwide not to drink when pregnant with warnings on bottles.

 

A logo telling pregnant women not to drink will be seen on all bottles for brands such as Chivas Regal, Absolut and Malibu produced by the company’s 80 subsidiaries. The business says the expansion of the voluntary labelling system aims to “unambiguously” highlight to pregnant women the dangers of drinking.

 

It will be supported by public conferences, leaflets and PR activity that will also highlight the company’s other commitments to responsible drinking.

 

Drinks makers have come under increasing pressure from the Government to implement pregnancy warnings on labels. The Portman Group has pledged to ensure pregnancy warnings along with unit information and daily guidelines will be included on 80 per cent of all labels by the end of 2013 as part of the industry’s commitment to the Responsibility Deal.

 

Pernod Ricard became the first global drinks business to include the logo throughout Europe in 2008.

 

 

——

Wells Fargo’s Weekly Economic & Financial Commentary

 

Source: Wells Fargo

Jun 7th

 

U.S.

.         May’s larger-than-expected rise in nonfarm payrolls does not mark a significant change in the economic outlook.

.         A very large proportion of the jobs being added are in lower-paying sectors, most notably the leisure and hospitality sectors.

.         Employment in many higher-paying sectors has actually weakened.

.         Manufacturing employment fell by 8,000 with most of the weakness coming from nondurable goods.

.         The recent slide in the ISM manufacturing survey, combined with declines in the related areas of the employment report, has likely raised concerns at the Fed that slow global growth and sequester-related defense cutbacks are taking a heavier toll on the economy than previously thought.

 

International

.         The global economy has started to show bits and pieces of good news on the production side.

.         This good news could be an indication that the global economy many not be weakening further.

.         The stronger PMI reported in the U.K this week was a very positive development.

.         The reading came in at 51.3, which is supportive of an expansionary environment.

.         In Brazil, industrial production increased by 1.8% for the month-much stronger than the expected 1.0%.

.         The slowdown in Germany appears to be coming to an end.

.         Industrial production has been up for three consecutive months.

 

Point of View

.         Interest Rate Watch

.         The jobs report supports economic growth outlook and continued Fed easing.

.         The rise in the unemployment rate signaled Fed policy would likely remain easy through at least September.

.         Credit Market Insights

.         Household net worth is at an all-time high, but consumers remain cautious.

.         Household borrowing has been particularly weak.

.         The bulk of the gains in consumer credit have been in the form of student loans.

 

Topic of the Week

.         Commercial real estate enters a new world.

.         With the exception of apartments, the sluggish economic recovery has made for a painfully slow improvement in operation fundamentals and new construction.

 

 

——

Giant US firm which makes Budweiser crushes tiny UK brewers – for naming beer after their children’s primary school

 

Source: Daily Mail

By Martin Delgado

8 June 2013

 

With just £1,000 in the bank and one part-time employee, the Belleville Brewing Company is hardly in a position to threaten the global dominance of the world’s biggest drinks producer.

 

But Anheuser-Busch, the powerful US corporation which numbers Budweiser among its brands, apparently thinks otherwise.

 

Lawyers acting on its behalf have written to the group of parents who run Belleville demanding that they drop the name or else face court action which could bankrupt them with legal fees. The US giant claims that customers could confuse Belleville’s ales and its own fruit-flavoured Belle-Vue beer.

 

The heavy-handed intervention has shocked the fledgling British business, which is named after the popular state school attended by the children of Belleville’s two directors – real ale fans Adrian Thomas and Mark McGuinness-Smith.

 

Potential investors are also required to have a child at Belleville Primary in Wandsworth, South London, to ensure the small-scale enterprise retains its community links. Mr Thomas, 50, said: ‘The legal threat is ludicrous because the products are completely different.

 

‘Belle-Vue is a Belgian fruit-flavoured beer with a tart taste. Our beer is made with American yeast and hops and is more like a pale ale. None of the shops and pubs we supply are more than a few miles away.’

 

However, Anheuser-Busch – which last year generated revenue of  nearly $40billion (£26?billion) – has  made the extraordinary claim that consumers could confuse the two.

 

A warning letter, drafted by British lawyers hired by the Missouri-based company to protect its UK commercial interests, says: ‘Visually and aurally, Belle-Vue and Belleville share the first six letters in common and end with the same letter “e”.

 

‘Conceptually, both Belle-Vue and Belleville would be understood by the English-speaking consumer as signifying something beautiful.

 

‘As a result of this considerable degree of similarity .??.??. your use [of the name] is bound to lead to deception and confusion among the public and our clients’ consumers and potential customers.

 

‘Such use also enables you to take unfair advantage of, or free ride on, our clients’ reputation in the EU.’ The letter, from Bristol law firm Humphreys & Co, demands the destruction of all packaging and promotional material bearing the microbrewery’s name and the removal of any references to Belleville on the company’s website within 28 days.

 

Mr Thomas, a musician who played guitar and keyboards with Tubular Bells creator Mike Oldfield in the 1990s – said his first instinct was to defy the threat of a High Court injunction. But after consulting colleagues, he decided a more prudent course would be to choose another name. One option under consideration is Northcote, the name of a road in Wandsworth.

 

Mr Thomas started home-brewing in his kitchen and offered his ale for the first time at a beer festival organised by the parent-teacher association at Belleville. His nine-year-old son, Callum, attends the school and elder son Jake, now 11, is a former pupil.

 

Mr Thomas added: ‘There is only one member of Belleville staff – me – and I don’t draw a salary.

 

‘The legal action must have been triggered when we registered the name. We feel coerced and bullied. It’s as if they’re saying, “We have more money than you, so you’ve got to do as we say.”?

 

A UK spokesman for Anheuser-Busch, whose chief executive Carlos Brito last year received a £2.7?million bonus, said: ‘We are unable to comment on ongoing legal matters.’

 

 

——

Vijay Mallya tells striking Kingfisher Airlines staff he has no money to pay them

 

Source: ET

Jun 7, 2013

 

Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya today told his agitating employees, who began a hunger strike, that he did not have money to clear their salary dues.

 

“I don’t have the money to pay your salary dues, because I cannot use the proceeds from the United Spirits-Diageo deal for this due to an injunction from the Karnataka High Court,” Mallya reportedly told the striking employees.

 

 

——

‘Vicki’s Vodka’ $250K lawsuit: Vicki Gunvalson, Brooks Ayers sued for fraud

 

Source: Examiner

By: Rachael Monaco

June 8, 2013

 

The original real housewife Vicki Gunvalson may have dug herself a hole she cannot get out of this time. Vicki and her boyfriend Brooks Ayers are being sued by Robert Williamson III for $250,000 on the grounds that they conspired to commit fraud in their joint “Vicki’s Vodka” venture.

 

Professional poker player Robert Williamson III filed court documents on June 7 Radar Online reports. In the documents Williamson alleges that Gunvalson breached their contract, committed fraud, failed to live up to good faith dealings, misrepresented herself and “conspired to unjustly enrich herself. “Brooks Ayers is named as a co-defendant in the action.

 

What happened? Vicki Gunvalson and Robert Williamson III launched a business venture together, creating “Vicki’s Vodka.” Gunvalson then gave Brooks Ayers 16.67 percent of the business without Williamson’s knowledge.

 

Ayers then turned around and sold his 16.67 percent of “Vicki’s Vodka” to Williamson for $50,000, who is now claiming fraud. A written agreement dated March 6, 2013 confirming the sale was filed in Clark County, Nevada.

 

Williamson III lawsuit alleges that Brooks and Vicki used the purchase as a way to extort additional money from him in bad faith “without the intent to honor the intent of the transaction.”

 

Williamson alleges that Gunvalson “demanded” that the ownership he purchased from Ayers be returned to her. The lawsuit claims that Brooks Ayers and Vicki Gunvalson intended to “lure Robert Williamson II into the purchase of Brooks interest” without the good faith intent to move forward with the company and make it successful.

 

Vicki Gunvalson later sent Williamson a cease and desist letter claiming a “total lack of cooperation’ to make “Vicki’s Vodka” a success. The Twitter account for “Vicki’s Vodka” has not had a tweet posted since May 12. The “Vicki’s Vodka” Facebook page has not had a post since February.

 

 

——

News From TTB

 

Source: TTB

Jun 7th

 

MAKING ALLOWABLE CHANGES TO APPROVED ALCOHOL BEVERAGE LABELS

 

If you are an alcohol beverage industry member (such as an importer or bottler) and are considering making changes to your previously approved alcohol beverage label, please review our complete list of allowable revisions before you submit your certificate of label approval (COLA) application – you may not need to send us the revised label at all!

 

When we updated our COLA application, TTB Form 5100.31, Application for and Certification/Exemption of Label/Bottle Approvalin July 2012, we expanded the list of items an alcohol beverage industry member can change on a previously approved label without TTB approval.

 

The idea behind the change is this: With a longer list of allowable revisions, we expect a decrease in the number of submitted label applications. With a decrease in the number of submitted label applications, we anticipate a faster review time for labels for new products and products with major changes.

 

A key component to the success of these changes is for industry members (or even consultants and attorneys practicing in the field) to know and understand the specific types of changes allowed for previously approved labels, and to exercise their freedom to make minor allowable changes to their labels without sending unnecessary requests for additional COLA approvals. With these changes, we anticipate industry may see a faster and easier application process in the future!

 

http://www.ttb.gov/labeling/allowable_revisions.shtml#completeList

 

 

——

In China, fake European wine more worrying than tariffs

 

Source: Reuters

By Terril Yue Jones

Jun 9th

 

Bruno Paumard, the cellar master at a vineyard in China, can’t stop laughing while describing a bottle of supposedly French wine a friend gave him two years ago.

 

It’s white wine, with a label proclaiming it is from the vineyards of Romanee-Conti, the bottle bearing the logo that is on bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, and declares its origin as Montpellier in southern France.

 

Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, better known for highly prized and highly priced vintages from France’s Burgundy region, makes only a tiny amount of white wine, labeled Montrachet. It has nothing to do with the equally prestigious Lafite, which is from the Bordeaux region, and neither brand is produced anywhere near Montpellier.

 

“It’s the most magnificent example of a hijacked brand of wine I’ve ever seen,” says Paumard, who works with Chateau Hansen in China’s Inner Mongolia. “It doesn’t get better than that.”

 

Liquor stores, restaurants and supermarkets in China, the world’s most populous nation and fifth-largest wine consumer, wage a constant battle against fake wines. The amount of knock-offs on the market may increase as Beijing investigates wine imports from the European Union, threatening anti-dumping tariffs or import curbs.

 

It announced the investigation after the EU slapped anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels.

 

“More expensive wine is okay, I just don’t want any fakes,” said Helen Nie, a Beijing housewife sharing a bottle of the Italian house white at a restaurant with a friend.

 

“If the cost goes up I’d still buy wine, though some people wouldn’t – the price makes a difference. But the quality is important; it’s a health question.”

 

EU wine exports to China reached 257.3 million liters in 2012 for a value of nearly $1 billion, more than a ten-fold increase since 2006 as rapidly increasing wealth transformed lives and tastes in the world’s fastest growing major economy. More than half of the 2012 total – 139.5 million liters – came from France.

 

Nobody knows how much of the market is cornered by fakes and copycats, says Jim Boyce, who follows China’s wine industry on his blog, grapewallofchina.com.

 

“Things that are faked tend to be things that are very popular,” Boyce said.

 

And wine, especially expensive wine, is popular in China, sometimes more for bragging rights than taste.

 

“Those expensive wines are where you see more fakes,” said Maggie Wang, who was sharing the house wine from Sardinia at the Beijing restaurant with Nie.

 

“But there’s lots of phony wine. Everything’s faked in China,” she said. “For a lot of Chinese consumers, the more expensive it is, the more they’ll buy it. Chinese like things like that – they’ll buy the most expensive house, drive the most expensive car. They don’t want the best, they want the most expensive.”

 

CHATEAU WHAT?

 

Given the high margins and the demand, the counterfeiters tend to focus on European fine wines.

 

The iconic Chateau Lafite has become the poster child for wine forgery. A bottle of Lafite from 1982, considered one of the greatest vintages of the 20th century, can cost upwards of U.S. $10,000.

 

That has led to a thriving industry in Lafite knockoffs in China. Aficionados say there is are more cases of 1982 Lafite in China than were actually produced by the chateau that year.

 

Christophe Salin, president of Domaines Barons de Rothschild, which owns Lafite-Rothschild, says fake Lafite however isn’t the major problem.

 

“I have never seen a bottle of fake ’82 Lafite,” says Salin, who has been travelling to China for 20 years.

 

“The problem we have is the creative attitude of some Chinese. They sometimes use our name in funny ways,” he told Reuters in a telephone call from Paris.

 

Several wines on the market are branded with names close to Chateau Lafite, including “Chatelet Lafite”. Chatelet is the name of one of the busiest subway stations in Paris.

 

Lafite “is such a generic brand in China that it has widespread appeal as a name and as a status symbol,” says Boyce.

 

The mystique extends beyond the wine — in Beijing there is a “La Fite British Exotic Bar” and the “Beijing Lafitte Chateau Hotel.”

 

The first step for anyone counterfeiting wine is to find or manufacture a bottle that is close to the original.

 

“People will also use real bottles with something else inside, or make labels that are spelled differently,” says Cheng Qianrui, wine editor for the Chinese lifestyle website Daily Vitamin. “If you know wines, you can tell, but not a lot of Chinese do.”

 

Last year’s 10 percent surge in wine imports over 2011 was led by Spain, which accounted for 36 percent of cheaper bulk wine imports to China in 2012, according to Chinese customs figures. Bulk wine accounted for just under half of all wine imports last year.

 

The copyright problems however tend to focus on the better-known marques.

 

Importer Torres Wines includes Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, another top-ranked Bordeaux, in its portfolio. Sales Director Sun Yu says phony wine brands such as “Mouton & Sons” or “Edouard Mouton” pop up in the Chinese market.

 

“It happens in secondary or third-tier cities where they don’t have much wine knowledge,” Sun says.

 

SMASHING BOTTLES

 

Elite wine makers are trying to fight back, sometimes by smashing bottles after tastings, to prevent their being refilled for resale.

 

Anti-counterfeiting measures by major international spirits brands, which also fall victim to fakes in China, include bottle buyback programs, tamper-proof caps and covert tagging of bottles. But such measures are less common with wine brands, according to an executive at an international beverage company in China.

 

Domaines Barons de Rothschild has been putting tamper-proof tags on bottles of Chateau Lafite and its second label, Les Carruades de Lafite, since the 2009 vintage.

 

But the producer has been protecting its elite bottles since 1996, company president Salin says, with four other identification techniques that he won’t reveal.

 

“If you show me a bottle of Lafite, I can instantly tell you when it was bottled, a lot of things,” he says. “To counterfeit it is not easy.”

 

 

——

Wine Advocate slams branded cases claim

 

Source: the drinks business

by Lucy Shaw

7th June, 2013

 

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, editor-in-chief of The Wine Advocate, has slammed recent claims that Robert Parker is involved with the sale of branded wine cases.

 

As reported on db.com earlier this week, négociant Bordeaux Vins Selection (BVS) announced it was to release cases of wines given 100-point scores by Parker in specially designed wooden gift boxes signed by the US wine critic.

 

However, Perrotti-Brown dispelled the claims yesterday on The Wine Advocate bulletin board, stressing that Parker never authorised the use of his signature.

 

“Robert Parker did not give permission for his signature to be used on any such packaging, and after speaking with Bordeaux Vins Selection, they will no longer be using his signature at all.

 

“We spoke with BVS last night to confirm that Robert Parker’s signature was not to be used in their packaging, in the format of our logo or otherwise,” she said.

 

“Some of the claims in the media suggest that we are profiting from the marketing and packaging of wines. This is not true. We continue to maintain our strict policy of not profiting from the sale of wine.

 

“Endorsing wines for profit is in direct conflict with the policy we have maintained for more than 34 years. We have no plans to change this policy,” she added.

 

The Wine Advocate recently moved into the sale of commercial licenses, allowing merchants like Bordeaux Vins Selection to market and sell cases using Parker’s perfect scores for the wines as a commercial hook.

 

The license allows merchants to reproduce Parker’s tasting notes and scores, though the use of Parker’s signature is not permitted within the agreement.

 

“This deal is in no way exclusive to BVS – other merchants are free to put together their own selections of Robert Parker rated wines,” Perrotti-Brown clarified.

 

“Neither Parker nor the TWA team have had any part in the selection of wines. We are not endorsing or profiting from the packaging or sales of the BVS cases,” she added.

 

In addition to commercial licenses, The Wine Advocate has also moved into the sale of bundles of subscription gift cards to eRobertParker.com to retailers.

 

“They are no different from the subscriptions available on the website; it’s just in a fancy card format that makes for a more presentable gift,” said Perrotti-Brown.

 

 

——

Nobles Crus suspended

 

Source: Decanter

by Jim Budd

Friday 7 June 2013

The Nobles Crus wine fund has been suspended due to a lack of liquidity.

 

The Luxembourg Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) temporarily suspended the fund on 27 May. It is not allowed to pay out redemptions or accept new funds.

 

Due to recent changes in European law, as of 31 December 2013, fund managers running unit trusts will not be allowed to invest in wine funds and other alternative investments.

 

This has led a number of Nobles Crus’ institutional investors to sell their holdings in the fund.

 

Miriam Wilson and Michel Tamiser, general partners in Noble Crus’ parent company Elite Advisers, have told their investors that ‘Nobles Crus now finds itself confronted with a few requests from some large institutional for redemptions involving considerable sums of money.

 

‘Currently, Nobles Crus does not have the necessary liquidity to honour these requests in the very short term.’

 

They continue: ‘As we have always emphasised, the fine wine market is relatively liquid, however, in different proportions to those of the financial markets. We are well aware of the importance, in the current circumstances, to sell at market price and not too hastily sell in order to free up the necessary liquidity to honour these redemption requests.’

 

Nobles Crus shares were worth ?180.25 as of 30 April 2013.

 

Last year valuations of fine wines by the Nobles Crus wine fund were questioned by the Financial Times and by French website LeVif/L’Express; Elite vigorously defended its valuation procedure.

 

A sale in February 2013 where ?8.7m was achieved at the ‘valuation price of Nobles Crus portfolio’ is further evidence of the accuracy of their prices, Wilson and Tamisier say.

 

In a separate development, on 4 June the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned the promotion of wine funds and other alternative investments to the ‘vast majority of retail investors in the UK’.

 

From 1 January 2014 these products will be limited to sophisticated investors and high net worth individuals.

 

 

——

French site accused of selling Yquem 2012

 

Source: the drinks business

by Rupert Millar

7th June, 2013

 

An online retailer, 1855.com, has been criticised for apparently trying to sell Château Yquem 2012 en primeur – even though that vintage was not produced by the estate.

 

Several Sauternes châteaux announced that they would not be producing a 2012 vintage because of poor conditions.

 

However, according to French newspaper Sud-Ouest, this did not stop the fine wine retailer trying to sell 2012 Yquem.

 

The paper managed to capture a page from the site, which it claimed showed that1855.com promised customers delivery of the wine by 2015 and available at the soonest possible price.

 

The page has since been taken down.

 

In reply, 1855’s president, Emeric Sauty de Chalon, wrote to Sud-Ouest: “1855 has never put Yquem 2012 on sale; no price was ever announced, there was no possibility to buy this product and it was never available to our clients and, evidently, no bottle was ever sold.

 

“Only the possibility of being informed of its availability was accessible to our clients.

 

“1855 very much regrets that Sud-Ouest did not contact the company before distribution of the article, the objective of which seemed to be to blacken the image of our group more than faithfully inform its readers.”

 

As Sud-Ouest pointed out, and as the drinks business reported at the time, Yquem announced in December of last year that it would not be producing a 2012 vintage.

 

The newspaper has previously reported that 1855.com has been censured before for late and damaged deliveries and even not delivering wine at all to some 200 clients.

 

There have also been questions raised concerning an affiliate company of 1855.com,ChateauOnline.com, by Château Conseillante in Pomerol, which said that the site was offering its 2012 vintage at a “ludicrously reduced” price and that it feared there was “very little chance” of buyers receiving the wine.

 

Reports of dissatisfaction with 1855.com date back at least as far as 2011, as this French site “Into The Wine” makes clear.

 

 

——

Japanese wine investors

 

Source: FT

By Jancis Robinson

Jun 7th

 

Some of the finest wines are made by Japanese-owned companies, but you would never know this from the labels

 

Last month I witnessed the opening of spanking new winery buildings at an estate in the Rheingau that attracted 600 guests from all over the world and included every luminary of German wine. But the most extraordinary aspect of the celebrations was that there was not a Japanese face in sight. German wine has long been relatively popular in Japan but that is not why I was surprised. Weingut Robert Weil has been owned by the Japanese whisky giant Suntory since 1988, yet you would never know it.

 

There was no mention of the connection in any of the literature handed out at the event. The Suntory website acknowledges its three subsidiaries in the European wine business but directs you firmly to Robert Weil’s own website on which there is not a mention of Suntory or Japan. Yet in the words of the president of the Rheingau wine growers association, Stefan Ress of the Weingut Balthasar Ress in the next village, “What an opportunity was given to the Rheingau by Suntory’s investment in Weil. Nothing better could have happened to the region.”

 

Weil is widely seen as the jewel of Rheingau, historically Germany’s grandest wine region. The pristine estate and its smart new cellars, not to mention its growth from 18 to 90 hectares of vineyard in the past 25 years and the impeccable quality and consistency of its wines, including a miraculous Trockenbeerenauslese every year, are all presumably made possible by the yen underpinning them. Wilhelm Weil, who had to take over the family estate as a very young man at about the time of the sale to Suntory, is an exceptional steward.

 

This extreme discretion, I realised on reflection, is characteristic of Japan’s best-known acquisitions in the world of wine, which include some of the very finest producers of all.

 

In Bordeaux, Suntory owns part of a negociant business and also owns the third-growth Château Lagrange of St-Julien. Here too they have steered a property that was far from realising its potential to one that, despite its less-than-perfect location, is a model of consistent delivery, making long-lasting wines of dependable quality and harmony. The current director Bruno Eynard told me once that someone from Suntory visits every so often, adding with only slight exasperation that he always has a full-time Japanese employee who “wants to understand everything exactly all the time; le feeling is not enough for them. But Suntory is definitely motivated by top quality rather than profit.” This determined learning process is presumably driven by the fact that Suntory has its own large winery in Japan where very passable ripostes to red bordeaux and white burgundy are crafted by dedicated staff, but otherwise the French management are left to get on with things.

 

There is an even more hands-off approach at other high-profile Japanese-owned wine producers. In 1988 Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy acquired the Charles Noëllat domaine in Vosne-Romanée and set up Domaine Leroy in competition with the world-famous Domaine de la Romanée-Conti whose door she was shown after a family tiff. But she was able to do this only because she was backed by her Japanese importers Takashimaya, whose name she has always had difficulty pronouncing. It is hard to think of a more headstrong producer in the world. I cannot imagine the Japanese managing to lay down any sort of law with her. Indeed the only evidence of a Japanese connection with Domaine Leroy is the number of bottles of its wines found in the smartest wine shops of Tokyo and Osaka. Hew Blair of Justerini & Brooks, who has been visiting Domaine Leroy since the beginning, reports that he is yet to see any evidence of Japanese influence.

 

Japanese presence elsewhere is just as subtle. Few visitors to Ridge Vineyards, California’s truly iconic producer of great, ageworthy, classical reds based on ancient Zinfandel vines and Bordeaux blends from almost equally historic vineyards, know that it has been owned since 1987 by a Japanese wine lover. Paul Draper continues to run this tight ship and although his travels take him all over the world, he rarely visits Japan. Also in the late 1980s Markham winery in Napa Valley was bought by Mercian, one of Japan’s most significant wine producers, but it is run by an all-American team.

 

There are California wineries such as Kenzo, Freeman, Dalle Valle and Clos Pegase that are obviously and explicitly Japanese-owned or part-owned. In the case of Kenzo most of the wine produced on its 100 acres of vineyard is exported to Japan. But I am even more fascinated by the – perhaps coincidental – way in which all over the world some of the producers of the wines I admire most happen to have Japanese owners who are as firmly in the background as the make-up artists in a kabuki theatre.

 

My favourite producer on Madeira, for instance – hardly an obvious investment prospect – is Barbeito. Ricardo Diogo de Freitas, arguably the island’s most talented and certainly most dedicated winemaker, took over the reins of this relatively young family company only in 1991. He encouraged other family members to exit the bulk madeira business and concentrate on top quality bottled wines; he now even bottles single-cask madeiras. But Barbeito needed capital to embark on this adventure. It sought and received it from the Kinoshita family whose business had long been importing Barbeito madeiras. Yet, again, there is no evidence of any Japanese connection at its immaculate new lodge outside Funchal – just delicious evidence of yen transformed into nectar.

 

In New Zealand, perhaps partly because of proximity, Japanese influence is relatively strong. At least two small-scale producers of fine, handcrafted reds, Kusuda of Martinborough and Sato of Central Otago, are family affairs where the work is done by Japanese immigrants and their friends. But De Redcliffe near Auckland is an example of a high-profile outfit whose Japanese ownership is very much in the background.

 

Japanese discretion and precision are two very positive qualities for wine in my book.

 

 

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China v European wine: aux armes!

 

In EU-China trade dispute, France is likely to be the biggest loser

 

Source: FT

Jun 7th

 

The hardy citizens of Europe made it through the banana wars. They even survived the bra wars – against China, no less. Trade disputes capture the imagination only when they have a catchy name. The solar panels at the heart of the spat between Europe and China were never going to excite interest. But that has changed since China this week said it would probe European winemaking subsidies. The battle for the bottle, perhaps? Aux armes, Bordeaux and Burgundy!

 

About a fifth of the wine drunk in China last year came from the EU. Sixty per cent of that, or 227m bottles, was French. EU wine exports to China have grown more than 50 per cent a year for the past three. For a country that increasingly likes the odd glass of foreign wine, it is odd that China has taken threatening action that could sharply raise the cost of that wine. But China is anything but reckless: the 2bn bottles the Chinese drank last year work out at under two per head. That makes the country a mere entry-level toper compared with the 60-plus bottles the average French person consumes, or even the eight drunk by Hong Kongers.

 

In other words, France’s one-tenth share of China’s wine market, which is expected to grow in volume by about 8 per cent a year, is more important to France than the cost of each bottle is to China’s small if growing band of oenophiles. And those wine fans have options, too. Any drop in European imports will probably only benefit its 450 domestic wine producers. Less than a third of China’s wine is imported and it is already the sixth biggest producer in the world, ahead of Australia, according to Vinexpo.

 

Pitting French viniculture against Chinese power could turn into a real fight. The French wine industry – the world’s biggest – is no slouch at promoting a sons-of-the-soil, family enterprise image. Yet the one-quarter of exported Bordeaux that headlines its wine sales to China and Hong Kong comes from big-production vineyards that can hardly be deemed artisanal. With China’s wine imports already taxed at about 50 per cent of value, French wine fans had better stock up in case the wine wars are only just beginning.

 

 

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Restaurants set to double overall job growth

 

Source: NRA

June 7, 2013

 

In his latest commentary, the National Restaurant Association’s Chief Economist Bruce Grindy breaks down the latest jobs report.  Restaurants added more than 38,000 jobs in May, and are on pace to post their second consecutive year of job growth above three percent.  Meanwhile, the overall economy continued down the path of steady but moderate employment gains.

 

The restaurant industry continued to be one of the top job creators in the economy in May, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Eating and drinking places – the primary component of the restaurant industry which accounts for roughly three-fourths of the total restaurant and foodservice workforce – added a net 38,100 jobs in May on a seasonally-adjusted basis, the third time in the last four months with gains above the 30,000 level.

 

Meanwhile, the overall economy added a net 175,000 jobs in May, which essentially matches the average number of jobs added during the last 12 months.  The private sector added 178,000 jobs in May, while government payrolls declined by 3,000.

 

On a year-to-date basis through May 2013, eating and drinking places added jobs at a strong 3.2 percent rate, which is double the 1.6 percent gain registered in the overall economy.

 

If the current trend holds, 2013 will represent the 14th consecutive year in which restaurant industry job growth outpaces the overall economy, and the third consecutive year in which the industry registered job growth in excess of 2.5 percent.  In comparison, the overall economy hasn’t posted job growth above 2.5 percent since 1998.

 

 

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Restaurant Serves Kids Alcohol Instead Of Orange Juice

 

Source: You Tube

Jun 7, 2013

 

Some New Jersey parents are upset this week after they say a family restaurant served their kids alcohol.

 

Jeremy and Dawn DeRoo took their three daughters to brunch at Bazil’s on Sunday and ordered them orange juice; when one of the girls complained that it tasted funny, their mom figured it was just different than the kind they were used to and didn’t think much of it. But after tasting it later, she discovered that it was actually a mimosa. To add insult to injury, the waitress allegedly brushed it off as no big deal and offered to replace the drinks with milk, and the manager never came over to apologize.

 

The DeRoos say their kids showed signs of being drunk later that day and slept for hours after they got home.

 

“That’s not good enough for parents having kids, drunk and sleeping all day. It’s not fair. These little kids shouldn’t have any alcohol period,” Jeremy DeRoo said.

 

The restaurant’s owners say they aren’t sure how the mixup happened, and that all drinks are labeled to avoid mixups; luckily for them, the DeRoos say they aren’t going to pursue legal action.

 

 

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Fuller’s pulls in profits and taps premium cider market

 

Source: FT

By Duncan Robinson

Jun 7th

 

Fuller, Smith & Turner, the London-based brewer, has jumped into the premium cider market for the first time in its 168-year history by buying Cornish Orchards for £3.8m.

 

Michael Turner, chairman of Fuller’s, said the 21-year-old cider maker was “small but perfectly formed”.

 

“They are completely passionate about the quality of what they produce – and we’re going to bring some commercial rigour,” said Mr Turner. The deal comprised £2.4m in cash, £500,000 of assumed liabilities and another £900,000 to be paid depending on production targets.

 

Fuller’s, which makes London Pride, announced the deal as it unveiled its full-year results. Pre-tax profits rose 22 per cent to £35.2m for the year to March 30 as the group benefited from exposure to the more resilient premium end of the pub market.

 

While domestic demand for beer was slack, Fuller’s exports have almost doubled over the past five years. “Our exports have been moving ahead very quickly and the difference is the duty,” said Mr Turner.

 

Beer in the UK attracts up to 12 times more duty than on the continent. Exports now account for about a fifth of the group’s beer volumes.

 

Overall revenues rose 7 per cent to £271.5m as the group expanded its estate. Diluted earnings per share rose a quarter to 52.1p, while the group’s dividend rose 10 per cent to 8.35p.

 

Management hopes that increased demand for craft beers will continue and help maintain volumes. Fuller’s entered the craft lager market this month with the launch of Frontier.

 

“If you look at food, the good old days of meat and two veg have changed,” said Mr Turner. “Everyone looks at different types of food now. People’s tastes are getting far more sophisticated and the same is happening with beer.”

 

Like-for-like profit growth in the group’s managed division was 6 per cent, compared with a 1 per cent rise in like-for-like profits in the tenanted division. Tenanted pubs across the whole industry have struggled with rising utility and other costs.

 

Improved recent weather resulted in a 7 per cent jump in like-for-like sales at the group’s managed pubs and hotels for the nine weeks to June 1. Fuller’s tenanted division continued to struggle, however, with like-for-like profits down 1 per cent over the same period.

 

Shares in Fuller’s were 5.7 per cent ahead in afternoon trading at 930p, having risen more than a quarter over the past 12 months.

 

 

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In a Grocery Face-off, Is Costco Amazon-Proof?

 

Source: Bloomberg

By Brad Stone

June 06, 2013

 

Seattle-based Amazon.com (AMZN) has a cross-town retail rival in Costco Wholesale (COST), located in nearby Issaquah, Wash., and the histories of the companies are interestingly intertwined. During Amazon’s formative years, founder Jeff Bezos got some key advice from his Costco counterpart, Jim Sinegal. And Amazon Prime, the two-day shipping club, was inspired in part by Costco’s membership fees and the psychological inclination of shoppers to maximize the benefits of a club they have already paid to join.

 

As I was researching the connections between the companies last year for my upcoming book on Amazon, I called Sinegal and left a message asking if he could talk. He called back on a Saturday and left his cell phone number, then invited me to Costco’s headquarters for a one-on-one visit. That kind of availability and transparency is extremely unusual for the leader of a Fortune 500 company, and the conversation lead to my story in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek about the company’s bizarro corporate culture and Sinegal’s like-minded successor, Craig Jelinek.

 

Costco is thriving, but Amazons’s relentless expansion looms over the second-largest retailer in the U.S., as it does every other retailer. The online giant is moving rapidly into apparel and is reportedly set to expand AmazonFresh, its Seattle-only grocery delivery business-two categories that are key to the continued vibrancy of big-box behemoths such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), Costco, and Target (TGT). Last year, I wrote that Amazon was poised to extend grocery delivery beyond Seattle, and on Wednesday the company quietly rolled out the service in Los Angeles.

 

Costco executives watch Amazon closely and believe the companies share a lot of cultural values, such as frugality and an interest in building for the long term. Like everyone else, they also marvel over the fact that Wall Street allows Amazon to get away with nearly nonexistent profit margins. “At some point people have to make some profits,” says Jelinek. “It is fashionable to make a lot of money these days.”

 

Jeff Brotman, Costco’s co-founder and chairman, says Bezos “doesn’t have to make a profit or break even on” services like Amazon Prime and AmazonFresh. “He’s building great loyalty with that, as we have with our executive membership,” which costs $110 a year and entitles members to additional benefits. Like other Costco executives, Brotman was skeptical that home grocery delivery could be profitable, but he notes that Amazon doesn’t really have to make it work perfectly in the short term: “He can spend a billion dollars experimenting and putting televisions on a truck and delivering them the same day with apples and oranges. That’s a research and development experiment that competitors and normal online businesses can’t do.”

 

So is Costco (and, for that matter, Wal-Mart) doomed if Amazon figures out home delivery of perishables and other sundries? Costco executives certainly don’t think so, and I agree. As others have noted, Amazon still has a lot of work to do to make home grocery delivery an economical option. And Costco members, attracted in part by its low prices, are exceedingly loyal, as its recent earnings reports have demonstrated.

 

Costco executives are not blind to the Amazon threat, and they talk in vague terms about evolving to meet the challenge. “It’s obviously a huge point of discussion around here,” says Paul Latham, vice president in charge of membership, marketing, and services. “We view Amazon as one of our primary competitors in almost every category. We all believe we are going to have to adapt in some form.” Latham also adds that “there’s a recognition that at some point Amazon has to start making money. They can’t continue on their current path of just pouring everything back into more infrastructure.”

 

 

——

Norway: Norwegian Politicians Defend Wine Monopoly

 

The majority of the country’s local politicians want continuation of wine monopoly and are against wine sale at convenience stores and supermarkets.

 

Source: Nordic Page

Jun 7th

 

A survey conducted among the country’s politicians for Newspaper News Agency (ANB) shows a majority against open for the sale of wine in regular stores. 52 percent of the respondents are against sale of high degree alcoholic beverages including wine at regular stores.

 

While 97 percent of the Christian Democratic Party politicians are against wine shops, 90 percent of FrP politicians want sale of wine at regular stores.

 

The greatest resistance to the wine shop is on the predominantly conservative West Coast of Norway.

 

It may Lead to Higher Consumption of Alcohol

 

According to press chief Jens Nordahl in Wine Monopoly, a principle decision to move wine sales to the corner store have dramatic consequences.

 

– Product selection will be significantly lower, and the price will go up. And market access for the people will be drastically larger when the number of outlets will increase from the current 280 to 5,000 stores, said he.

 

Also, the politicians and health authorities are concerned that consumption will increase drastically with allowing wine sale out of monopolies. When alcopops were moved from monopolies to the convential stores in the early 2000s, sales of alcopops had dramatically increased from four million to 16 million liters per year.

 

A recent study conducted by TNS Gallup for Wine Monopoly also shows that 90 percent of the population is satisfied with the availability of the wine monopoly. Only eight percent are dissatisfied with the availability.

 

Vinmonopolet (English: The Wine Monopoly) is a government-owned alcoholic beverage retailer and the only company allowed to sell beverages containing an alcohol content higher than 4.75% in Norway.

 

As the arm of the Norwegian government policy to limit the citizens’ consumption of alcohol, primarily by means of high cost and limited access, the primary goal of the Vinmonopolet is to responsibly perform the distribution of alcoholic goods while limiting the motive of private economic profit from the alcohol industry. Equally significant is the social responsibility of Vinmonopolet, to prevent the sale of alcohol to minors and visibly inebriated customers.

 

Outlets, located across the country from cities to smaller communities, typically close business earlier than other shops, normally weekdays at 18:00 and Saturdays at 15:00. In 2007 Vinmonopolet sold 71,100,000 litres (18,800,000 US gal) of alcohol.

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