image: Publix Grape Magazine

Supposedly, it is Spring. Here in the Philly area, however, we jumped from sub-40F evenings directly to sunny, 80+F afternoons and something like 12,000% humidity. So, Summer decided to crash the party early.

A serendipitous time, therefore, is upon us during which to tell you of my contribution to the Summer 2015 edition of PUBLIX’s Grape Magazine (to which many of you can subscribe for free, by the way).

I contributed quite a bit of uncredited content to that one (much of it in the form of wine/food pairing write-ups). I also penned the In Focus section, this time focusing on the dreaded topic of boxed wines. Why this amazing little form of alternative wine packaging is still widely derided is beyond me, as we’re long past the point of the juice inside of those bag-in-boxes being sub-par. Granted, fine wine-ing it’s not, and admittedly it’s not the easiest task on earth to find a boxed wine that over-delivers on quality, but it certainly is easier finding a fairly-priced, tasty, and totally drinkable boxed wine than ever before.

During the In Focus piece, we get into the history of the boxed wine format, as well as explore some of the technology behind the bag-in-box packaging, which in a geeky way I have always found fascinating. You can check it out by subscribing at http://www.publix.com/clubs-programs/publications/publix-grape-magazine .

Cheers – and stay cool!

“On the midnight street
No moon and no stars
No one around to calm you down
And to soften the stings to my heart
The dream is sand in my hands
The dream becomes sand in my hands”

-Morrissey, Good Looking Man About Town

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

-Japanese proverb

image: Wine.Answers.com

OK, folks…

First, an explanation of why I have been several months behind on writing up producer features here on 1WD (Amici, Red Car, some high-end KJ brand stuff, and several Sicily items are all in that pipeline, waiting patiently for me to get my act together). The short version of the story: I am getting divorced, and it’s an enormous time, energy, and emotion suck.

So now those of you who have been giving me crap about only posting references to my paying gigs know why I am so behind on things (I barely have enough bandwidth and energy to get the paying work in on time). I am the one who filed, so I am not looking for any pity here (and I am having far more good-to-great days than bad at that moment). Everything that has transpired on the home-front since my marriage crisis started has more-or-less showed that ending the marriage is absolutely the right thing to do, so little sleep is being lost on that front now. The kid is also doing great, so the tippy-top priority is well in-hand.

While I am not fishing for sympathy, I do want to tell you that I am deeply grateful for the enormous and touching outpouring of support that I have received about this situation, both publicly and privately, from so many of you. I will never, ever forget it, and not one sunset passes right now that I don’t list those words of encouragement near the top of my list when I review the things for which I am most grateful right now.

So I hope that you’ll understand why today I am giving you yet another pointer to more of my paying gig work (I know, I suck)…

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image: Fix.com

I am aware that it’s been a long, oh, I don’t know, five whole minutes since I last talked about a Fix.com article, but the fine folks over at that website have seen fit to publish yet another of my modest attempts at edu-taining the wine soaked masses yearning to be… well… edu-tained.

And so, because I’ve nothing more pressing to do (this nanosecond, anyway), I point you to my Fix.com take on wine prices (why they are what they are, and roughly what to expect with each increasing price band), titled Behind the Tag: The Scoop on Wine Prices. Once again, Fix.com’s images make my words look good.

In the attempts penned to answer the question “why does a wine cost what it costs?” I’ve yet to find any version that cannot be boiled down to the following answer: “because that’s what they think you’ll pay!” Of course, that’s not long enough for a standard article, but the devil’s in those pesky details. And the details are particularly, interestingly, peskily devilish. Like a black hole, a wine’s price incorporates a whole lot of data that isn’t necessarily visible (at least, not at first).

Also interesting, I think, is that the subjectivity of a wine’s upper price point (after normal economies of scale are taken into account) is the entire reason why wine critics have any power whatsoever (think about it…). We often talk about the diffusion of wine criticism, and the dwindling power of traditional wine coverage, but rarely do we make the mental leap to connect that decrease in critics’ power to the increase in wine quality at all price points (itself most probably a result of the earlier efforts of critics calling wines on the carpet… but now we’re well into black-hole-event-horizon-crazy recursive-ness, Interstellar style, so let’s just shut up about it now). Better quality products naturally require less direct critical assessment of their quality, after all.

Anyway… the full Fix.com infographic take on wine prices is embedded below after the jump. Enjoy!

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image: Fix.com

Attention, peeps!

My latest entry for Fix.com is now live; this time, we’re providing an overview of some of the world’s more exciting sparkling wine regions, titled Bubbling Over. See what they did there? Ok, I’ll shut up now.

Once again, the Fix.com crew’s stellar graphics talents are on full display, making the most (and then some!) of my modest attempt at the prose. The full info-graphic is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Most of these bubbly regions will be familiar to you geeks, though I think there’s one in there that might come as a slight surprise even to you fabulous wine nerds. Enjoy!

Cheers!

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