Afternoon Brief, August 14th

Maui Wildfires Kill Dozens and Devastate Communities and Hospitality Businesses: The historic town of Lahaina, popular with tourists, has lost hundreds of buildings, including restaurants like Fleetwood's on Front St., owned by musician Mick Fleetwood...

  Posted by Laura Ness of Spirited Magazine | Mar 31, 2020 | Packaging, Equipment, Wine, Production    You have to be just slightly natters to engage in a livelihood that can literally blow up on you—and yet, the sisterhood (and brotherhood) of bubbles runs deep. That’s probably why it’s considered the ne plus ultra of winemaking. There are many ways to sparkle a beverage, but méthode Champenoise is considered the highest form of sparkling art. It’s a process that’s been painstakingly perfected, by hand, over the centuries. It requires two entirely separate fermentations, the second of which occurs in the bottle, which is where the magic happens. Says Todd Graff, winemaker and general manager at Frank Family Vineyards in Napa Valley, “The secondary fermentation in the bottle is the trickiest part, because however many bottles you’re making, each is an individual fermentation.” Méthode Champenoise is time consuming, filled with repetitive tedium, complicated (often by many months o