Going Low: Making Lo-Alc Wines Isn’t Always Trendy

One Ohio winery is making low-alcohol wines as a matter of course. By Paul Vigna   You could say winemaker Joe Juniper at Vermillion Valley Vineyards in Wakeman, Ohio, is […]

While associated with fun and frivolity, sparkling wine is a complex wine of many moving parts that requires serious skill to make. We catch up with some of the leading lights in the fizz industry, from Champagne, Spain and England, to find out the secrets of their craft and the challenges surrounding creating a consistent sparkling wine style in an ever-changing climate. Synonymous with celebration, sparkling wines are easy to enjoy but challenging to create. Crafting quality fizz requires a skilled hand, well-trained nose, razor-sharp intuition and nerves of steel come harvest time, when deciding on the perfect moment to pick feels like a game of Russian roulette. Cellar masters are the wizards of the wine world, able to create a consistent style of wine each year from hundreds of elements amid increasingly erratic weather conditions. They have to be time travellers too, projecting themselves into the future when tasting aggressively acidic base wines, working out how they will harmo

Members of the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics Community Provide Vital New Sources of Sanitizer in Fight Against Pandemic What do spirits and hand sanitizer have in common? They require alcohol. Three members of the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics family have responded to the nationwide shortage of hand sanitizer by pivoting production from beverages to hand sanitizer. Sonoma Wine Executive MBA students Jason Somerby of New Alchemy Distilling and Travis Smith of American Winesecrets LLC and Spiritsmith LLC, and Gary Heck, owner of F. Korbel & Bros and Wine Business Institute advisory board chairperson, are utilizing their production facilities to help fight the spread of COVID-19 throughout California. They are producing and donating hand sanitizer to local and government agencies, hospitals, first responders, and other essential businesses such as grocery stores and commercial farming operations. The generosity and community-mind