• Regional wine week: Drink Local Wine will hold its sixth annual Regional Wine Week from Oct. 6 to Oct. 12, which means everyone has a chance to be a wine writer. Maybe that's my legacy as one of the group's co-founders? Anyone –- professional wine writer to bloggers to wine drinkers with Facebook or Tumblr -- can send a link to their story or post about regional wine. This year, as a bonus, there's a photo contest with wine-related prizes. Over the past five years, writers from across the United States and Canada have posted stories and sent DLW links from blogs, websites, magazines, and newspapers about their favorite regional and local wines, wineries and events. I'll have my annual post on Oct. 6.
• Breaking down the cost of wine: One of the great mysteries about wine is how costs are allocated; that is, how much does each part of the process cost, whether grapes, bottling, marketing, and so forth. I cover this in the Cheap Wine Book (with a nifty graphic), and Jo Diaz, a long-time wine industry insider, has come up with similar numbers. What's important to note is how little the grapes cost -- about seven percent of a $50 bottle of wine.
• Who do consumers trust? Not, apparently, wine writers if one study is to be believed. We're so far down the list it's hardly worth mentioning. This has caused all sorts of kerfluffle among those of us who do this for a living, which I'm mostly ignoring as part of my new policy of not writing about wine writing. It's worth mentioning that the study's author, the respected John Gillespie, has said that the survey "may not fully capture market influence." But it sure is fun to write about, no?
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