Treasury Wine Estates traces its roots back to the establishment of Penfolds in Adelaide, South Australia, in the mid-1840s, and the founding of Beringer Vineyards in the Napa Valley in 1876.

Penfolds was eventually acquired by Southcorp, and over time, Beringer acquired other wineries, too, including St. Clement, Stags’ Leap Winery and Etude in Napa Valley and Chateau St. Jean and Chateau Souverain in Sonoma County and Meridian in Paso Robles.

As it’s getting easier to accurately identify what yeasts are present in fermentation, the information is leading to more questions about yeasts and challenging conventional wisdom.

Winemakers that incorporated native or spontaneous fermentations often say the yeast is coming in from the vineyard. Those who inoculated contend they prefer having control of what yeast was present to achieve certain style goals.

It turns out that both point-of-views may be incorrect or not as definitive as some believe.

 

For years, we’ve reported on the progress of the major cork suppliers to improve quality and reduce the level of cork taint.

As better cork alternatives became available to the industry, cork suppliers had to improve their production processes and quality control to minimize taint and provide a consistent product. Since at least 2012, we’ve also reported on the efforts of a few major suppliers to automate the process for checking individual corks for any contamination.

In the “closures war” there’s also been an arms race among cork suppliers to be the first to deliver high quality corks that are guaranteed to be free of contamination through individual testing. Yet it never really seemed clear when these systems would be ready and in fact for a few years I kept hearing it would “next year.”

 

Wines & Vines is intensely interested in wine packaging. We publish at least half-a-dozen packaging features yearly, scour the Unified Symposium exhibit floor for new offerings and in 2014 inaugurated a highly successful annual packaging seminar (next scheduled for August 2016 in Yountville, Calif.). It’s a topic that’s vital to our readers.

Earlier today we posted an article on the home page about the about ShipCompliant's annual report on the direct-to-consumer market. DtC sales grew more than 8% in value and volume and nearly surpassed $2 billion.

It's a pretty safe bet that DtC sales will remain strong, especially in light of distributor consolidation, less and less legal barriers, better technology and consumers getting more comfortable with buying wine online. As the market grows, however, it likely won't ressemble as we know DtC sales today.