Word: wined
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perhaps the Bible is wrong, and you really can put new wine into old wineskins. It certainly seems to be the business model for lots of old, fusty fashion labels these days. The fashion industry has always had a voracious appetite for the new and the young--and has ultimately lost gobs of money pursuing them. But it has recently developed a taste for Lazarus labels, back from the dead and back in the black...
...lies 25 km northwest of Montpellier in the heart of the Languedoc region, known throughout the 20th century for producing oceans of undistinguished plonk. When that market dried up in the 1980s, a new generation of growers showed that the Languedoc could also produce smaller quantities of high-quality wine. It didn't take long for the news to reach California's Napa Valley, where Robert G. Mondavi, now 88, and his family have been making premium wines for decades. In early 1998, Mondavi dispatched a team to the Languedoc to find a vineyard where the winemaker could produce...
...only problem was that the land belonged to the village. Mondavi cut a deal with the local government giving the firm a 50-year lease in return for a partnership to improve the quality of wine produced at the local growers' cooperative. In concrete terms, that meant annual payments to growers of $7,000 for each hectare they devoted to the partnership wine, plus a capital injection of $400,000 over five years to modernize the coop's equipment. So the Americans were stunned when the announcement of the project was greeted by storms of protest from an unlikely coalition...
...Daumas Gassac whose plans to sell his own vineyard to Mondavi had fallen through. Mayor Diaz won over a majority of Aniane's voters with arguments worthy of Astérix: "Do we French growers, with our know-how and traditions, really need Mondavi to help us with our wine-making technique...
...says Jacques Bonnier, director of the growers' cooperative. The small producers who bring their grapes to the coop are still engaged in high-volume production, a sector that is wilting in the face of New World competition. The Mondavi deal offered them financial support as they moved into quality wine-making plus access to a worldwide sales network. "It was a fabulous opportunity," says Bonnier. "Today we're looking at a catastrophe...