Off-premise wine sales data increased 3.4 percent from the same period of the previous year in the 4 weeks ending March 3, 2012, according to The Nielsen Company-tracked data. In the 13 weeks ending during the same period, wine sales increased 2.4 percent.
Domestic wine sales increased 5 percent while imported wine sales fell 0.7 percent in the 4 weeks ending March 3. In case volume during that same period, domestic wines increased 2.1 percent while imported case volume fell 2 percent.

A research project to help grapegrowers manage their carbon footprints and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is expected to yield results this year. Wine and Vines reports that data from the study will be used to develop an online application to help vineyard managers maximize soil carbon storage and minimize GHG emissions. Researchers with the University of California, Davis, presented information about the project at the Recent Advances in Viticulture and Enology (RAVE) meeting on March 15.

Hamilton-based Hill Laboratories is to buy the Cawthorn Institute’s Marlborough laboratory to strengthen its core environmental and wine testing businesses, reports Waikato Times.
Cawthorn, New Zealand’s largest independent, community-owned research centre and Hill, the country’s leading private analytical testing company, have a heads of agreement for a deal expected to be sealed by the end of June following due diligence.

True story: When New Zealand’s modern Sauvignon Blancs burst on the scene in the 1980s, American tasters raved about their literally mouth-watering acids and pungent, vibrant gooseberry aromas.
We came to recognize them that way even though most of us had never been in the same room with a gooseberry. I mentioned that to a friend at dinner one night, and a week later, a can of gooseberries arrived in the mail, reports New Zealand Herald.

“I’ve been making sparkling wine for many years, and if I had to make bubbles in just one place, I would make them in New Zealand,” says Dr Tony Jordan. This is praise indeed of the country’s potential given Jordan’s pedigree as one of the world’s leading fashioners of fizz and onetime CEO of Domaine Chandon.
I caught up with Jordan when he was in New Zealand last month to launch his latest sparkling wines, a non-vintage and a rosé made as a joint venture with Central Otago’s Akarua winery.

Get set to get your hands on some truly fantastic wines from the Langhorne Creek 2012 vintage. After struggling through years of drought and their fair share of inclement weather events the winegrape growers and winemakers of Langhorne Creek are celebrating an exceptional vintage as the last of the harvesters across the district enter the home stretch and the winery fermenters reach capacity.

Upper Hunter vineyards have been left out of the NSW Government’s recently released draft regional land use policy for the Upper Hunter.
“There’s been some sort of misrepresentation or some sort of a mistake by the NSW government,” Upper Hunter Winemakers Association president Laurie Nicholls told the Muswellbrook Chronicle. “They have the Lower Hunter vineyards in there – Broke, Bulga, Belford and the Pokolbin area. There’s no mention of the vineyards and wineries in the Muswellbrook and Upper Hunter shires.”

Liquor retailer Doug Evans calls it ”feeding the monster”. The peculiar spectacle of independent bottle shop owners backing their trucks up to big box outlets such as Dan Murphy’s and filling up with cheap booze to then sell at their own stores, reports Business Day.
Such is the pricing and buying power of outlets like Dan Murphy’s – owned by supermarket giant Woolworths – and Coles’ own network of 800 stores, that they can buy and sell beer, wine and spirits at a cheaper price than is available to the nation’s thousands of independent bottle shops.

The Chancellor’s decision to continue the automatic tax escalator on drinks has been denounced as a ‘lazy cash grab’ and satirised as ‘our own Olympic record’ by drinks professionals. In today’s Budget announcement, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said the alcohol tax escalator which automatically increases tax on alcohol by 2% above inflation, will stay. This will see duty on alcohol rise by 7.2%, meaning that tax on a bottle of wine represents around 56% of the cost of the bottle. From 26 March, consumers will now pay £0.11 more on a 75cl bottle of wine, £0.41 more on a 70cl bottle of spirits at 37.5% abv and £0.03 more on a pint of beer, reports Decanter.

Kiwi wineries are having to sell bulk wine to overseas retailers in return for getting their bottled brand on supermarket shelves, a Markhams wine spokesman says. Markhams’ national wine spokesman, Graeme Rhodes, said bulk wine sales were making it harder for wineries to make profits, but they were entrenched in many sales deals. “Bulk wine is being used as leverage, with wineries agreeing to supply in order to get their finished wines on supermarket shelves, particularly in export markets.” New Zealand Winegrowers chairman Stuart Smith said such deals reflected who winemakers were dealing with, reports Business Day.