Wow. It’s really happened.

According to NIQ data for 4 weeks ending 4-20-24, beer imports have taken over the domestic beer category in the U.S.

For the 1st time ever.

For a number of years now, when you want to look at innovation in high end packaging and presentation, chocolate has been one of the categories to watch.

This is such a simple, penetrating question in response to those endless variations of 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.' I've never seen it asked of politicians or pundits.

😄Classic wine geek conundrums here, with wit and clever advice mixed in. Sweet wine idea is risky IMHO; I've often seen it forgotten or people have had enough by dessert. P.S. if dining with trade/producers, often better to bring the most exotic wine than a prestige bottle.

Some collector, university or wine museum should surely pick this up. Of historic interest; prohibition permitted a small, restricted amount of home winemaking, and in fact many California growers of thick-skinned, shippable wine grapes (or stuff like this) did well in the 30s.

This perfectly captures U.S. mainstream media's treatment of politics these days.

Bravo & about time! All those smudge pots in the vineyards were ridiculous from both an efficiency and climate viewpoint, given the value of the crop.

I don't think Billy Gibbons plays this the same way ever. Which is pretty cool, considering the magnetic attraction of the original solos.

This BBC article claims Tastry's AI-powered app uses a 'database of taste preferences of 248 million US wine drinkers.' That's close to the entire 21+ population in US & only 35% of them drink wine. @Tastry can you clarify?bbc.com/news/business-…

At least until last year, he was still touring. Saw a remarkable show a few years ago, with his son in the band. It was like a tour of rock & soul history from the 1960s until the 2000s, brilliantly done.

Going through some very old papers, I run across a quote from Jon Fredrikson (founder of wine industry data journal Gomberg-Fredrikson) saying in 2002 that the new wave of RTDs were going to take shelf space from wine. A bit ahead of time, but impressive foresight.

This is truly demented. Masochists can follow the rest of the thread, it gets worse. Points for honesty to the Gov, though. Most of his party opt for changing the subject or 'what-abouts'.

Saw this in a store a while ago. Is it just another diacetyl-driven coattails brand, or a (probably too) cleverly named crisp no-ML style. Regret not buying it, my curiosity is gnawing at me now.

OLD: Reproductive rights
NEW: Refrigerator rights

One of the most innovative and fun labels in recent years comes from Bordeaux. Who knew? Having done some market research on Bordeaux, I know how reluctant both producers, trade and to some extent consumers are to cut loose with packaging.

Long time readers of the WSJ know there's a bizarre but respect-worthy disconnect between the reporting & editorial pages. Sometimes the latter appears not to have read the former.

SCOOP: David Hume Kennerly, the famed photog who served in the Ford WH, resigned Tuesday from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, blasting it for cowardice in rejecting Trump critic Liz Cheney as the recipient of its top yearly award. politico.com/f/?id=0000018e…

Wow. Brutal economic truths here, that go far beyond the wine industry. I've always despised the pay-for-content-with-ads paradigm, for reasons too lengthy & complicated for tweeting. Seems like the central conflict in journalism is that paradigm vs. direct pay for content.