Florida: Fla. Retailers Sue Over Craft Brewery Permits
A new front has opened in the battle surrounding Florida's burgeoning craft brewery scene, as retailer and distributor groups in the state filed a pair of lawsuits challenging the way the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation has been licensing...
Legislators Float Bill To Cut Small Brewer Taxes
U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., introduced legislation Thursday to slash excise taxes on beer sold by small brewers, marking the latest legislative effort to cut taxes in the new Congress. The Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act, which Paulsen...
The Best Wine Apps
Whether you're looking for a specific bottle or wanting to find the best price, there's an app for you WHEN I FIRST STARTED working in wine retail in the late 1990s, if someone asked for a producer we didn't stock, we had to go through the long and sometimes laborious...
Bordeaux and Rest of the World stay afloat in December
The Bordeaux and Rest of the World sub-indices of the Liv-ex 1000 were the only two to see increases in December. FineWineCellarAs reported by Liv-ex, the overall index closed on 242.74 in December, 0.25% down on November, dragged under by the other composite parts:...
Craft Brewers Are Running Out Of Names, And Into Legal Spats
With so many craft breweries now in operation, just about every beer name you can imagine is taken. That's making it harder for newcomers to name that brew without risking a legal fight. Columbia? Taken. Mississippi? Taken. Sacramento? El Niño? Marlin? Grizzly? Sorry,...
Minnesota: A tougher landscape for municipal liquor stores
Hours before midnight on New Year's Eve, the sales floor at Edina's 50th Street municipal liquor store was still humming. As customers roamed the aisles and lined up at the checkout counter, a promotional message played over the public address system, ending with the...
Could investing in wine boost your wealth?
Whether it's baseball cards or Beanie Babies, most collections don't result in financial gain for the collector. The dividends tend to be paid out in enjoyment instead of dollars, and only the rarest of specimens will ever appreciate in value. Investing in more...
Subsidising wine
The EU has now increased the sum available for promoting wine over the period 2014 to 2018 by 121 per cent to €1.15bn "Making good wine is just the beginning - selling it is what's difficult." So says Silvana Ballotta, and she should know: she runs Business Strategies...
UK trade exceeds target on unit removal
The UK drinks trade has reached its target to remove one billion units of alcohol from the market by the end of 2015 ahead of schedule. Dozens of suppliers, retailers and producers signed up to the Public Health Responsibility Deal in 2011, pledging to remove one...