Weekly Wine News Around The Web

Hotel Happy Hour: In an effort to boost wine and food sales, Sheraton Hotels have teamed up with the Wine Spectator to offer wine tasting events in their hotel lobbies. Hotels that participate in Sheraton's "Social Hour" will hold the tastings three to four times per week. In North America, two of the wines they pour will hold a 90 or above rating from Wine Spectator, as reported by USA Today. Sheraton hopes this will encourage the wine loving Gen Xer travelers to socialize more in their hotels.

Greek Wine: In this time of economic crisis, winemakers from Greece are on a international promotional mission to spread the word about the wine revolution that is currently underway in their country. Sponsored by the Hellenic Foreign Trade Abroad (HEPO), winemakers recently held tasting events and wine symposiums in New York City to help bolster exposure of wines from Greece for consumers and wines professionals in the US. When asked about the future of the Greek wine industry, given the state of such political and economic uncertainty, many of the winemakers at the events seemed very positive, as reported in this article from the Chicago Tribune. The general consensus among the Greek wine professionals seems to be that things will improve after the next general election on June17th. In the mean time, they are continuing to spread the good news about wine from Greece.

Editor's note: CORKZILLA was invited to take part in a Greek wine webinar tasting event hosted by the Hellenic Foreign Trade Abroad (HEPO) in NYC last week. Stayed tuned for our review!

10 Years at $2: Interesting read from San Francisco's fantastic local public radio station KALW (91.7FM) about Trader Joe's uber successful Charles Shaw Wines - also known as Two-Buck Chuck.

Wine Fulfillment: As wine sales increase and more and more states allow direct wine shipments to consumers, the demand for fulfillment service providers has sky-rocketed. Sonoma base wine fulfillment company, WineShipping, is planning on spending millions of dollars upgrading it's packaging automation systems and expanding it's operations to a 150,000 square foot warehouse in Napa, as reported by the North Bay Business Journal. Another cause for the company's growth is increased interest in WineShipping's ability to offer it's customers a temperature-controlled delivery service option - allowing wineries to ship wine throughout the year.