Weekly Wine News Around the Web

More Brand Protection for Napa: Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) have enlisted the help of a group known as the Organization for Geographical Indications Network to protect its brand, according to this report. The organization enlisted by NVV is known to lobby internationally for increased legal protections related to key geographic areas, such as Napa and its association with wine.

Consumers Breaking our Benjamins for Wine: One of the casualties of the U.S. recession has been a dip in the price consumers want to pay for a bottle of wine, but that’s changing, according to this report in the Napa Valley Register. The only issue holding back Napa Valley from selling more wine, for example, is a lack of supply to satiate consumer appetites for its varietals, according to participants at a Napa Valley event.

A Small Step for The Garden State: Due to a bill that New Jersey Governor Christie signed at the beginning of this year, which became effective this week, wineries in the state can take orders from customers and ship directly to their homes, as reported by PhillyBurbs. In addition, NJ wineries that get licensed in other states will soon be able to ship to out-of-state customers and out-of-state wineries that produce less than 250,000 gallons will be able to ship direct to consumers in NJ. Corkzilla has been following this piece of legislation closely since last year. Although this is a positive step towards Freeing the Grapes, it is still limiting about 90% of US wine producers from shipping to NJ due to the 250K capacity cap.

Wine and Toilet Paper: This falls in the 'not necessarily the news' category, but it's somewhat fascinating. Apparently, the most powerful wine buyer in the world is Annette Alverez-Peters. For those that don't know Annette, she is the lead wine buyer for the big-box behemoth, Costco - which does roughly one billon in wine sales per year. In a recent interview with MSNBC, Annette spoke about how she considers wine to be the same as any other lifeless product Costco sells - such as clothes or toilet paper. There's not much soul or passion put into the making of toilet paper. I bet you could buy a lot of it for 1MM. Watch the vid here for a closer look...