Three news items that show just how detached the wine business is from reality
When I worked at the late and much missed Dallas Times Herald, the two sports columnists couldn’t stand each other and didn’t speak. So when they covered the same event, like a Cowboys game, they would often write the same column, which wasn’t good, or write the complete opposite of each other, which was even worse.
The latter happened a lot. So the guy who ran the copy desk coined a term: Dueling columnists. As in, “What did the dueling columnists write this time?”
Which happens all the time in wine — call it dueling news. So, for the blog’s final news briefs post, these three stories (which appeared just before the holidays):
• Is the Negative Shift in Alcohol Spending Behavior Temporary?
• Americans Spending on Holidays After all?
• Luxury brands brace for lackluster Christmas, inventory pile-up?
The first says the decline in booze is because it’s too expensive, so when it gets cheaper (or we have more money), we’ll come back. The second says price isn’t a problem, really. And the third says it is, and wonders if it’s time to panic.
Trying to make sense of all of this is exactly the sort of thing I won’t miss.
Photo: “Toronto Star newsroom” by Toronto History is licensed under CC BY 2.0.