Wine news May 1, 2017

Marketwatch on Martha Stewart's new wine club. "As Stewart told us via email: “Now is a good time for us to start pairing wine with food for the curious and very needy customer. And I say needy because we’re all way too busy to try to figure everything out on our own.”

Bon Appetit checks out Trader Joe's canned wine. "The main draw of the Italian sparkling wines is the price (we see you, Two Buck Chuck). Trader Joe's customers can pick up a four-pack for a mere $3.99."

The Wine Enthusiast asks what makes a good wine label? "Save the animal stories for the website. The bottle should explain as much as possible about the wine inside."

Jancis Robinson asks is Champagne losing its fizz? "It is certainly true that the dire quality of most supermarket own-label champagnes that are sold for a song in both France and the UK constitutes the greatest threat to the image of champagne (far more than some of the more obscure battles fought by the CIVC's extremely litigious protection division such as the damaging, and ultimately fruitless, three-year pursuit of an Australian wine writer who styled herself Champagne Jayne)."

CNBC on on a wine distributor foregoing brick and mortar to take on China. "According to the International Wine & Spirit Research organization, China is to set overtake Britain and France to become the second largest wine consumer by 2020."

On JamesSuckling.com Stuart Pigott visits the Finger Lakes and drinks Riesling. "Well, the FLX quality revolution is largely the work of a new generation of winemakers, many in their 20s or early 30s." 

Andrew Jefford in Decanter checks out the book French Wine – A History. "If you had to summarise its message, it might well be that the throughout much of the last 2,000 years in France, the French wine drunk by ordinary citizens was mostly unpleasant, and that many of those citizens were often, by necessity and seen with modern eyes, more or less tipsy. "