California International Business Report

The California Sustainable Winegrow-ing Alliance, created by the San Francisco-based Wine Institute and the California Association of Winegrape Growers has received a $125,000 specialty crop block grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service to create a certification system for the effort. According to a Business Journal Report, the program started five [...]

The Wine Institute hired a director of international marketing, according to a report in San Francisco Business Times.  Linsey Simpson Gallagher will fill the new position at the San Francisco-based Wine Institute, created because Joseph Rollo, head of the institute’s international department for 20 years, had seen his work increase dramatically.  Rollo will continue full [...]

As reported in the Los Angeles Times:
With the declining value of the U.S. dollar and increasing wine sales overseas, Charles Shaw wine, an American favorite, may seem in some places more like “One-Buck Chuck.”
That’s because the low value of the dollar is starting to turn California wines into bargains abroad. 2007 was a vintage year [...]

San Francisco Business Times reports that:
Sonoma State University, in the heart of the North Bay’s Wine Country, is offering what officials are calling the nation’s first Wine MBA program.  The school said Wednesday that the MBA program is meant to fill a growing need for winery executives and managers who understand both management techniques and [...]

An AP report has noted that “Two Buck Chuck” -the two dollar wine sold in Trader Joe’s, has sold three hundred million bottles in its first five years of existence and now accounts for 8 percent of California’s in State wine sales:
It’s been five years since the first of these amazingly cheap chardonnays and cut-price [...]

“U.S. wine exports, mostly from California, soared 30 percent in value and 4 percent in volume last year, after slipping in 2005, according to a new study of Commerce Department data by the Wine Institute trade group. Exports rose to $876 million and 404.5 million liters last year, with California generating 95 percent of [...]

Brunton Vineyards, Inc., a division of Brunton Vineyards Holdings, Inc. announced that it has received a Letter of Intent from Zhejiang Ouhai International Trade Corporation for the distribution and delivery of a minimum of 1,200 containers per year of the company’s wine brand, Addison Cole. The proposed transaction translates to approximately 1,000,000 cases of wine [...]

The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports that wine sales are up: “U.S. wine exports, 95 percent from California, totaled $876 million and 404.5 million liters in 2006, an increase of 30 percent in value and 4 percent in volume compared to 2005, according to the Wine Institute International Department… ‘The dramatic sales [...]

“Mitch Clark and Jim Buckley, two Bay Area wine industry veterans with links to both Robert and Michael Mondavi, have purchased Scott Street Portfolio Inc., a wine importing company previously owned by Australia’s Evans & Tate Wine Group… The new owners are renaming the company Avanti Fine Wine Selections LLC. They also plan to expand [...]