I don’t know if they still do, but at one time the Chinese called America Gum Shan, the mountain of gold, a symbol of opportunity and the chance to get rich. Today, the Chinese have found another symbol of opportunity whose very name beckons the ambitious. In French Lafite means small hill, in Chinese it [...]

The wine industry was battered and bruised in 2008, the astronomical prices for top-level wines plunged, and as if in an act of repentance more winemakers went green. For example, Boisset, the second-largest producer of Beaujolais Nouveau, bottled its entire 2008 harvest in lightweight plastic bottles. Biodynamic and organic wines increased. Yet many still doubt [...]