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California’s Secret Pot-Infused Wines; Wine & Spirits Names Best New Sommeliers

“Stop bogarting that Cab Franc, man.” Photo: iStockphoto

• It’s an open secret in Northern California’s wine country that some winemakers make marijuana-infused barrels of wine, usually red, to serve as “digestifs” or special treats for friends and VIP guests. [Gourmet Live]

• Climate change could make 50 percent of California’s wine-growing regions too hot to grow grapes by 2039, according to one controversial study, and places like southern England, the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, and the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York could become bigger players in the industry. [USA Today]

• QVC in England will, for the first time, be selling a wine brand on the air. It’s called Pig in a Poke. (Is that a National Lampoon’s European Vacation reference?) [Harper’s UK]

• San Francisco–based wine writer Robert Finigan, whose newsletter Robert Finigan’s Private Guide to Wines became an early source of cheerleading for California wines in the seventies, died last Saturday at the age of 68. [Wine Spectator]

Wine & Spirits magazine has named their Best New Sommeliers for 2011, which include Sur Lucero at Oenotri in Napa, and Alexander LaPratt at DB Bistro in New York. [Wine & Spirits]

• Lucky for him, the Times’ Eric Asimov recently got to do a vertical tasting of old vintages of Charles Krug cabernets, from 1961 to 1991, at Sotheby’s, as part of the winery’s 150th anniversary. Yes, some California wineries are that old. [NYT]

California’s Secret Pot-Infused Wines; Wine & Spirits Names Best