• Hilarious: A wine from Chile’s Maule Valley with the label “Chilensis” has some Chinese people upset, and others laughing their asses off. The word loosely translates as “f**king nuts” in Cantonese, and thus it went from a cheap bottle to a collector’s item within days. [Drinks Business]
• Ice wine makers in the Czech Republic breathed a sigh of relief this week as temperatures finally dipped in this unusually warm winter and allowed them to harvest grapes for their expensive dessert wines. [Daily News Online]
• Napa Valley vintners sighed and cried this week as a villain was sentenced. Mark Christian Anderson — who torched a wine-storage facility in 2005 to cover an embezzlement scheme, and destroyed at least $50 million worth of premium vintages in the process — got 27 years. [Grub Street SF, Earlier]
• And remember the tale of Mark Lugo, the New York sommelier who got arrested for a San Francisco art heist last July? He admitted in a New York court this week to stealing a $350,000 drawing off a wall at the Carlyle Hotel. Prosecutors say he was only trying to decorate his apartment. [Grub Street NY, Napa Valley Register]
• The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine guy Jon Bonné takes a tour of less appreciated Bay Area vineyard regions with experienced and shrewd winemaker Tegan Passalacqua of Turley Vineyards. [Chron]
• Urban wineries are becoming more of a thing, and the Blue Lobster Urban Winery and Lounge, which will make and sell its own wine on-site using grapes sourced from California, is getting set to open in downtown Portland, Oregon. [Portland Press-Herald]
• This week, the Times’ Eric Asimov waxes poetic about the wines of the norther Rhône region of the Côte-Rôtie, which translates as “roasted slope.” [NYT]
