• The Food Network decided they wanted to get into the wine business, so they got Anne Burrell onboard and teamed up with Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California, to launch Entwines, a new line of thirteen-dollar bottles. There will be four varietals, all “accessible to new drinkers.” Anne says, in general, “[Wine] doesn’t have to be scary and it doesn’t have to be expensive either.” [YumSugar]
• Kooky alleged con artist/fine-wine embezzler Mark Christian Anderson — who plead guilty to charges that he torched a wine collectors’ warehouse in 2005, destroying some 6 million bottles of wine worth over $200 million — was back in court this week trying to get his own guilty plea thrown out. On Tuesday, a federal judge “heaved exasperated sighs, rubbed his face and said he was ‘very much torn’” before scheduling a new hearing on the matter. [Grub Street, Chron]
• Rejected Bachelorette contestant Ben Flajnik, winemaker at Sonoma’s Evolve Winery, is moving on, and apparently wants to be mayor of San Francisco someday. [Press-Dem, Examiner]
• Fiji Water and its billionaire owner, Stewart Resnick, seem to want to become players in the vino business, and they’ve just made their second winery acquisition in a year, scooping up Landmark Vineyards in Sonoma. Earlier this year they bought Justin Winery in Paso Robles. [Wine Spectator, Chron]
• Robert Parker’s man in South America, Jay Miller, says “nothing can compete with Malbec” in the ten- to twenty-dollar price point. [WineSur]
• Despite believing it’s the “the vinous equivalent of trailer trash,” boxed wine is the subject of the week with Eric Asimov, FloFab, and the crew, who tasted twenty boxed wines that are striving for higher quality. Asimov declares, “The choices are far superior to what was available five years ago.” [NYT]
