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As California wineries began to crush wine grapes in fall 2009, many growers worried about finding a home for their grapes. Many sell wine under long-term contracts, and some of those who do not are receiving much lower prices for their 2009 grapes. For example, the average price of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon was $4,700 a ton in 2008, but dropped in some cases to $2,000 a ton in 2009.

The US had 6,100 wineries in 2008, including 1,000 virtual wineries, meaning that the winery used another winery's bonded status to make wine but had its own label. Of the 5,100 bonded wineries, there were 2,200 in California, 500 in Washington, and 300 in Oregon.

The leading US wineries in 2008 and their US case sales were Gallo, 67 million cases; Wine Group, 56 million cases; Constellation Brands, 46 million cases; Bronco, 20 million cases; Foster's Wine Estates, 18 million cases; and Trinchero Family Estates, 12 million cases. Giumaurra Vineyards and Vie Del produce bulk wine and grape concentrate sweetener but do not have their own wine labels.

Gallo celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding in 2008; Gallo has 5,000 employees and sells 60 brands of wine. The privately held Livermore-based Wine Group is the leading seller of wine in boxes (22 million cases of Franzia), while Constellation Brands is the world's largest wine seller? it sold 46 million cases of wine in the US and 50 million cases in other countries in 2008. Bronco, maker of Two-buck Chuck, sold 20 million cases, and was followed by Australia-based Foster's, which sold 18 million cases of wine in the US and 20 million cases in other countries. Trinchero is the largest family-owned winery based in Napa.

In 2008, 22 percent of the wine sold in the US was Chardonnay, followed by 14 percent Cabernet, and 11 percent Merlot.

A study of 2,500 wines that were entered in at least three competitions found that almost half won a gold medal in at least one competition. However, these gold medal winners were regarded as average or below average in the other competitions, suggesting little consistency in judging. Roger Hodgson in "An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions" concluded that, if the wineries are sending consistent wines to the contests, judges must be inconsistent, a conclusion similar to that reached in his review of the California State Fair Wine Competition, which found that judges often rated the same wine differently when they tasted it twice in blind tastings.

Bronco Winery of Two-Buck Chuck fame introduced a low-cost Australian Chardonnay, Down Under, for $2.99 a bottle. Australia has too much wine, and Bronco says that it may introduce similarly priced Australian red wines if it can cheaply buy surplus bulk wine. Casella Wines, maker of the $6-a-bottle Yellow Tail, sued Bronco, alleging that its label confused consumers into thinking that Down Under is Yellow Tail.

Over 600 California wineries entered wines in the 2009 State Fair competition. The overall winter was South Coast Winery of Temecula, which won 39 awards, including five gold medals, and was named the Golden State Winery of the Year for the second consecutive year.

A new book by Jerome Tuccille, Gallo be Thy Name, on the Gallo family contends that Gallo has its roots in crime and ties to the Mafia.

Santa Barbara county's Santa Ynez Valley was featured in the Oscar-winning film Sideways in 2004, and especially pinot noir wine continues to reap the benefits of the movie in 2009. There are about 5,000 acres of vineyards and 75 wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley, and a survey found that almost a fifth of the 8.4 million visitors to Santa Barbara county in 2008 came for the wine.

El Cerrito-based WineQuest develops "progressive wine lists" for restaurants such as Olive Garden, the largest restaurant seller of wine, that a organizes wines from lightest to heaviest. For example, the sweet white category would include Riesling, the light category Sauvignon Blanc, and the medium category Chardonnay. The WineQuest "budometer" uses responses to a series of questions about a drinker's preferences in coffee, beer, cocktails and soft drinks to predict what wines they are likely to prefer.

More wineries are testing one-liter plastic bottles. Bay-area plastics maker EnVino makes bottles with a special layer designed to keep oxygen from permeating the container and altering the taste of the wine. However, plastic is not as air-tight as glass, so wine in plastic bottles has a use-by date. Plastic bottles cost $5 a case, while glass bottles cost $5 to $7 a case. With consumers accepting screw-top bottles and wine in boxes, plastic bottles may spread as their cost of production drops.

France. Champagne sales, which rose between 2000 and 2007 to a peak 340 million bottles, fell to 320 million in 2008 and a projected 260 million in 2009. There are an estimated 1.2 billion bottles of champagne in storage, a four-year supply. LVMH, which owns Veuve Clicquot and other brands, accounts for almost 20 percent of French champagne production.

A trade group, the CIVC, determines how many grapes per hectare the champagne houses must buy from growers. In 2008, it set the level at 14,000 kg per hectare. In 2009, the requirement is 9,700 kg per hectare; because of the surplus, not all of the grapes picked will be turned into champagne immediately. In 2010, when the independent growers who produce almost all champagne grapes sign new five-year contracts, cash-strapped growers are expected to agree to reduced prices for their grapes.

French wine grape growers usually pay harvesters piece rate wages of about E0.22 cents ($0.31) a kilo to harvest grapes? the equivalent of $280 a ton. There were 2.5 million unemployed workers in France in June 2009, and the French government allowed those receiving UI benefits to harvest grapes without having their UI benefits reduced.

French wine consultant Michel Rolland, who owns or has an interest in 11 wineries, was criticized in the 2004 documentary Mondovino for helping wineries to homogenize the world's wine. By allowing grapes to remain on the vine longer, sugar levels rise, increasing the level of alcohol in wines and producing softer tannins and an absence of herbal flavors that were once commonplace in Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines.

American wine critic Robert Parker favors wines produced by Rolland-advised wineries, which are usually drunk within a few years of bottling; Parker samples 10,000 wines a year and publishes the results in the Wine Advocate. British wine critics who prefer wines aged a decade or more often condemn Rolland-influenced wines, alleging that they substitute homogeneity for terroir.

Edible History. In "An Edible History of Humanity," Tom Standage divides food's role as a catalyst for human transformation into six sections. First is food's role in encouraging settlement as animals and crops were domesticated. Second is the role of food and settlement in developing culture and social hierarchy, as farmers paid taxes in food that fed religious and government workers. Third is food trade, with exploration stimulated by the rise of Islam creating a "curtain" between Europeans and the Asian spices they craved; eventually, this trade led to the discovery of the Americas and colonialism.

Fourth was the role of increased food production to sustain workers during the Industrial Revolution, and fifth is food logistics in war that emphasizes "armies march on their stomachs." The sixth section considers the interrelationships between food, population and development.

Standage's 2006 book, "A History Of The World In Six Glasses," examines history through six beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. Beer became a reason to switch from hunter to farming grain, wine bolstered civilization in Greece and Rome, spirits played important roles in sugar production, the slave trade and the Civil War, tea led to colonization, coffee houses in 19th century Europe were the internet of their age, and Coca Cola became a symbol of American culture around the world.

Hodgson, Robert. 2009. An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions. Journal of Wine Economics. Vol 4. No 1. Pp1-9. Standage, Tom. 2009. An Edible History of Humanity. Walker & Company. Tuccille, Jerome. 2009. Gallo be Thy Name. Phoenix Books.