Beer, Wine & Spirits
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Restaurant owners are worried that a tough new drunk driving law, which would make it illegal to drive with at blood-alcohol content level above 0.05, may hurt their business.
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The response to the Ann Coulter blog streams in! From Roald M: "Miss Wells states very well what christians believe. Ann Coulter, as is her style, put christian beliefs in a way that meant to bring on discussion or comment, but believe me, was not mean spirited..
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This is a challenging blog to write. It’s very personal. The funny thing about being a Christian in this country is that, while Christianity is the dominant religion, I find it difficult to say, “I am a Christian.” I feel some people jump to conclusions, few of them flattering.
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From the Funny Business email bag, a treasure trove of frivolity! Countrywide wristband for auction on eBay. Letter of commitment to company could be thrown in for free! Reader Ed L. directed me to this listing...
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You like wine? I do. That's one reason an estimated $30 billion in wine was sold in this country last year. You think wine is made out of fermented grapes? Well...mostly. Here's what most winemakers don't want you to know: they put other stuff in wine, and they use a lot of non-grape materials in processing it.
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It's funny what a little time off will do. Just back from vacation and figuratively pushing my psyche through the sieve of relaxation, it dawns on me slowly. Creativity takes guts. Some people have them, other people don't. This epiphany came from two disparate sources: football and the "new" TV season. I didn't see much of either on my seven day "hiatus" (we'll be revisiting that word in a second), but I saw enough -- enough to know that we, the consuming public, are getting cheated on both fronts.
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This is why CNBC makes money. We ask readers and viewers to come up with branding slogans...for free! I've asked you to help me develop a name for my weekly farm reports, and the response has been fantastic.
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What do Vince Neil of Motley Crue, the Governor of Nevada, O.J. Simpson and I all have in common? We were all in Las Vegas this week and three of us talked to each other. (Sorry Juice but you had split by the time I thought of it.) So what did Vince, the Governor and I talk about? Business.
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So how far are you willing to go to make your spouse happy? Would you drive for 7 days over 2,400 miles toting a 75 year old New York City diner? Vince Pierce did, along with his father-in-law. Vince is a long haul trucker and his wife is a human dynamo named Cheryl.
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Silicon Valley is certainly not short on big money and big personalities. But every now and then, I get the opportunity to go to that other newsmaking valley north of here, Napa Valley, to hook up with other names in the headlines. And this is a story that has all the makings of a blockbuster.
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We have been sweltering out here in the West, which leads me to my two favorite hot business pitches: First... they're trying to get people to come up to the Canadian Rockies to celebrate the centennial of Jasper National Park. The pitch: come to the newly-refurbished Miette Hot Springs! Uh, ok. I did a little research.
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French wine and spirit makers appear to be clawing their way back into the global market after years of watching foreign taste buds respond to innovative New World wines.
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You can almost hear it through the fog if you listen very closely. The spinning blades of a wind turbine being turned by the winds of change. "This project particularly represents a paradigm shift for American business." So says Kevin Schulte, a Vice President and "wunderkind" of Sustainable Energy Developments. The turbine we're looking at was made by GE, the plan to install it and make it work belong to Schulte, but the "paradigm shifter" is someone else. His name is Brian Fairbank.
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Here's the second of two part of my post on wine maker Fred Franzia: If Franzia isn't quite a pariah in Napa Valley, he's close. He prefers "maverick," known for his straight-talking complaints about what he calls a snooty wine business, indignant over the high cost of wine for no real reason other than greed, and an approach to the American consumer that severely restricts the industry's overall growth.
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Sure, I'm the Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, but every now and then I get to cover stories from that other newsmaking valley just north of here: Napa Valley. We're working up a story on Fred Franzia and when it comes to the wine business, he's probably not a name you easily recognize. There's Mondavi; the Gallos; and yes, Fred Franzia. He's either revered, or reviled, depending upon whom you talk to in the wine world.
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So Star Jones finally admits she had gastric bypass surgery. Really? People, it's like denying you had a facelift, collagen, or breast augmentation. WE KNOW. 177,000 people had gastric bypass last year, nearly double from 2003, making it one of the fastest growing plastic surgery procedures. So is PhotoShop. Check out Kelly Osbourne--I'll have what she's having.
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It's not a word I think of often or use much: impresario. But it is the word that came to mind about 1 minute into my conversation with Bob Sillerman. Sillerman is the CEO and Chairman of CKX, the NASDAQ-traded--for now--company that owns "American Idol." Next time you watch it, even if you say you don't, hang around to the very end. You'll see the little logo 'CKX'. Of course you also saw it, if you were able to make it to the end, on the Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) 'special' on NBC recently.
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It’s lunch time. The food has been prepared by the Executive Chef (that’s what you call him by the way, ‘Chef’). The horizonless pool is gurgling. The sun is shining and now it’s time for the boat ride around the lagoon. This is a business trip gang. A business trip for Exclusive Resorts. Exclusive Resorts is a division of Steve Case’s Washington DC based Revolution.
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Investors may want to raise their glasses to beer stocks on July 4th, because the holiday can generate about 5% of annual beer sales.
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Constellation Brands Thursday posted a quarterly profit far above Wall Street estimates, as its efforts to cut the amount of wine it ships to U.S. distributors did not hurt sales as much as expected.
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No one embodies The American Dream like John Paul Dejoria. A first generation American who hit rock bottom early in his life, he eventually turned around and started not just one, but two multi-billion dollar businesses, each making him $1 billion each! At one time, he was homeless, living in a car and collecting three dollars a day from returning empty bottles. At other times in his life, he was a janitor, an encyclopedia salesman and even repaired bicycles!