Artisanal Cellars promotes wines that reflect individuality of region, winery, and production style (terroir based wines). We offer wines from small production family owned wineries that frequently use organic, biodynamic and/or sustainable viticultural methods. Everything we sell we would gladly serve at our own table.A giant liquor distributor defrauded four city bars over a period of years by charging for alcohol that the businesses never ordered or received, according to a lawsuit seeking more than $1.25 million in damages. The suit, filed Tuesday, alleges a salesman for Southern Wine and Spirits, with knowledge of management, repeatedly put through unrequested last-minute orders, known as "will calls," that the representative signed for under his own name or with forged signatures, sometimes misspelled, of representatives of The Barrel Saloon, The Capital Bistro, Public House 42 and Pearl Street Pub. The businesses, co-owned by Chris Pratt and Alessio Depoli, are all in Albany and opened between 2009 and 2014.

Filed on behalf of Pratt and Depoli by attorney James D. Linnan, the suit seeks $500,000 for Pearl Street Pub, the oldest of the four bars, $250,000 apiece for the other three, punitive damages to be determined, court costs and attorney fees.best wine bar in sf After a review of financial records and inventory, Pratt said the bars paid Southern more than $42,000 for wine and spirits they neither ordered nor received, most taken as part of automatic monthly withdrawals. best wine for creativityHe also found more than $100,000 charged through his accounts with Southern that wasn't paid by the bars, suggesting the Southern rep was padding sales figures by ordering on the bars' accounts, returning some products and likely selling the remainder elsewhere on the side, according to Linnan.where to buy wine glasses to paint

The practice came to light over the summer, when Pratt, alerted to a discrepancy, asked to review his will-call orders. While his records showed only 10 will-calls, he eventually turned up from Southern a stack of orders several inches thick dating back years, he said. best time to visit wine country in californiaSome were for products that his bars don't sell, such as high-end Scotch for the barbecue-focused Barrel Saloon, and others for quantities that would take many months to sell.best french wine vintage years Pratt, in an interview Tuesday at Linnan's Albany office, acknowledged he should have caught on sooner.best sweet wine for cooking "We weren't paying attention," he said. "But they're a (multibillion)-dollar company.

You don't think they're going to be scamming you." The suit names Southern Wine and Spirits of Upstate New York and Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits of Upstate New York, its name as of earlier this year following a merger. The New York company is a subsidiary of Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, a $16 billion-a-year conglomerate that is the country's largest distributor of wine and spirits, selling more than 150 million cases in 44 states plus, the District of Columbia, the Caribbean and Canada, according to reports in industry journals. Linnan said negotiations with Southern broke down when the company offered an unsatisfactory financial settlement and refused to acknowledge a systemic practice of padded bills and charges for products never ordered. Linnan, who previously owned a restaurant and has represented bars and restaurants in legal matters for decades, said conversations he and Pratt have had with other bar owners suggest the abuse is rampant. "It's not just me;

it's every bar owner in the state," Pratt said. Referring to Southern, he added, "They know it happens, and they haven't changed their policies, as far as we know." He said he switched his business to other distributors except for key brands including Tito's Vodka, Jameson Irish Whiskey and Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, which are demanded by customers by name and carried exclusively by Southern. Linnan said when he and Pratt brought their allegations to the State Liquor Authority, they were told the agency has been alerted in the past to similar behavior by Southern. "To my knowledge, the SLA is investigating this matter," he said. An agency spokesman didn't immediately reply to an inquiry seeking comment. Hank Greenberg, an Albany attorney representing Southern, said he had not seen the suit and declined comment.Bragging rights aside, the country’s metropolitan areas differ greatly in their consumption of wines. Often, we see consumption expressed as gallons per capita.

That measure doesn’t tell the whole story, though. The “gallons” in gallons per capita are usually “all wines”, which includes sparkling wines, dessert wines and specially-flavored natural wines in addition to the table wines we think about. Table wines are still (no spritz) wines of no more than 14% alcohol. You say you’ve been enjoying red table wines with more than 14% alcohol? Where are they classified? Well, as far as the federal government is concerned, those are dessert wines and are taxed at a higher rate than table wines. For wine marketers, however, those high alcohol wines are usually thought of as being table wines because they are displayed on the shelf alongside all of the other table wines and are sold the same as table wines. The ratios differ from city-to-city, but the typical relationship is: table wine accounts for 87-88% of all wines. In the northeast and Midwest states, Champagne is still part of many cultural traditions, so the table wines share would be lower than elsewhere.

The bar chart (Figure 1) shows the top 20 metropolitan areas of America in estimated volume of table winesconsumed during 2011. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside and New York-northern New Jersey-Long Island are in a class by themselves. The term “metropolitan area” generally is defined as Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs) by the Census Bureau. CSAs are combined MSAs where more than one MSA make up a seamless urban area. For example, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside CSA combines Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana MSA and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA in California. In defining these areas’ analyses, the way in which distributors organize their distribution was taken into account. The challenge in conducting estimates for metropolitan areas is found in the way wine consumption statistics are compiled by government. ATTTB compiles them by state, because that is the way the tax collection apparatus works. Therefore, the analyst must construct the metropolitan area share of consumption for all or parts of one or more states.

A special analytical exercise has to be performed for the Washington, DC-Arlington-Alexandria MSA. That’s because three states are involved for Washington, DC; Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia; Bethesda, Maryland and the District of Columbia itself. The next 10 metro areas (21-30), in descending order (from 7.52 to 5.49 million gallons), are: Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford; West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton; and Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford. Wineries should look to these leaders in table wine volume because, as a star sales manager once told me: “if you want to catch a fish, it makes sense to fish where the fish are!” However, a more important statistic may be the metro area’s growth rate in table wine consumption. The reason is this: it is only in the rapidly-growing metro areas that wine distributors are taking on the representation of more wineries. In metro areas where the demand for table wines has stagnated, or is decreasing, a distributor has to jettison a winery from its portfolio in order to take on a new one.

And, this happens in an environment where wineries already represented are asserting pressure on the distributor to increase their sales volume. The picture wouldn’t be complete without a ranking of the large metro areas by growth of gallons of table wine consumption. Figure 2 and Table 2 present the fastest-growing metro areas in terms of increased gallons of table wine during 2005-2011.Metropolitan Areas with decreasing consumption[/box] Within the metro areas with the largest table wine consumption are six that experienced reduced table wine consumption between 2005 and 2012. They are shown in Table 3. Hurricane Katrina took an enormous toll on New Orleans and Birmingham. Recession-reduced tourism is no doubt the reason for the losses in Las Vegas (casinos), Providence (Newport and the rest of the coast) and Virginia Beach. The performances of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are puzzling. Has the state’s liquor monopoly chased its wine consumers to go out of state in search of lower prices or better selection?