The Cupcake Skinny
Will the confectionary craze last?
If there’s anyone more excited than a kid in a candy shop, it’s a middle-aged woman in a cupcake shop. The national cupcake craze also has hit all regions and demographics, according to those in the bakery industry.
Girl Crush
Female winemakers gain market share
When Gay Callan left her Bay Area sales job to grow grapes in the Sierra foothills in the early 1980s, people told her that she — a city slicker and a woman to boot — was crazy.
Intoxicating Career
Entrepreneurs craft beverages at home
Michael Frenn was a committed Coors Light drinker. For him, it was as American as baseball and apple pie.
Aging Gracefully
An oak by any other name is not just another barrell
Just as winemakers won’t put just any old juice in a barrel, they won’t use any old barrel either. For one wine, it’s French oak. For another, American. For yet another, Hungarian. In some cases the wine goes into a steel tank and never touches oak of any kind.
Working Lunch with Christopher Artinian
It was the end of 2008 when the economic dominoes began to fall: Lehman Brothers was upside-down, housing crashed, the stock market swooned, banks faltered and the domestic car industry all but went belly up. It wasn’t the best of times to be a high-end American steakhouse.
Big Red
Industry experts weigh in on high-alcohol vino
Bold wines are big sellers these days, and to meet consumer demand, winemakers across California are pushing their wines to the max by replacing white varietal vineyards with reds and allowing fruit to stay on the vine a little longer.
Good Eats
Restaurants get creative to pad the bottom line
Mikuni Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar felt the recession in April 2008 when catering sales began to slide. When the financial pinch hit the chain’s eight restaurants in the second and third quarters of 2009, its management team refocused marketing efforts.
Chain Reaction
Auxillary industries weather the wine storm
Northern California manufacturers and distributors of everything from barrels to bottles to pesticides for the region’s wine industry are using the same juxtaposition to sum up the wine market: “up and down.”