Grape sex, Snooth, icewine fraud, Aussie beer — sipped & spit
SPIT: repurposed content
Snooth.com, a site that ranks high in search results yet often offers frustratingly little hard information, has been scraping Cellartracker content, the Vintank blog suggests. The Snooth co-founder admits the content has “slipped through” their Ph.D. programmers since 2007 and apologizes. The Cellartracker founder comments on the post to say he has emails from 2008 contradicting several points in the apology post. As they say in the Twitterverse: oh, snap!
SPIT: sex
According to a new study, wine grapes lack genetic variation because of asexual reproduction, making them susceptible to pests and/or disease. This may raise use of pesticides or fungicides to unacceptable limits, which leaves growers three options: developing genetically resistant grape varieties, going organic, or cross-breeding grapes to have naturally sturdier varieties. [NYT]
SIPPED: cool wine
FedEx announces temperature controlled trucks to certain hubs, but the last stage of delivery will be in regular trucks. Is half a trip better than none? [winebusiness.com]
SPIT: frozen grapes
The head of the Canadian Vintners Association points the finger at China in recent icewine fraud. [Reuters]
SIPPED: bidding
The auction of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wine in Hong Kong grossed $5.6 million, surpassing estimates. Sotheby’s cited the consignor’s “proven reputation.” [AFP]
SPIT: suds
Australians are drinking less beer than any time in the past 61 years, according to government statistics. Don’t worry, they’re not on the wagon: wine is growing in popularity. Will “wine” ever be Australian for “drink”? [smh.com.au]
On January 25th, 2011 at 8:56 pm ,Tweets that mention Grape sex, Snooth, icewine fraud, Aussie beer — sipped & spit | Dr Vino's wine blog -- Topsy.com wrote:
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Susan Rice, Wine Club. Wine Club said: Grape sex, Snooth, icewine fraud, Aussie beer — sipped & spit: SPIT: repurposed content Snooth scrapes Cellartra… http://bit.ly/fsrAJN […]
On January 26th, 2011 at 11:40 am ,Lisa wrote:
The Snooth thing is interesting since I was just on the site the other day and realized that they have basically scraped all the information from my winery client’s websites – photos, content, etc. Seems sleazy to me.
On January 26th, 2011 at 3:44 pm ,Dan Ganshirt wrote:
WinetrippingTV offers some similar features as Snooth and we often have to change our direction, but it’s a little strange to not just tell it like it is. That said it’s good to be big enough that people care.
On January 26th, 2011 at 6:02 pm ,Lisa wrote:
Interesting article on Icewine fraud. I wasn’t aware of the issue. Thanks for posting this link!
Also, I found it INCREDIBLY interesting that Aussie’s beer consumption is on the slide. However, I’m sure the breweries have nothing to worry about.
On January 29th, 2011 at 9:39 am ,Dave Erickson wrote:
The article from the Times about grape sex is interesting. I would love to hear what Alice Feiring has to say about it.
On January 29th, 2011 at 10:49 am ,Dr. Vino wrote:
Dave, why Alice? Her “Battle for Wine and Love” was about people, not grapes. 😉
On March 1st, 2011 at 7:55 am ,Was Snooth crushed by Google’s new algorithm? | Dr Vino's wine blog wrote:
[…] in the organic search results yet providing so little useful information that they were found to be scraping cellartracker.com content since 2007 to populate some pages. For web ad sales, more page views can mean higher ad […]