Giuseppe Quintarelli, “master of the Veneto,” has died at 84. [NYTimes.com]

Registration is now open for the next session of my six-week wine class at NYU. [scps.NYU.edu]

And next Monday, I’ll be participating in a panel at The New School with Frank Prial, Julia Flynn Siler, Charles Sciccolone and Andy Smith. We’ll be discussing the life and legacy of Robert Mondavi.

SPIT: Burgundy 2010 allocations are harder than ever to get, per above video!

CHUGGED: USA remains the largest wine-consuming country for the second year in a row. China rose to the top five for the first time. [thedrinksbusiness]

SIPPED: Americans rejoice as they will soon be able to purchase NJ wines directly! Or that’s how they spun the bill’s passage to liberalize the state’s shipping laws. [NJToday.com]

SPIT: Chinese “8″ no longer lucky for Lafite — 08 vintage has tumbled 45% in a year. [decanter]

SIPPED: Collateralized drink obligations. A little leverage with your wine? A NY lender offers loans with wine as collateral: borro.com

SIPPED: Mmm, maps. Parcel-by-parcel in Montrachet.

SIPPED: I offer some wine picks at Men’s Health. You’ll have to get the ab workout advice from them though…

SPIT: Vinturi aerator
A panel of sommeliers blind tastes wines that have been put through the Vinturi aerator. They admit that it transforms the wine but give three out of four the thumbs down. [bonappetit.com]

SIPPED: bubbly
The NYT tasting panel has some good picks for all your blanc de blancs needs.

SIPPED: malbec, DrBigJ & Stone Temple Pilots?
A new wine shop in Prospect Heights suggests music pairings on their shelf talkers (too bad they also borrow heavily from at least one DrBigJ tasting note without attribution and slap on point scores, instead of pursuing the point-free path). [Village Voice]

SIPPED: carry on
A traveler at Charles De Gaulle airport dropped $60,000 on six bottles of wine. Come on, didn’t he know that there are better values in town? [Metro.co.uk]

SIPPED: investigations
Robert Parker has launched an “investigation” into only what transpired in Murcia. And the Institute of Masters of Wine has initiated an investigation into whether Pancho Campo MW has violated their code of conduct. [DrinksBusiness.com]

Wine jobs: Director of Hospitality, retail store general manager, new store sales associate, magazine intern and more!

SIPPED: imitation as flattery?
From the coffee threatdown files: Starbucks will extend its wine bar concept with up to seven locations in Chicago. Make it a venti vino? [SeattleTimes]

SPIT: stinky reporting
A microbial enologist laments the lack of rigor in Decanter and Wine Spectator’s recent reporting of sequencing the genome of Brettanomyces, a cause of feral, animale aromas often considered a flaw. She says that while sequencing is an accomplishment and helpful, but “by no means guarantees a solution to winery brett problems.” [wineoscope]

ANNOUNCED: sequences
Speaking of sequencing, David Schildknecht hit the airwaves to say that Parker told him almost a year ago that Miller was retiring at the end of 2011. [Jim's Loire]

GAWKERIZED: Recent personnel changes at Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate make Gawker, in typically colorful style.

SIPPED: tragedy
A blogger views the events transpiring in Spain through the lens of Aristotelean tragedy. But how does it end? [koskeloonwine]

SIPPED and SPIT: Yao Ming wine
Yao Ming, former NBA player and current wine enthusiast living in Shanghai, has released a Napa cabernet that will sell for $289 a bottle in China (including duties and sales tax). Blake Gray points out that the wine is not from a specific vineyard; Cameron Hughes elaborates in the comments that he bought similar wine for $5 – $25 a gallon on the bulk market. (There are about five wine bottles to the gallon.) A higher-priced wine, Yao Family Reserve, is expected soon. [WSJ, Gray Report]

SIPPED: BYOB?
Over on Chowhound, a commenter wonders if it is okay to bring wine, specifically Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades,” to MASA where the corkage fee is $90. Over on Facebook, Lyle Fass quips that the bling bottle merits that “They should charge your ass double!!” It’s an interesting idea to have restaurants vary corkage fees depending on whether they like a diner’s wine–how much for Chateauneuf du Pape at Masa? Or Yao Ming cab?

Oh my cot!
Things you learn in the WSJ: Cahors is the only region of France where malbec is still grown. Actually, Cahors only grows two-thirds of French malbec per ONIVINS.

SIPPED: diversity
Über-somm David Lynch will open a wine restaurant in SF where all sub-$100 wines will be available as 375ml for half price. Kind of makes you want to try two different halves, no? [SFGate]

SIPPED: Beaujolais
Beaujolais from 2009 and 2010 get thumbs up in a thoughtful LA Times article. “Beaujolais is a party,” says a natural winemaker who still seeks to capture the fun of the wine.

SIPPED: wine jobs
Senior account executive (PR), California Direct Sales Manager for an import portfolio, assistant cellarmaster internship at BALTHAZAR, executive assistant to the CEO at Acker Merrall, and more!

SIPPED: traveling with wine
HOW TO: Bring wine on board a plane
HOW TO: successfully check wine on a plane

SIPPED: Valencia
Proava.org reported last month that Jay Miller would lead a “master class” of Valencia wines in the region this month. An email to Miller last week requesting comment did not garner a reply. It appears that his visit to neighboring Murcia has been canceled or postponed.

SIPPED: Burgundy in Hong Kong
Interest in Bordeaux softens while “Burgundy’s on fire and sizzling.” [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: summer fun
A fun slide show (from July): A Wine Tour of Collio, by Vespa [NYT]

SPIT: copy editing
The cover of a recent Wine Spectator misspelled Christian Moueix, “Bordeaux’s quiet leader” and a winner of the magazine’s Distinguished Service Award.

SPIT: opening a bottle with a shoe
A reader tries to open a wine bottle with a shoe at a party and gets a trip to the hospital and six stitches for the effort. [comment]

SIPPED: rules
A 92-year-old woman in Britain was not allowed to buy a bottle of whiskey since she didn’t have ID, only a pacemaker certificate. [Daily Mail]

SIPPED: restaurant advice
Start at the back of a wine list? Levi Dalton offers some excellent and provocative suggestions on how to navigate a wine list based on his covering for my class last week when I was snowed under (literally). [SoYouWantToBeASommelier]

WANTED: 1870 Lafite
A restauranteur friend of the Pentagon chief will uncork an 1870 Lafite Rothschild for him on New Year’s Eve as a result of the successful Bin Laden missin. [CNN]

SIPPED: Malbec for Porsches
Isn’t that the trade that Adam Smith wrote about? It’s happening now in Argentina. [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: liberalization
The California Alcohol and Beverage Control has issued new regulations on “third-party” marketing and advertising of wine. It was previously a gray area but the reform clarifies and liberalizes. One commentator in this Wines & Vines story suggests that even Amazon, the retail giant that previously called off a foray into the wine biz, might be attracted back to the space now.

And from the annals of wine shop emails, guess which region is under discussion here? “…his intimate knowledge of each butt’s character was incredibly impressive…”

SIPPED: watching grapes grow
Viticulture & Enology is one of the sexiest majors at Cornell. Well, with the helicopter blow driers, why not? (Oh and what type of positioning is happening in their vineyard?!) [CornellSun.com]

SIPPED: buying binge
Chinese investors are no longer satisfied with mere wine: now they are buying wineries in Australia and Bordeaux. [Bloomberg, BBC]

SIPPED: wine in food
Short ribs feature at Men’s Health — with a delicious braising wine (and drinking) from Dr. Vino. But will it give you six-pack abs?

SIPPED: more wines at better prices?
The Pennsylvania governor released a report on privatizing the state’s liquor stores. [businessweek]

SIPPED: Yeoman wine
James Conaway, who wrote Napa a couple of decades ago, now turns his eyes and palate to Virginia and its wines on the pages of Garden & Gun (really, who doesn’t get their wine news there?).

SPIT: brainwashing
As we did here recently, Matt Kramer also expresses distaste with the idea of “brainwashing” among wine consumers [WineSpecatator.com]

SPIT: left on the block
Sign o’ the times? Lafite fails to sell at auction in Hong Kong. “There weren’t so many buyers.” [Bloomberg, WSJ]

SPIT: AOC
So what if Anjou producer Olivier Cousin wrote “Anjou Olivier Cousin” on his box? Well, the authorities that preserve origins already have a monopoly on those initials so his wrist has been slapped the spanking paddle has been broken out with large fines threatened. [levindesamis]

SIPPED: Bacchanal and bananas
The Montmartre Harvest Festival is underway in Paris, celebrating the one remaining vineyard there, complete with kids’ programming, a parade for Bacchus and a tribute to France’s overseas holdings (not sure of the wine angle there…).

SPIT: brown bags
Wine picnics in Paris: what NYC could emulate if it weren’t for open container laws…enjoy a last gasp of summer this weekend! [Enjoy the photo above and more at WineTerroirs]

SPIT: Puritanism
Professor Lena Brattsten has offered a wine appreciation course to Rutgers undergrads for twenty years. And for twenty years, it has had an outlandishly long wait list. Remind me: Why aren’t there more undergraduate wine classes? [Rutgers.edu]

SIPPED: Manhattan harvest
A blogger joins what is perhaps Manhattan’s only grape harvest, 350 pounds from a single labrusca vine on the UES dubbed Chateau Latif. [Treehugger]

SIPPED: a Riesling rap
“My Riesling’s so tasty/I drink it so hasty/because it plays well with sausages in their casings.” [youtube]

SIPPED: remembrances
A touching piece that balances the pleasure of learning about wine with the horror of 9/11. [esquire]

SIPPED: quality
The Muscadet region, known for quantity over quality, now boasts three sites officially recognized as superior, as crus, including Clisson. So glad the authorities are catching up! [larvf.fr]

SNAPPED: fun pics of the 2011 harvest in the Loire (one of which is above). [Wine Terroirs]

HAMMERED: $500k of Lafite
A vertical of 25 solid cases of Lafite from 1981-2005 sold for $539,280 to an “anonymous Chinese phone bidder” at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong. Great way to dump those ’91s! [WSJ]

SIPPED: going postal: The budgetary crisis at the US Postal Service puts wine shipping on the table. [NYT]

SPIT: frauds
Mike Steinberger summarizes the recent reactions–and adds his own–to Parker’s recent report on tasting fraudulent wines. [winediarist]

SIPPED: edumacation
My next NYU wine course runs Oct 12 – Nov 16. Registration and details.

SIPPED: horreur!
Lafite actually declined eight percent since April. [Liv-Ex]

SIPPED: getting pissy
Gerard Depardieu, vineyard owner, makes air travel fun for everyone. [NYPost]

SPIT: breathalyzer
An iPhone app tells you if you’re buzzed. But you don’t breathe into; rather, it’s a sobriety test of data entry. Would Gerard have passed the test?

SPIT: beer
Wine in Thailand: It’s not just for old, rich folks anymore, apparently. [BK]

SPIT and left for dead: bad web design
A Slate columnist examines the incredible suckiness of restaurant websites. Winery web developers, take a look!

SIPPED: robots again
Robots, last seen in our 2006 threat-down, are again meancing the sommelier class with their e-tongues! The new challenge comes from Catalonia but fortunately a somm bats it down at the bottom of the story. The world of dining remains safe for humans! But will the e-tongues threaten critics next, dunking into wine and spitting out points? [CNN]

SPIT: 2010 Bordeaux futures
Simon Staples of BBR in London says that total Bordeaux 2010 futures declined by 50% from the previous year, citing high prices and small releases from the chateaus. Only five percent of sales went to Asia. But auctions are still growing at a 46% clip in the first half. [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: winery stores
A new law in NY will allow wineries to open up to five sales rooms throughout the state. That’s all well and good, but why should wine stores owners still be limited to only one store in the state?

CRASHED: shipping container
A forklift lifted 462 cases of wine 20 feet in the air! No, this isn’t the Guinness World Record for machinery; instead, the load fell to the ground destroying the Australian shiraz therein. Although the vintner, Sparky Marquis, is crying over spilled wine, he was also insured. [NYT]

SPIT: infomercials
RJonwine has a detailed account of this past weekend’s conference of wine bloggers in Charlottesville, VA. He decried the preponderance of “paid-sponsor presentations” on the program. Another blogger who is disenchanted with blogging finds the whole event salvaged by hanging out in the wee hours with fellow wine enthusiasts.

MULLED: deposits
Massachusetts may expand its bottle deposit program to include more beverages. If they were really serious about encouraging recycling, they’d raise the rate too.

SIPPED: me on the teevee
Well, sort of. Thirteen.org has a new magazine called MetroFocus, which has an article on NY wines. Spot the Dr, Vino quotage, more or less accurate!

SIPPED: informative infographics
A very cool map of world trade in wine from Rabobank. Just wish it were higher res!