The secrets of wine importing

By Tracy Byrnes

Wine with Me

Published March 18, 2013

FoxNews.com

• 

Imagine being a small winery that dreams of getting its wine everywhere. You just don’t have the budget to do that.

Well, maybe you need an importer. Take Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits.  It imports household names like Yellow Tail and
Georges Duboeuf.

Tom Steffanci, president at Deutsch, the fifth largest wine and spirits company in the U.S., explained how it works. Basically, his company goes out, finds great wines from vineyards that need help moving those wines and forms partnerships.

One of their most recent alliances was with Josh Cellars, a small California cab with a great story.   Josh Cellars was started by Joseph Carr --whose father was also named Joseph, but his close friends just called him Josh.  The story goes that at the end of Joseph Sr.'s workday he and his friends would tinker around in the garage working on old cars.  When Joseph Jr. was creating his now high-demand cab, he thought of this story when choosing the name Josh Cellars, because he too sat around in the "garage" --or in his case the wine cellar--after he and his friends were done producing their Napa Valley wines.

That's just one story that makes up Deutsch's own portfolio of wines.  Steffanci realizes though that while the big cab customer is still out there, there are more young people drinking wine who are looking for something sweeter.

So Deutsch has worked with Yellow Tail to create more sweet wines like Sweet Red Roo, Sweet White Roo and a Moscato.

So your importer can help point you in the right direction too.  Then it’s up to your importer to get your wine to out to distributors so it ends up on wine shelves across the country.

Because isn’t that the goal? To get your labor of love into wine glasses everywhere?

Cent’ Anni.

Tracy Byrnes

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Audit to probe reports of leaked military secrets from NASA facilities

• 

  Shown here is an aerial shot of the Ames Research Center.NASA.gov

• 

  The cover page of a report, obtained by FoxNews.com and purportedly presented to the FBI, alleging that confidential Defense Department missile secrets were leaked to foreign countries.FoxNews.com

Next Slide Previous Slide

The NASA office of the inspector general will audit NASA’s Ames research facility in the wake of a FoxNews.com report on violations of International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) laws at a storied California space-research facility.

Documents obtained by FoxNews.com last month detail a four-year FBI investigation into the transfer of classified weapons technology -- including rocket engine tech for missile defense systems -- to China and other countries from NASA’s Ames Research Center. The documents also purport that an investigation into the security lapses that led to the event are being stonewalled.

'The OIG is opening a new audit that will more broadly examine NASA’s controls over access by foreign nationals to its facilities.'

- NASA inspector general Paul Martin

On March 14, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin wrote to Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Chaka Fattah, D-Pa, to announce that he planned to open a broad investigation into these and other allegations, which Wolf has been urging NASA and the FBI to do.

“I wanted to inform you that the OIG is opening a new audit that will more broadly examine NASA’s controls over access by foreign nationals to its facilities,” he wrote.

Last week, Wolf described a similar incident at Kennedy Space Center in Florida involving visits by Chinese officials, a charge NASA denied.

The news of the Inspector General's probe came a day after Martin testified before a congressional panel on the fiscal challenges NASA is facing, in part due to the sequester.

“Because NASA received less than half its requested budget for commercial crew development last year, the Agency extended to 2017 the earliest it expects to obtain commercial crew transportation services to the [International Space Station] – a date uncomfortably close to the Station’s currently scheduled 2020 retirement,” Martin wrote on the OIG site.

“Against this bleak budgetary backdrop, Agency managers continue to face significant challenges managing NASA’s diverse portfolio of science, exploration, and aeronautics projects.”

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Ames Research Center has been a center of high tech innovation for more than 60 years. As the space agency’s mission has changed over the years since it was built, NASA has turned it into a commercial research facility, leasing out space to a number of companies including rocket firm SpaceX and tech giant Google, which leases 42 acres there through a holding company called Planetary Ventures.

The accusations a Ames stem from a reported ITAR violation, a ruling that governs the export of defense weaponry. In 2006, Ames adapted specialized rocket engines -- originally developed for the Pentagon missile defense “Kinetic Kill Vehicle” program -- for a moon lander prototype that ultimately became NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). The robotic moon orbiter is set to launch on Aug. 12, 2013.

Information on guidance and terrain-mapping systems from the Tomahawk cruise missile and a radar from the F-35 were also shared, according to one report in Aviation Week.

"When I mentioned the tech that was compromised to the Armed Services Committee, their jaws just dropped," a congressional source told FoxNews.com.

Related Interactive

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Letter to FBI over defense tech leaks from Ames

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View the original article here

Audit to probe reports of leaked military secrets from NASA facilities

• 

  Shown here is an aerial shot of the Ames Research Center.NASA.gov

• 

  The cover page of a report, obtained by FoxNews.com and purportedly presented to the FBI, alleging that confidential Defense Department missile secrets were leaked to foreign countries.FoxNews.com

Next Slide Previous Slide

The NASA office of the inspector general will audit NASA’s Ames research facility in the wake of a FoxNews.com report on violations of International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) laws at a storied California space-research facility.

Documents obtained by FoxNews.com last month detail a four-year FBI investigation into the transfer of classified weapons technology -- including rocket engine tech for missile defense systems -- to China and other countries from NASA’s Ames Research Center. The documents also purport that an investigation into the security lapses that led to the event are being stonewalled.

'The OIG is opening a new audit that will more broadly examine NASA’s controls over access by foreign nationals to its facilities.'

- NASA inspector general Paul Martin

On March 14, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin wrote to Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Chaka Fattah, D-Pa, to announce that he planned to open a broad investigation into these and other allegations, which Wolf has been urging NASA and the FBI to do.

“I wanted to inform you that the OIG is opening a new audit that will more broadly examine NASA’s controls over access by foreign nationals to its facilities,” he wrote.

Last week, Wolf described a similar incident at Kennedy Space Center in Florida involving visits by Chinese officials, a charge NASA denied.

The news of the Inspector General's probe came a day after Martin testified before a congressional panel on the fiscal challenges NASA is facing, in part due to the sequester.

“Because NASA received less than half its requested budget for commercial crew development last year, the Agency extended to 2017 the earliest it expects to obtain commercial crew transportation services to the [International Space Station] – a date uncomfortably close to the Station’s currently scheduled 2020 retirement,” Martin wrote on the OIG site.

“Against this bleak budgetary backdrop, Agency managers continue to face significant challenges managing NASA’s diverse portfolio of science, exploration, and aeronautics projects.”

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Ames Research Center has been a center of high tech innovation for more than 60 years. As the space agency’s mission has changed over the years since it was built, NASA has turned it into a commercial research facility, leasing out space to a number of companies including rocket firm SpaceX and tech giant Google, which leases 42 acres there through a holding company called Planetary Ventures.

The accusations a Ames stem from a reported ITAR violation, a ruling that governs the export of defense weaponry. In 2006, Ames adapted specialized rocket engines -- originally developed for the Pentagon missile defense “Kinetic Kill Vehicle” program -- for a moon lander prototype that ultimately became NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). The robotic moon orbiter is set to launch on Aug. 12, 2013.

Information on guidance and terrain-mapping systems from the Tomahawk cruise missile and a radar from the F-35 were also shared, according to one report in Aviation Week.

"When I mentioned the tech that was compromised to the Armed Services Committee, their jaws just dropped," a congressional source told FoxNews.com.

Related Interactive

Letter to Justice Dept. over defense tech leaks from Ames

Letter to FBI over defense tech leaks from Ames

Related Stories

Curiosity rover first robot to ever drill into Mars

NYPD and Microsoft build high tech crime fighting 'dashboard'

Historic NASA facilities going to waste

U-2 spy plane pilots get Key lime pie, hash browns and more

View the original article here