Wine Industry

Just 10 years ago, Washington's wine industry was the darling of agriculture, a growing niche industry with a loyal fan base for its 160 wineries. Today, Washington still can't touch California when it comes to wine production -- and wine grapes are no match for apples as Washington's top crop. But, as of last month, Washington has licensed 602 wineries, marking a nearly 300% increase in just a decade. "It's great news," said Robin Pollard, executive director of the Washington Wine Commission.

Are you a "people person"? How about an "excellent communicator"? Do resume-wrecking cliches like those make your thumbs twitter with excitement? If so, you may be just what California's Murphy-Goode Winery is looking for. In a sign of the cyber-crazed times, the Sonoma County winery is on a nationwide hunt for someone to fill its "Really Goode Job." The successful applicant will earn $10,000 a month to tweet and use other social media skills to generate buzz about its reds and whites.

The gig: Plug in "wine of the month club" and you'll come up with thousands of search-engine hits. But the folks who say they started the trend operate out of a 15,000-square-foot office-warehouse off the 210 Freeway in Monrovia. And despite massive changes in the global wine industry since the club's founding in 1972, the Wine of the Month Club still follows the same basic model: Two wines a month -- one white, one red -- selected by the club and delivered for a fee. Getting started: Paul Kalemkiarian Sr. was running a small string of pharmacies around the Los Angeles area in the early 1970s when he struck a deal to buy a drugstore in Palos Verdes and the liquor store next door.

The grapevines of southern Tuscany rest in winter. You see them in soldierly rows around the hill towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino, tethered to stakes like crucifixes, brown, gnarled and seemingly dead. Not so. This dormant time in the life cycle of the grape is the beginning of rich and fruitful life to come, which even winter travelers can appreciate by touring wineries in the hill country about 50 miles southeast of Siena.

Is this the end of Two Buck Chuck? A proposal to raise the state tax on wine to a level more than six times higher to help close California's giant budget deficit would kill the $1.99 price for Charles Shaw wine, said Fred Franzia, who created the famous label sold by the Trader Joe's grocery chain. Charles Shaw, of course, is the formal name for the California wines sold since 2002 that are now widely known by their nickname Two Buck Chuck. The proposal by Gov.

Rivers and creeks overflowing with wine -- was it a biblical sign of the end of the world or time for a free drink? This singular image kept coming up as Vivienne Sosnowski talked to the elder members of Northern California wine-making families -- many in their late 90s -- about life after Prohibition took effect in 1920. And it's the image that inspired the title of her book "When the Rivers Ran Red: An Amazing Story of Courage and Triumph in America's Wine Country" (Macmillan: 256 pp., $26.