Our friend Jerry doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would go digging around in the closeout bin or shopping for wine at Aldi – too classy for that — but there he was at Joyce and Barry’s house on Friday showing off his latest finds: cheap wine from...

David Rosenthal at Chateau Ste Michelle I  teach a class called “The Idea of Wine” at the University of Puget Sound. It isn’t your typical wine class. It’s an examination of wine in the context of geography, history, science, business,...

My last post, Starbucks and and Coffee-Wine Paradox, raised questions about the relative price of wine. We think of coffee as being expensive, especially coffee drinks at Starbucks and other gourmet espresso bars. But compared to wine they seem like a...

The Water-Diamond paradox is a classic problem in economics. Water is essential to life, but it is relatively cheap in most situations. Diamonds, on the other hand, are non-essential luxuries in most uses, yet they cost the earth compared to water. How...

A few years ago I edited a book on globalization for a New York Times series. I was given everything that was published in the NYT in the 20th century and asked to tell the story of globalization’s rise and fall and rise again. One of the things I...