October 5, 2026 · This Week Uncorked

October 5, 2026 – Counterfeit Wine Could Be Hiding in Plain Sight

This week’s wine news underscores an industry navigating tough economic headwinds while embracing radical technological and regulatory evolution. Impact Databank projects the U.S. wine market will slide another 3.5% in 2026, dropping below 300 million cases for the first time in over fifteen years—a decline only partially softened by the surge in wine-based RTD cocktails. On the innovation front, AI tools are taking over everything from vineyard tracking to pinpointing chemical signatures for fraud protection. Plus, we cover high-stakes counterfeit busts, Wales’ historic bid for a natural wine appellation, and top local dining spots.

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Winery of the Week

Telaya Wine Co.

Cork & Journey: 5 out of 5 stars

Wine of the Week

Telaya Wine Co., “250th Anniversary Liberty Red” Red Blend 2023

Cork & Journey: 91 points

Restaurant of the Week

Meril at the M – Las Vegas, NV

Cork & Journey: 5 stars · Corkage Fee: $25 Per Bottle / No Limit

Corkage of the Week

Kevin Rathbun Steak

Corkage Fee: $30 Per Bottle / No Limit

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Wine News Round-Up

Shanken News Daily

Impact Databank Projects U.S. Wine Market To Slip 3.5% In 2026

Daniel Marsteller, writing for Shanken News Daily, has the latest market data.  After peaking at roughly 344 million 9-liter cases in 2020, the US wine market has now endured five straight years of volume decline, and the 2026 edition of Shanken’s Impact Databank Review and Forecast projects another 3.5 percent slip this year to below 300 million cases. It has

been more than fifteen years since the category was under that threshold. Two details make it worse than the headline. First, spirits overtook wine in US volume terms last year for the first time in four decades, boosted by ready-to-drink products. Second, and more uncomfortably, wine’s own decline is being cushioned by the same RTD craze: wine-based cocktails surged to 18 million cases last year, led by Beatbox and Buzzballz Chillers. Strip those out and the projected decline is closer to 5 percent. 

Random Call Outs: Top Seven U.S. Wine Marketers, retail volume growth 2026 year to date

Gallo, down 5.2%
The Wine Group, down 9.3%
Trinchero Family Wine & Spirits, down 3.7%
Delicato Family Wines, down 5.2%
Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, up 2.0%
Anheuser-Busch, up 10.8%
Jackson Family Wines, up 1.3%
Total Top Seven, down 5.0%

Meininger's

The AI Revolution Is Already Transforming Wine

Felicity Carter, writing for Meininger’s International, reports from the third edition of the Harvard Data Science Initiative’s Vine to Mind Symposium, held at UC Davis in May. Carter was a speaker there, and the article does have some interesting AI uses for the wine business.

From the article:

Dan Petroski from Massican described how he walks his vineyards while talking to AI, recording everything he sees. AI captures and structures the data, giving him a day-by-day view into how his vineyard reacts to minute changes in weather conditions. He says the AI has been able to pinpoint the exact conditions that give rise to his best wines.
Professor Alexandre Pouget from the Department of Basic Neurosciences in the Faculty of Medicine at UNIGE showcased work he had done on the chemical signatures of wines. Working with Stéphanie Marchand, a professor at the University of Bordeaux, Pouget used AI and machine learning to analyze gas chromatograms—chemical signatures—from 80 Bordeaux wines spanning 12 vintages and seven estates. In total, this represented 30,000 data points per wine.
The system identified each wine’s geographical origin with 100% accuracy, opening up possibilities for wine authentication.
And AI is also being used to solve one of the most difficult problems of all—that of human taste.
As Katerina Axelsson of Tastry explained to the room, it’s been difficult to create true taste-matching systems because wine research has focused too much on individual chemicals—which have no predictive power when it comes to preferences. The fact that someone likes the taste of cherry, for example, doesn’t mean they will like a wine with cherry notes, because there may be other compounds in that wine that they dislike.
One of Tastry’s biggest findings is that what you dislike is a more important predictor of taste than what you like; people can be enthusiastic about a wine in one setting, but can take it or leave it in another. But when they dislike something, they dislike it all the time.

Wine Business

Wine Fraud Expert Reveals How Counterfeiters Fooled Even the World’s Top Collectors

Maureen Downey, one of the world’s leading authorities on wine authentication, provenance and fraud, sat down with Janina Doyle on the Eat Sleep Wine Repeat podcast for a 54-minute conversation on counterfeit wine. There is some great stuff in the episode, and I recommend you add this to your podcasts.

From the article:

“Counterfeit Wine & Wine Fraud: Could Your Wine Be Fake?”, fraud isn’t confined to rare, high-value bottles:
The UK is awash in counterfeit Yellow Tail. They’ve literally arrested people with vans full of counterfeit Yellow Tail.”
The episode also revisits the case of Rudy Kurniawan, the world’s most notorious wine fraudster, whose $34 million sale remains the largest in auction history. Downey, who knew Kurniawan personally, challenges the popular narrative around him:
“Rudy was trained, Rudy was funded, Rudy was supported. He didn’t go from drinking $40 Napa Merlot to being the most experienced palate on Bordeaux from the ’50s and Burgundy from the ’30s and ’40s in literally two years by himself. Didn’t happen.”
“Was he a good taster? Yeah. Was he some f***ing savant? No.”
Gold.

The Drinks Business

Wales Bids for World’s First Natural Wine Appellation

Barnaby Eales, writing for The Drinks Business, reports that Britain could become home to the world’s first appellation built specifically around natural wine. The proposed would exclude synthetic chemicals, processing aids, additives and industrial yeasts, limit sulfur in quantity and permit it only at bottling, and require that wines be made in Wales from spontaneously fermented grapes grown in Wales under organic practices on certified organic, regenerative or biodynamic estates.  

From the article:

“For consumers, enjoying a Natural Wine of Wales will mean they know they are drinking a raw, fermented grape product, providing an honest and healthy representation of each vineyard, a taste of that place, unadulterated by synthetic chemicals either in the vineyard or in the winery.”
“We would like to see wine ingredients listed via QR codes or directly on labels. It is important that consumers know the nature of their product. They have a right to know,” Rolt continued.
“In Britain, producers can currently make wine using 60 products, but consumers are unaware of this. Current labeling rules mean there is no obligation to list ingredients or processing aids.”
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Wine & Winery of the Week

Winery of the Week

Telaya Wine Co.

Telaya is a family winery in Garden City, founded in 2008 by Earl and Carrie Sullivan, working fruit from both Idaho and Washington. The focus is structured reds: vineyard-designated bottlings and regional blends built to age. The tasting room sits on the Boise River Greenbelt, with flights, wines by the glass and private tastings indoors and out.

  • Cork & Journey: 5 out of 5 stars

Cork & Journey: 5 out of 5 stars

Wine of the Week

Telaya Wine Co., “250th Anniversary Liberty Red” Red Blend 2023

Telaya’s 250th Anniversary Liberty Red leads with ripe blackberry, plum and black cherry, backed by vanilla, cedar and baking spice. Medium-full in body with rounded tannins and a warm, toasted oak finish, it is generous and approachable right now.

  • Cork & Journey: 91 points

Cork & Journey: 91 points

03

Restaurant of the Week

Restaurant of the Week

Meril at the M – Las Vegas, NV

Meril at the M is Emeril Lagasse’s Henderson outpost, a contemporary American room inside the M Resort with chef de cuisine Wilfredo Avelar running the kitchen. The menu pulls global influences into an approachable American framework, served from breakfast into the evening and late night on Fridays and Saturdays. It only opened in July, so the review counts are still catching up.

  • Cork & Journey: 5 stars

Corkage Fee: $25 Per Bottle / No Limit
Bringing a bottle? The Cork & Journey app tracks corkage fees at thousands of restaurants. Check before you book.

Cork & Journey: 5 starsCorkage$25 per bottle · no limit
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Corkage of the Week

Corkage of the Week

Kevin Rathbun Steak

Corkage Fee: $30 Per Bottle / No Limit
Atlanta, GA
4.8 Stars with over 2406+ Reviews

Kevin Rathbun Steak is an upscale, modern chophouse located in a converted industrial warehouse along Atlanta’s Eastside BeltLine trail. It is highly rated for its prime steaks, seafood, and extensive wine list.

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