Wall Street Journal - Every culture has its own lucky number. For the Chinese, eight is considered the luckiest as it symbolizes wealth and good fortune. (It's also the model size for fashion designers, though in New York the luckiest size is probably a two.) Now the wine industry has it own magic number: Fourteen, which is not only the maximum alcohol level of a table wine in this country—but increasingly, among certain professionals, a rallying cry.

Fourteen is the cutoff point between a "regular" and a "high alcohol" wine under federal wine-labeling law. Anything between 7% and 14% alcohol is considered "table wine" and taxed accordingly, while wine between 14% and 24% is called "dessert wine" by the government and taxed at a much higher rate, though in fact plenty of these wines aren't dessert wines at all. Fourteen is also the number cited by some sommeliers who refuse to taste—let alone buy or sell—any wine over this particular  Read more...