Update: Yes, the wine supply chain is out of whack
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
Can’t find your favorite wines on store shelves? Blame the pandemic (but at least we have enough lorry drivers)
In June, Dave McIntyre of the Washington Post wrote that we’d be seeing higher wine prices and widespread shortages through the rest of the year. Turns out he was spot on.
We talked about higher prices in June; today, it’s the supply chain discombobulation that has persisted for the first nine months of the year. The good news? At least we don’t have the problem the British have, where Brexit chased foreign lorry drivers (or truck drivers, as we call them) out of the country. So there aren’t enough people to drive trucks to deliver wine. Says one restaurateur: “We’ve had days without any red wine at all.”
How obvious are the shortages in the U.S.? A Google search will find all sorts of examples; closer to home, one leading Dallas retailer held a rose sale a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t have any Charles & Charles, Bieler Pere et Fils, Zestos, or Jolie Folie – all wines that it normally has in huge amounts and that I buy a lot of.
The wine supply chain snafu revolves around a combination of things. Perhaps the most important is a shortage of containers, says a Portuguese wine importer. The containers are the huge steel boxes loaded with merchandise that ships carry between ports; they’re unloaded directly onto train flat cars. If there aren’t enough containers, then wine sits in warehouses waiting to be shipped.
Second, long delays unloading ships at U.S. ports. The reasons for this are a bit vague, since it seems counter intuitive that there would be delays if there aren’t as many containers. But, as the story in the above link notes, there is “record-low container ship schedule reliability and port and inland congestion in the US and elsewhere keeping cargo in transit longer than usual.”
When will this end? The Post article guessed at the holiday season, but the Portuguese importer told me he wasn’t as optimistic. Some importers are already predicting Champagne shortages this year, though it’s not clear if that’s just a British problem.
Until then, we’ll just have to buy what we can when we can. Though I do miss the Zestos.