Ask the WC 31: Pinot noir, minimum pricing, wine apocalypse

This edition of Ask the WC: When is pinot noir not pinot noir? Plus what’s minimum pricing and whether the wine apocalypse is coming

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Hey, WC:
I liked the McManis pinot noir review, but some of it didn’t make sense. How can a wine be called pinot noir if there are other grapes in it?
Confused about pinot

Dear Pinot:
A varietal wine — a wine that has the name of the grape of the label — doesn’t have to be made only with that grape. Federal law allows varietal wine to have as much as 25 percent of something else, and most pinot noir that costs less than $30 often has 25 percent of something else. I wrote a trade story about this a decade ago, when inexpensive pinot became popular. One winemaker told me that his company used tannat, grenache, syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah, refosco, and dornfelder in pinot noir. The goal was to make the wine darker in color and fruitier, since traditional pinot is neither. So, when I write — as I did in the McManis review — that most inexpensive pinot tastes like a red blend, that’s because it was made to taste that way.
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Oh Curmudgeonly One:
What’s this minimum pricing I keep hearing about, where the government sets alcohol prices? That doesn’t sound very free enterprise. We don’t do it in the U.S., do we?
Free markets rule

Dear Markets:
Yes, we have minimum pricing in the U.S. Most notably, it’s in Connecticut and Michigan; the state decides the minimum a retailer can charge, though it may exist in other forms elsewhere given the tangle that is U.S. liquor regulation. The rationale is that if liquor costs too little, we’ll buy too much and all be drunk — the infamous “public health and safety” standard that allows states to regulate alcohol in their own way. So no, no free market in the U.S. in booze.
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Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
I’m getting a little tired of you talking about the wine apocalypse all the time, and how wine is going away. It’s a $100 billion business. isn’t it? How can that disappear?
Irritated and annoyed

Dear Irritated:
Wine sales in the U.S. are about $70 billion annually, so yes, not going away tomorrow. But that’s hardly good news. Wine sales have been flat for years (and may actually have decreased, depending on who did the study), per capita consumption has decreased, and younger people aren’t interested in wine. Hence the concern among those of us who love wine but refuse to be blinded by the industry’s obsession with prices and scores. And do you think I like writing about this stuff? Hardly. But someone has to do it.

Photo: Joey Nicotra on Unsplash

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 30: BYOB, wine for friends, California fires
• Ask the WC 29: Birthday gifts, larger bottles, and on-line
• Ask the WC 28: Wine Curmudgeon ethics, sweet red wine, and wine spending