Category:Wine trends

Update: Yes, the wine supply chain is out of whack

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

shipping containers
Not enough shipping containers means not enough wine on store shelves

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.

Stop the presses! The U.S. is not falling down in a drunken stupor

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine and health
What do you mean, we’re not all passed out drunk? But a bunch of studies say so.

Remember all that neo-Prohibitionist foolishness about increased pandemic drinking? The latest Gallup poll offers more evidence that the Drys were wrong

Fewer U.S. adults are drinking, and those who are are drinking less. That’s the finding from the most recent Gallup poll about alcohol use in the U.S. – and it directly contradicts every scare story, fear-mongering headline, and panic-stricken Internet alert that we’ve seen during the pandemic.

Gallup’s survey, generally regarded as the most accurate overview of U.S. alcohol consumption, found that 60 percent of U.S. adults reported drinking wine or beer in 2020 – down from 65 percent in 2019. In addition, our average weekly number of drinks fell to 3.6 from 4.0

So I guess we’re not all passed out on the couch, are we?

In fact, says Gallup, the number of Americans who drink may be at a 20-year low. As recently as 2010, two-thirds of us said we drank alcohol. And, says the study, the average number of weekly drinks is the lowest since 2001 ”and is more in line with reported alcohol consumption in the late 1990s and early 2000s than with more recent readings.”

In other words, almost every single story warning about pandemic drinking, including the scare piece in my beloved New York Times, may have been wrong. Or, as one analyst told me when I wrote about pandemic drinking earlier this year, it would have been almost impossible for us to drink more, given that bars and restaurants were closed for the first part of 2020 and that hardly anyone went to a party.

Once again, this is not to discount the horrors of alcoholism or to infer that’s it’s OK to drink to excess. As noted here many times, I know the ruin alcoholism produces. Rather, it’s to remind everyone that drinking is not cigarette smoking, and that wine with dinner does not lead to death, ruin, and destruction like some 21st century version of “Reefer Madness.”

More about the Neo-Prohibitionists and drinking
• Binge drinking during the pandemic — or not
• Has wine with dinner been turned into binge drinking?
• Are the neo-Prohibitionists winning the debate about drinking?

Beer drinkers — and Big Beer – love nutrition facts labels

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

nutriton labels
If beer, why not wine?

So why is the wine still business still opposed to telling us what we’re drinking?

An independent survey found that more than 70 percent of the beer products sold in 2020 included a nutrition facts statement that listed the alcohol, the number of calories, carbohydrates, protein, and fat on products either on the packaging or on a website.

Best yet, said a companion survey, beer drinkers welcomed the information – 60 percent were more likely to purchase beer, wine, or spirits that included the information and almost three-quarters said labels encouraged responsible alcohol consumption.

Not that the wine business cares much. It remains as obstinate about nutrition and ingredient labels as it has for more than a decade. Every once in a while, it will commission a survey that says real wine drinkers don’t care about junk like ingredient labels and keep pretending that it’s still the 1990s and all is well.

But when Big Beer – hardly the most enlightened business in the world – recognizes the need for labels, then something important is happening.

“I don’t know why beer decided to do this, but I can tell you for sure that and without exception that they were very smart to do it,” says Nancy Glick, the director of food and nutrition policy for the National Consumers League. Her organization has supported nutrition and ingredient labels for alcohol even longer than I have.

“The beer industry is showing that it’s more committed to its consumers,” she says, “and the data is showing them that consumers appreciate that.”

The labels were part of the Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, a Beer Institute program started in 2016. The goal was to show that brewers and importers could put a nutrition label on bottles and cans of beer despite the cost and the small size of the containers.

Which, apparently, they were able to do. Yes, the participating companies included Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors, Constellation, Heineken, and FIFCO, whose brands include Labatt and Gennessee – all of whom are some of the largest beer producers in the world. So the cost and technology to add labels wouldn’t be as onerous as it would be for a craft beer producer.

Still, says Glick, that’s almost not the point. What matters, she says, is that these companies added the labels despite years of objections that it wasn’t possible.

n addition, using a QR code – the boxy thing you scan with a cellphone – instead of actual ingredient labels solves most of the cost problems. The can or bottle code doesn’t have to change when ingredients do; rather, the QR code sends people to a website where changing the ingredients and nutrition information is as simple as a couple of keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Beer drinkers responded enthusiastically. Three-quarters in the above linked survey said alcohol beverages should have nutrition labels, while 77 percent would support wine and liquor companies providing this information to consumers.

Is anyone in wine listening?

And, because the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates irony: Even though Constellation Brands’ beer unit (a host of Mexican brands) added labels, its wine unit – including Robert Mondavi– doesn’t use them.

More about ingredient and nutrition labels:
• Leading wine experts call for ingredient and nutrition labels
• Clean wine: Has the Winestream Media finally figured out why we need nutrition and ingredient labels?
• Bud Light debuts new and improved ingredient labels

Wine’s generation gap may be even bigger than we think

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

gen zThese influencers matter to Gen Z – who in wine knows who they are?

Gen Z is the demographic coming up behind the Millennials – born after 1996 and who are just becoming old enough to drink wine. Given the bang-up job wine has done reaching Millennials (yes, sarcasm), is there any hope it can reach Gen Z?

Not really, if the chart at the top of page is as important as it seems to be (chart from Helixa, via Wine Industry Insight). These are the 10 most important influencers for Gen Z, the people they follow most on social media.

Not one wine critic, wine magazine, sommelier, or wine personality on the list.

Yes, we can have a long, academic discussion about influencers and their role – real or imagined, necessary or marketing hype – but that doesn’t change the fact that Lil Nas X reaches one-third of those ages 24 and younger. And when’s the last time you heard anyone in wine talk about Lil Nas X? (Go on, Google him. You won’t be the only one.)

In fact, look at the entire list, and you’ll notice not only how young they are, but how little they match any wine demographic. The closest is probably basketball superstar LeBron James – and when he’s the closest, you know how little the list has do with wine drinkers as they are today.

The one constant about wine over the past 20 years, the thing that has been overlooked in all of the rest of the foolishness, is that wine it isn’t cool anymore. Because it used to be. Damn, it was cool – Jessica Lange drinking wine in “Tootsie” cool.

But then wine got hung up on scores and $100 bottles and snottiness and all the rest, and it barely held on to Gen X and it lost the Millennials. Cool turned into bougie, and younger people switched to hard seltzer.

And you don’t have to know who Lil Nas X is to know he isn’t bougie.

Follow-up: Convenience store wine’s surge in popularity

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

c-store wine
“Of course, I’m unhappy. You stopped to buy wine and forgot the diapers.”

Is wine at convenience stores part of a larger, and possibly important change, in the way we buy wine?

This month’s post detailing the surge in wine sales at convenience stores brought a variety of responses:

• A reader said a friend bought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, the $40 Champagne, to go with his takeout fried chicken at a New Orleans convenience store. The wine was not only chilled, but cost less than at a leading national chain.

• Another reported that a local brewery had sampled its $12 beer at a Virginia convenience store, and that the beer was the store’s second most purchased after Bud Light. “It wouldn’t shock me if winery partnerships are next,” he emailed.

• Dallas’ Corner Stop offers almost 60 wines for delivery. Yes, some of them are Barefoot and some of the prices are ridiculous, but they include a high-end Orin Swift Napa cabernet sauvignon. Talk about surreal.

In other words, something important is going on here, though I can’t begin to figure out what it is. Traditionally, discerning wine drinkers never bought anything at a convenience store unless it was chips and a soft drink. But as reported here in the spring, sales of high-end Champagnes, including Moet and Chandon, more than doubled in one survey of independent corner retailers in 2020.

I’ve talked about this with a variety of wine business types, and they’re not quite sure what’s going on, either. Some of it, almost certainly, is generational – younger consumers don’t have the antipathy towards 7-Eleven and the like that their parents and grandparents do. And some of it can be attributed to business-savvy operators, who see wine as a way to attract more and different customers.

But I also wonder: As wine has become more complicated, more snobby, and more expensive over the past decade, are convenience stores part of the antidote? They don’t sell orange wine or natural wine or pet nat or any other wine geek trend; just national brands that are easy and convenient to buy.

And is that such a bad thing?

Photo: “First diaper” by goldberg is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Poor, poor pitiful merlot?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

movies
“Do people really think this is a good movie about wine?”

Or maybe not: Untangling the urban myths surrounding California’s most notorious grape

Merlot is the grape everyone loves to hate. That includes a certain character in a certain movie that even people who don’t know much about wine know about (and which the Wine Curmudgeon doesn’t acknowledge). The truth, though, is more complicated – and, possibly, more interesting.

Merlot was never quite as popular as everyone remembers, and it never fell quite as far as the legend has it. That’s the subject of a story I wrote for Pix.wine, in which I found:

• Merlot, even at its height, was never more popular than cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay, and it wasn’t any more common than zinfandel. And when’s the last time you read anything about the demise of zinfandel?

• One reason for its popularity? It was easier to pronounce than cabernet sauvignon, so it was huge in restaurants in the 1990s with anyone who wanted a glass of red wine.

• Today, though it’s not nearly as popular as a varietal as it once was, it’s a key element in red blends, sweet and otherwise. And red blends have been one of the fastest growing wine categories for several years.

• Merlot was also part of Coke’s unhappy time as a big wine company in the early 1980s, when it planted the grape up and down wine country in an attempt turn it into wine’s version of a soft drink. And it may even have played a small role in the collapse of the Seagram’s liquor empire in 2002.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels

Welcome to the terrors of ultra-premiumization

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine as opera
Wine? Opera? What’s the difference?

Is ultra-premiumization – where wine becomes a luxury and not something to drink everyday – the next logical step in the evolution of the wine business?

This is the second of two parts looking at premiumization’s grip on the wine business. Today, Part II: Is ultra-premiumization the next logical – and terrifying – step? Part I: Higher prices are strangling wine to death, so that we may have lost a generation of wine drinkers

My in-basket has been overflowing with the news, updates, and offers: A startup has raised $1 million to compete with Liv Ex, the wine stock exchange. A cellar management app will now offer wine investment advice, since “investment-grade fine wine has performed very strongly against most major asset classes.” A wine consultancy, meanwhile, has formed a limited edition wine club, which will only sell “one of a kind” wines in small numbers. And how about luxury wine glasses, which start at $34 each? Or the $5,000 Napa wine trip?

These days, it seems, hardly anyone sends me a news release about a wine or wine product that most of us can afford.

And why should they? Wine has embraced premiumization for a decade, targeting more expensive wine, more expensive wine products, and the affluent consumers who can afford them. Which raises a most terrifying question: Is ultra-premiumization the next logical step in this process?

I hope not. And I know that my email is a small sample size, with all that means about predicting what’s next for wine. One wine writer’s spam does not a trend make.

But I’m reminded of a couple of predictions that wine economist Mike Veseth has made: First, what he calls juice box wine, in which mega-producers will make cabernet sauvignon not from one region or even one state, but from different countries, just like juice is made. A carton of orange juice often lists two or three or more countries of origin. So why not cabernet from California, Chile, and eastern Europe, in which economies of scale and mass production give us the wine equivalent of juice boxes – both in price and quality?

Second, that wine will become like opera – too expensive and too pretentious for most people to appreciate, even if they wanted to. Opera was popular entertainment in Mozart’s time; today, it’s barely a blip on the cultural register.

These two forecasts offer a glimpse of ultra-premiumization: Juice box wine for those of us who still care about wine, and wine as opera for the one percent, complete with expensive glasses, wine investment advice, and one-of-a-kind wine clubs. Yes, there are still hundreds and hundreds of inexpensive wines, but they’re owned by a handful of companies. And these companies have the technical and supply chain expertise to turn those products into juice box wine while focusing on their most expensive wines. Is it a coincidence that those producers have been investing heavily in brands costing $20 or more over the past several years?

Again, I write this not because I’m certain it will happen, but because it seems ever more possible as the wine business continues to push aside the ordinary wine drinker in favor of the more affluent. My job is to warn those of us love wine about the possibility.

Photo: alevision.co on Unsplash