Voting is closed, and the winner is Indiana and its foolishness about not selling cold beer. Minimum pricing in Connecticut and Michigan were second. Thanks to everyone who participated.
The choices are hardly complete; that Mississippi isn’t listed says something about how silly the rest are. No doubt, I could have included something from almost every state. If I did miss one, leave it in the comments. Those of you who get the blog via email may have to go to the website — click here to do so.
My favorite, of course, is Utah’s Zion curtain. It’s mostly gone, but not to worry: The state has other safeguards to protect children from the glamour of working in a bar.
Poll image courtesy of The Fine Print, using a Creative Commons license
Hence, the reason for this podcast — Clara offers smart, insightful perspective on wine and the restaurant business during the duration. I’ve known Clara for a couple of years from judging the Colorado Governor’s Cup, and she understands that not all wine costs $100 or needs to be Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon. How many people in her line of work are willing to admit that?
Clara is also a passionate supporter of local restaurants, local jobs, and local food. And her plea for federal aid to help save local is one of the best I have read or heard. If four out of five restaurants close because of the pandemic, do we really want the one restaurant left to be a national chain?
The good news is that she has plenty of inexpensive wine at home, and she and husband Ian Palazzola (laid off from Denver’s Acorn) have been able to cook, drink wine, and spend time together. Which, she says, doesn’t happen much. Finally, a mea culpa: Sunday Vinyl is in Denver, despite my saying it was in Boulder twice.
Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is almost 11 minutes long and takes up 4 megabytes. The sound quality is very good; we’re back with Skype, the blog’s unofficial podcast software.
Photo courtesy of 5280, using a Creative Commons license
Celebrate Earth Day by understanding the difference between greenwashing and wine that’s truly green
Wednesday is Earth Day, an annual event that reminds us that we need to treat the planet with more respect. As such, it’s the perfect time to talk about greenwashing – a marketing technique where producers, manufacturers, and other companies describe their products as environmentally friendly or sustainable even though they may be nothing of the kind.
Sadly, greenwashing is not uncommon in wine. This is the time of year when wine writers are inundated with news releases touting how green a wine or a wine brand is, even if the product in the release isn’t especially ecological. That’s because green products are rated more highly by consumers, and especially by the younger consumers who aren’t much interested in wine.
So why not flog green wine? It’s made of plants, isn’t it? How much greener does it need to be?
A lot, actually, and starting with the glass bottle. Wine bottles are notorious for their excessive carbon footprint, and even wine critic Jancis Robinson, who is about as establishment as wine critics get, has seen the light: “Consumers as well as producers really need to rethink the issue of wine packaging.” That so much wine is shipped in glass bottles all over the planet just makes a bad thing worse.
The other handicap facing wine? It’s almost impossible in this country to figure out how green a wine is. Federal laws regulating organic wine are confusing and contradictory – an organic wine is legally different from a wine made with organic grapes. Organic wine is mostly about not adding sulfites, while wine made with organic grapes is closer to what we think of when we think organic potatoes or tomatoes.
There’s sustainability, and then there’s sustainability
In addition, the leading sustainability standard, promulgated by the Wine Institute trade group, defines sustainable as winemaking practices that “are environmentally sound, socially equitable and economically viable.” Does this mean sustainability only makes sense if it’s profitable?
Several years ago, I wrote a green wine magazine story, and an organic viticulture consultant in northern California put it plainly: “Consumers assume that wine, by its very nature, is pure and natural to begin with. Ask most consumers, and they don’t equate a vineyard with a factory farm the same way they do for other products. Vineyards are beautiful, and don’t look like a picture of a factory farm.”
In other words, wine is made of plants, isn’t it? How much greener does it need to be?
This is not to say that many growers and producers don’t take green seriously. I’ve talked to many who spend extra time and money to do the right thing, and sustainability groups in the Napa Valley and in Lodi have produced impressive results.
So the next time you see an ad touting a winery’s stewardship of the earth, give it a second look. There’s stewardship, and then there’s greenwashing. It’s the least you can do for Earth Day.
Image courtesy of GreenBiz, using a Creative Commons license
“Those poor saps in 2020. They’re stuck with the laws that were designed to keep speakeasies from opening, even though speakeasies don’t exist in 2020.”
Will the success of e-commerce and restaurant delivery during the pandemic eventually make it easier for us to buy wine, beer, and spirits?
This is the second of two parts looking at how the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we buy wine. Today, will the pandemic lead to changes so it’s easier to buy wine on-line? The first part – finding value when buying wine on-line – is here.
Wine is being shipped to our homes, and we don’t have to sign for it. That used to be a felony in many states. We’re ordering wine from restaurants and liquor stores over the Internet, which was not only illegal in some states, but almost impossible to do even where it wasn’t.
All of this is because of the coronavirus pandemic, as state liquor cops relax enforcement of many of the laws that make up the three-tier system. Their goal is to help restaurants and retailers stay in business, and so the economic benefit outweighs enforcing the law.
Which raises a question about the future of the three-tier system, the set of state laws that govern how we buy alcohol in the U.S.: Will the success of Internet sales and restaurant delivery during the pandemic lead to changes that will make it easier for us to buy wine, beer, and spirits?
The answer, after a week of reporting, is almost certainly. Once the pandemic ends, say those I’ve talked to, it will be difficult for state regulators to return to the strict, Prohibition-era system that defines U.S. liquor laws. And that means more flexible e-commerce and home delivery regulations.
“My crystal ball is not particularly clear on this,” says Jason Haas of Paso Robles’ Tablas Creek Vineyard, one of the most thoughtful and erudite people in the wine business when it comes to discussing three-tier. “But I think it is clear that we as a society are not against lifting the restrictions. The fear was always that, if we did, the unknown might happen, that it would hurt business and alcohol would flood society. And those arguments would sound really silly after all of this.”
E-commerce and home delivery have traditionally been a tiny percentage of U.S. wine sales. Wine.com, the only truly national e-commerce wine retailer, does less than $150 million in sales each year, barely noticeable among the $70 billion U.S. wine market. Even the so-called DTC market, where wineries sell directly to consumers, accounts for just single percentage points of that $70 billion.
And that’s because the three-tier system was set up to make it difficult to do anything other than buy wine in a restaurant or retailer. And that’s because the goal of the three-tier system, which took effect when Prohibition ended in 1933, was to keep Al Capone out of the liquor business. I’ve written extensively about why this happened, on the blog and in the cheap wine book, but the reasons almost don’t matter anymore. It’s enough to know that even though this is the 21st century and Al Capone has been dead for 73 years, we’re still stuck with a liquor regulation system that makes no sense in the Internet age.
But maybe not for much longer.
“The genie is definitely out of the bottle,” says Cameron Hughes, whose self-named winery has been one of the country’s pioneers in DTC sales. “This shows we can operate successfully without ruining the intentions of the three-tier system, so why should have to sign up for it again once the pandemic is over?”
And the wine industry executives I talked to aren’t the only ones who think change is coming. The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association, which has lobbied successfully on behalf of three-tier for almost 90 years, is apparently worried, too. It warned U.S. consumers about “black market liquor” shortly after many states eased three-tier delivery restrictions. That the only thing most of us know about black market booze is from old movies is irrelevant to the wholesalers; they’ll do almost anything to save the system that gives them a constitutionally protected monopoly to distribute alcohol.
Coming next
“Relaxing the rules has always been the goal,” says Matt Crafton, the winemaker at Napa Valley’s Chateau Montelena. “So why not make that permanent?”
So what might happen – or not – once the pandemic winds down? Any changes probably won’t happen immediately, but even later rather than sooner will be a welcome change:
• The law that requires every wine sold in the U.S. to have a distributor won’t change, so the wholesalers trade group can rest easy.
• More and easier home delivery from retailers, restaurants, and wineries. It’s possible the rules will be changed in various states so that more wine shops and restaurants can take Internet orders – and how much better would it be to order wine with your takeout food? The catch here is restaurant pricing. Will restaurants realize they’ll have to improve on their three and four to one markups to be competitive?
• The end to signing for wine deliveries, the hassle that the delivery companies hate as much as consumers do. So far, the republic hasn’t ended without signing for wine, and, says Hughes, “in the 21st century, there has to be a better way for Fed Ex and UPS drivers to deliver wine than to check ID.”
But how do we know that we’re getting value when we buy wine on-line? Never fear; that’s why the Wine Curmudgeon is here. I’ve spent the past month buying wine on-line to see whether it’s a practical alternative during the duration. The answer, not surprisingly, is that it all depends, and it’s not necessarily about how much the wine costs.
Know, too that not all on-line wine retailing is the same. Buying wine directly from the winery has almost nothing in common with buying wine from a retailer — limited selection and different laws among them. In addition, your neighborhood wine shop is likely to offer better value than a chain retailer, if only because they’ve seen you in the store and don’t want to tick you off. To most chains, you’re nothing more than a digital account floating in the cyber-ether.
Keep these five points in mind when buying wine on-line:
• Vintage. Some retailers list the vintages for the wines; some don’t. If they don’t, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the current vintage. A Total Wine in Dallas sent me the 2016 vintage of a white wine; the current vintage is 2018. The 2016, not surprisingly, let much to be desired.
• Substitutions. Make sure you don’t allow the retailer to substitute its choice if what you want is out of stock. I was offered a California red for my Spanish tempranillo, which are hardly the same thing. Yes, the retailer is supposed to tell you about the substitution when they make it, but this doesn’t mean it always happens.
• Selection. Some retailers, like Spec’s in Dallas, only offer part of their inventory on-line. The Spec’s near me has one of the best wine assortments in the U.S.; on-line, though, it’s mostly supermarket plonk.
• Retailers vs. delivery services. Companies like Drizly and Instacart are delivery services that contract with retailers. This means limited selection and almost always higher prices. It should say on the website if a third-party delivers for the retailer.
• Shipping and delivery. Two things have traditionally slowed on-line wine sales – restrictive laws and the high cost of shipping and delivery. Sometimes, I think the latter is the bigger stumbling block. I bought 17 bottles from wine.com in March, and the shipping charge worked out to almost $3 a bottle. My order from Total Wine cost me $10 for delivery plus a 15 percent tip, again adding about $3 a bottle to the total. Is the convenience worth the extra money? Only you can decide that.
The answer? A qualified yes, but with higher prices and less rose to choose from
Drinking rose is about being outdoors and about being with friends. And, for a significant part of the rose drinking population, it’s about social media, Instagram, and selfies. All of which, of course, have been severely curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic.
So will there be a 2020 rose season this spring?
The good news is a qualified yes. The producers and importers I’ve talked to are sending their 2019 roses to market, hoping for the best at a time when most restaurants are closed and retailers are only offering delivery, pick up, and on-line sales.
“I am not sure what will happen with rose season, but we are importing a few containers and hope that retailers will support our efforts,” says Patrick Mata of Ole & Obrigado, one of the best Spanish importers in the world. “The key to being successful in this new environment is to work with retailers that already know the wines and can recommend them to their customers, since most customers cannot walk into the stores to browse around.”
The bad news? This is a retail environment no one has seen before. Layoffs, furloughs, and reduced salaries for those still working could mean consumers will cut back on wine – including rose – sooner rather than later, says Charles Bieler, who makes the Charles & Charles Washington state rose and the Bieler et Fils Sabine rose in Provence.
In addition, the pandemic means we almost certainly won’t see the assortment or the quantity of rose we’ve seen in years past. This was going to be the case even before the pandemic, thanks to the Trump Administrations 25 percent tariff on French and Spanish wine. Bieler, for example, had to increase the retail price of the Sabine, so it will cost $12 to $13 instead of $10 to $12 this year.
In this, Chris Keel, who owns the boutique Put a Cork in It wine shop in Fort Worth, Texas, says he has seen a few 2019 roses, but he’s still working his way through the 2018s that are in stock. Not surprisingly, he says, the 2018s have been some of his best sellers.
Finally, expect retailers who stay open to be inventive in marketing rose this year, including virtual tastings with their customers. Mata says he has already done three, and expects to do more.
Rob McMillan: There are going be better quality grapes in cheap wine, even as wine prices decline.
“What’s going to happen to demand? People are still going to drink”
The good news? Rob McMillan of Silicon Valley Bank, perhaps the foremost financial analyst in the wine business, says wine can survive the coronavirus pandemic. The bad news? It’s not going to be a lot of fun during the duration.
The highlights of our conversation:
• Expect to see weaker wineries fail, as well as some grape growers who don’t have producers to buy their grapes. In this, there probably won’t be bankruptcies or foreclosures as much as there will distress sales. There are always people wiling to buy wineries, says McMillan, even in a recession, and prime vineyard prices probably won’t decline all that much.
• Wine prices were expected to fall before the pandemic hit the U.S., and the stay at home orders and layoffs will only hasten the process. In this, though, since there are too many grapes, expect to see better quality grapes going into cheap wine. One rumor? That a major $3 producer snapped up Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon at bargain prices.
• Look for more producers to try to sell their wines at mass retailers and supermarkets. The loss of tasting room business needs to be made up somehow, and retail wine sales haven’t slumped as much as some thought.
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
Celebrate Earth Day by understanding the difference between greenwashing and wine that’s truly green
How to find value when you buy wine on-line
The answer? A qualified yes, but with higher prices and less rose to choose from