Tag Archives: three-tier

Winebits 761: The “It’s all about liquor laws” edition

dry january sign
The sign says it all, yes?

This week’s wine news: Jason Wilson deconstructs the neo-Prohibitionists, plus carding underage drinkers and Brexit may be worse than three-tier

• No booze for you: Jason Wilson, writing in the Washington Post, offers a long and detailed look at neo-Prohibitionism, Dry January, and all the rest. A couple of caveats (as well as a shameless plug): The WC shows up in the story (though I didn’t know that until it was published), and Wilson subscribes to the blog. His point, though, is all his own: We spend so much time arguing about whether drinking is good or bad that we know almost nothing about what Wilson calls “drinking literacy;” that is, serving sizes and alcohol by volume. In other words, how much actual booze is in what we drink, so we can better figure out how much to drink.

• Card those kids! Lifehacker, the blog’s unofficial Mainstream Media site that sometimes writes about wine, tells us everything we need to know about how services like Drizly and Instacart avoid selling to the underage. Know two things here: First, this is not a new trend – I was writing trade stories about this a decade ago. Second, it’s going to be a very important story as delivery becomes more important over the next several years. Some services use electronic verification, while some are still in the “Let me see your driver’s license” stage. For what it’s worth, I am occasionally carded when I use these services, and I stopped looking underage a long time ago. The piece also notes that, failing delivery service access, “your kid may turn to the old-fashioned alcohol procurement method of hanging around outside a liquor store and asking skeezy looking reprobates to buy for them.”

• All that paperwork: British wine wholesaler Daniel Lambert is moving to France, where it will be easier for him to do business in Britain thanks to Brexit. Reports the Guardian newspaper: “His Twitter posts about the Brexit regulations have a brisk following among fellow businesses, as he was one of the earliest to come to terms with the 200 pages of paperwork per consignment.” So those of us who are unhappy with U.S. laws – three-tier! — now have someone else to feel sorry for.

Photo: “Sod dry January” by Matt From London is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Winebits 742: Grocery Outlet, lawsuit, non-alcoholic alcohol

grocery outletThis week’s wine news: Good news for Grocery Outlet and its cheap wine, plus another wine lawsuit and more buzz about non-alcoholic alcohol

• Grocery Outlet: High gas prices may be benefiting Grocery Outlet, the Wine Curmudgeon’s favorite supermarket that he hasn’t shopped in. Regular readers know about the chain’s heavily-discounted wine prices; Layla Kasha, senior vice president, chief marketing officer and chief new store growth officer for Grocery Outlet, told Supermarket News that hard times usually bring new customers to her company. The podcast doesn’t specifically mention wine; rather, it focuses on the company’s methods that allow it sell $15 and $20 wine for $8. Which it does a lot.

• Another lawsuit: The WC has long been fascinated by wine-related lawsuits, and this one is a doozy. The president of Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, whose brands include Josh Cellars, is being sued by its president, Tom Steffanci. The lawsuit claims that the company is withholding royalty payments from Steffanci. The lawsuit is quite complicated, including details about holding companies, tax consequences and — my favorite — the legal discovery process. It also raises an intriguing question: How can all these people work with each other if there is a lawsuit?

• No alcohol: How about fake booze where the key ingredient is apple cider vinegar? That’s the “secret” behind Jukes Cordialites, which offers red, white and rose versions of non-alcoholic wine. The product is made with a variety of herbs and spices, as well as the vinegar; the idea is that it’s concentrated, and can be diluted with water. The WC, always willing to take one for the team, wants to know: Should I ask for a sample and review it?

Winebits 741: Mafia, wine sales, Utah

hard seltzer
Hope they bought these hard seltzers at the state store; otherwise, the Utah liquor cops will be after them.

This week’s wine news: An Italian court absolves a Sicilian winery of Mafia ties, plus more bad news for wine sales and Utah clamps down on hard seltzers

• No Mafia: An Italian court has acquitted Mezzacorona of alleged money laundering in Sicily. The country’s tax police had said the company, whose holdings include Stemmari and Rotari, had used the Mafia to launder money at its Feudo Arancio winery. The company had always protested its innocence, dating to a 2020 raid where police seized more than €70m (US$76 million) in assets. The judge ruled last week that the claims had no validity. The story in the link seems to be some sort of news release from the winery, so it’s not quite clear what the judge said or did, or why the case was dismissed.

• More bad news: The latest set of sales figures offer more bad news for the wine business. SipSource (composed of wholesaler data) shows wine continued its slump in December 2021. Sales, by volume, declined 6.2 percent from 12 months earlier, the ninth consecutive month of declines. Pemiumization is working well, isn’t it?

• No hard seltzers: A new Utah law will force the removal of about half of the hard seltzers in supermarkets, and they will only be allowed to be  sold in state-owned liquor stores. The Salt Lake Tribune says the law prohibits the sale of beverages that contain even a trace amount of ethyl alcohol, a commonly used stabilizer for artificial flavorings that is used in such products as soda, mustard, and teriyaki sauce. Some 80 hard seltzers and kombuchas are approved for sale in Utah grocery and convenience stores; 39 of them have ethyl alcohol in their flavorings. Chalk this up as another victory for the neo-Prohibitionists, protecting us from food stabilizers.

Winebits 740: Virtual wine tastings, Illinois wine, wine and sugar

wine tasting
Try doing this on Zoom. …

This week’s wine news: Have we hit Zoom fatigue when tasting wine? Plus, Illinois wineries want to make it easier to sell wine and no, wine isn’t packed with sugar.

• No to Zoom? Virtual wine tastings, which were all the rage over the past couple of years, may have hit a wall, reports the Wine Enthusiast. “Zoom fatigue is real,” says the headline, and this is not surprising to anyone who has done more than a couple of these things. Wine, by its very nature, is a social experience, and no one has yet to find a way to turn a virtual tasting into something other than a college lecture – and a decidedly dull one. Most of the virtual tastings I’ve done since the pandemic started have been little more than a series of winemakers saying the exact same thing about their wine, one after the other. This is not to say they didn’t have a purpose during the worst of the pandemic; rather, it’s to wonder why we couldn’t come up with better presentations?

• Illinois wineries strike at three-tier: Illinois’ wineries want the state to allow more of them to distribute their own product, without the need for a wholesaler. This is a big deal for regional wine; most are too small to attract a wholesaler, which they need if they want to sell their wines at retail. The state wholesaler trade group declined to comment on the proposed change, though it is supporting a cut in licensing fees the wineries always want.

• No, no sugar: The Wine Spectator’s Mitch Frank, continuing his defense of the wine business, reminds his readers that most wine isn’t as sugary as soft drinks – no matter what the various lifestyle writers and neo-Prohibitionist groups are telling us. “No, Your Wine Is Not Packed with Sugar,” he writes, and then explains why the myth exists. It’s something we’ve heard a lot lately, given the emphasis on “healthy” and “better for you” wine.

Winebits 717: Winespeak, DoorDash, supermarket wine

winespeak
“OK, now let’s make this clear — toasty and oaky are out.”

This week’s wine news: Wine Scholars Guild says it will try to make winespeak easier to understand. Plus, DoorDash expands booze delivery and a look at the supermarket wine store of the future.

• No more toasty and oaky? The Wine Scholar Guild, a leading wine education group, says it wants to change the way we talk about wine. Or, at least I think that’s what it wants to do. The story describing the effort is so full of PR-speak, education-speak, and some -speak that I couldn’t decipher, that it’s difficult to say for sure. To quote: The project would “empower the individual to taste and describe wine with an enriched and universal lexicon.” In addition, it would “dive deeper into assessing the qualities of a wine’s building blocks” and look “into the nature of a wine’s personality.” Sigh. This is probably worth a separate post on the blog; I’ll try to follow up and see if I can make any sense of it.

• Bring on the booze: DoorDash, the restaurant delivery  service that has branched out to groceries and clothing, is expanding its alcohol delivery effort. Customers will be able to place orders for beer, wine, and spirits (with or without food) from participating local restaurants and supermarkets in select markets in 20 states. We’ll ignore for a moment the company’s infamous reputation (and that the Wine Curmudgeon has all but stopped using it, since half my orders are wrong in some way). Instead, let’s focus on what this news means: Another chink in the armor that restricts alcohol sales in the U.S. That the company would have done this two years ago is doubtful. But the pandemic changed all that, and that DoorDash thinks it can make money with wine delivery speaks volumes.

• Even in Iowa: We’ve written a lot on the blog about how important supermarkets are to the future of wine, and here’s one more example — a regional grocer has built an upscale market in suburban Des Moines, Iowa, with “a Hy-Vee Wine & Spirits department offering a walk-in beer cooler, a walk-in wine room and a walk-in humidor.” In Iowa? In addition, the story reports that building the store required a $26 million investment, and that it is its “first entirely reimagined grocery store.” What does that say about what Hy-Vee’s bosses think about selling wine in supermarkets?

Winebits 708: Three-tier, direct shipping, Big Food

walmart wine
“Do you see that Walmart wine that the WC needs to buy?”

This week’s wine news: Even Walmart is scared of three-tier, plus direct shipping for spirits, and Big Food dominates even more than Big Wine

• Not in Arkansas? The email from the Walmart marketing person wanted me to review its new $10 Winemakers Selection Reserve Series wines. But when I talked to the woman, she said I would have to go to Walmart to buy the wines. Arkansas law forbids the company – one of the largest retailers in the world, the inventor of the post-modern supply chain, and the subject of more academic studies than Wine Curmudgeon has rants – from sending samples. Is it any wonder I worry about the future of the wine business? I mention this not to be upset and bothered that I have to go to Walmart to buy wine; regular readers know I buy about two-thirds of the wine I review, and have bought much Walmart wine in the past. Rather, it’s to note that it’s difficult to get products reviewed when it’s illegal to send the product to reviewers. Which, of course, happens in almost no other business in the world.

• Bring on the spirits: Several trade groups are lobbying for direct shipment of beer and spirits, which is currently illegal. If they succeed, you’ll be able to buy craft beer, whiskey, gin, and so forth directly from the producer, just like we do with wine. This means they’re heading for a showdown not only with the various states, but with the all-powerful Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America. It opposes all direct shipping, even of wine. The groups say that even though 46 states plus the District of Columbia allow direct shipments of wine, only nine states plus D.C. permit direct shipping of spirits, despite “despite broad consumer support for the latter.”

• Big Food: Dwight Furrow, writing in Edible Arts, talks about the human, environmental, and agricultural cost of Big Food, the companies like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Conagra, and Unilever that are even more dominant in their sphere than Big Wine is in its. “For those of us who have been watching consolidation in the wine business, this will come as no surprise. But the situation is much worse in the food industry,” he writes. It’s a clarion call to anyone who worries about consolidation in wine and how it affects something we dearly love.

Photo: Kampus Production from Pexels

Winebits 700: Sunday wine sales, tasting room fees, imported wine

supermarket wine
“Ah, 9:58 a.m. So I can buy wine in just two minutes!”

This week’s wine news: Texans will be able to buy wine at 10 a.m. on Sunday, plus a hike in California tasting room fees and imported wine takes a hit

• Bring on the wine: Texans will be able to buy wine at the supermarket at 10 a.m. on Sunday on their way to church, thanks to legislation passed last week. Previously, we had to wait until noon, when church ended. The bill may have been been a compromise to stop Sunday liquor store sales; it’s illegal in Texas for liquor stores to open on Sunday, and has been since 1935. Because, of course, church. A bill to allow liquor stores to open on Sunday failed to pass yet again, at least the fifth bill in the past decade to do so. Still, we have cocktails-to-go if we need a belt of whiskey on Sunday.

• Up, up, and up: The average price for a standard tasting fee has almost doubled in five years to $58 in Napa County and $30 in Sonoma County. That’s good news just in time for a revival of wine tourism, yes? Wine-searcher reports the details from Silicon Valley Bank’s 2021 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Survey Report. The average tasting fee in the U.S. is $25, according to the report. Washington state wineries charge the least – just $15. And many wineries report having a higher “reserve tasting” fee, which averages $90 in Napa and $50 in Sonoma.

• Down and down: The global pandemic, on-premise shutdowns, and the Trump tariff sunk imported wine shipments to the U.S. last year, reports Shanken News Daily. Imported table wine shipments to the U.S. fell almost nine percent in 2020. Which, of course, is to be expected for anyone paying attention. Italy accounted for more than one-third of U.S. imports, making it the top foreign wine importer.

Photo: Oleg Magni via Pexels