On a cool, clear drive thru the meandering hillsides of the newest Sonoma County appellation, Fountaingrove District AVA, you can find fire-scared vacant lots, a scattering of homes under construction, and swaths of vineyards left with unpicked fruit. In rear view, it has been a devastating wildfire season across the West Coast, and in Australia. Once hopeful expectations of an average harvest here, have been devalued significantly by these seasonal, unannounced forces of nature.
With the pervasive risk of 'smoke-taint' on harvested grapes, and the widespread cancellation of grape contracts by producers is expected to yield a sales loss of more than $400 million to California's small winegrape growers. As a global impact, it has also been a year of broad temperature extremes from a changing climate, reflected in part by the earliest recorded grape harvest in Burgundy, France, ever.
An on-going trans-Atlantic trade war between the U.S. and the European Union wine industry continues to result in higher tariffs, higher prices for domestic consumers and our Old World counterparts. Here typically, these imported wines from France, Spain and Germany were among the great authentic values for many global wine lovers to seek out. In the war's early days wine importers and distributors took the cost hit, but without any certainty in the market future, this is changing to be passed on to consumers.
With the recent FTC approval of the Gallo-Constellation Brands buyout, the behemoth Modesto empire now controls an even greater sway in the lower end brand marketplace(bottom shelves). As consumers increasingly buy 'down' in grocery stores, there is a trend for more modest wines to increase sales volume at the expense of more premium brands. Coupled with the broad on-premise demise, where more than an estimated 100,000 restaurants across the country have permanently closed, small producers who opt for supermarket space now get to fight the wine beast. Well positioned, multi-faceted Gallo also dominates the domestic glass bottle market.
And, yet, retail wine sales grow. There are more brands, more alternative packaging in our marketplace than ever before. Western states lead the nation in responsible, sustainable winegrape growing practices, with 1800+ custodians of our Sonoma County vineyards leading the way. Newly improvised 'virtual tastings' are also gaining traction with consumers, as the shroud of mystery surrounding limited bottlings finds a growing marketplace accessible from a home screen or mobile device.
A wineries federal excise tax(currently around $1/gallon) now benefits from the permanent reduced tax rates and tax credits via the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, recently signed into law. It marks the needed updated reforms to decades old tax legislation that impacts so many small wine producers who had been burdened by its antiquated structure.
At the end of another wine day, so many of us continue to have relatively easy access to a social vehicle that is to be enjoyed and shared. We can safely visit a local retail merchant, join an on-line club, or invest in a growing number of virtual retail wine sites. Harmlessly in our shelter-in-place domiciles, wine can be an escape in a glass, a delicious and intriguing indulgence that may lift us away from the mundane, the ordinary. Even if ordinare, wine can be that facilitator of an intimate dinner conversation, and the inspiration for dreams that lead us to possibilities while enhancing the sustaining bounty before us.
As we close another chronicle and look to a brighter future, we can still access good wine throughout the marketplace, we can still find wonder in a distinctive and authentic quaff that excites, and we can still share the joy with those close to us. For us wine lovers, the more bottles we explore the more we can taste that this has been a year of wine unlike any other.
Salute! and Happy, Healthy New Year!!
WineLinks:
http://fountaingroveava.com/
https://sonomawinegrape.org/scw/sustainability/
https://www.winebusiness.com/news/?go=getArticle&dataId=212102
https://www.gallo.com/portfolio/
