WineInk: Strange days | AspenTimes.com

WineInk.
WineInk

The pundit on television smirked as he said it. “If you really want to know, the average American in this country could care less about the price of wine from France. They care about gasoline costing less than $3 per gallon.” He was making a point, correctly, that the prices of energy, eggs, and chicken weigh more on people’s minds than what tariffs may or may not be placed on imported wine.

But with the smirk, he was also implying that it was frivolous to care about the cost of wine, that wine was not a subject worthy of consideration in our economy of haves and have-nots. It is easy to take a shot across the bow of the wine industry and suggest that wine prices are a trivial matter to most. But wine is more than just a frivolity for the wealthy; it is a significant industry that directly affects the lives of thousands and the business of more. It is estimated that the U.S. wine industry directly employs over 900,000 people in around 11,000 wineries.

This past Tuesday, President Trump suggested that he might use the cudgel of increased tariffs on French wines to spur French President Emmanuel Macron into joining his “Board of Peace” concept. “I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join,” Trump said. Suddenly, the French wine industry, which already is subject to a 15% tariff, was being dramatically disrupted as buyers and sellers in both Europe and America tried to figure out how to predict and make purchasing plans in an ever-changing landscape.

What will happen remains to be seen, but it is another brick in what has been a wobbly wall for the wine industry over the last few years. Here in Aspen, a resort town for the well-heeled, demand for premium wines remains relatively strong, but further afield there are continued struggles in an industry that has an economic impact of over $300 billion a year.

One of the more striking trends has been a decrease in consumption of wine in recent years by younger people. “Millennials just don’t care about wine anymore,” a local wine distributor told me recently as he spoke of the changes in the wine market. There are myriad reasons given for this trend, but changes in attitudes about health and evolving competition from alternative beverages like craft and nonalcoholic beers, canned cocktails, and energy drinks all have contributed to the slowdown in consumption. Wine marketers are attempting to speak with authenticity to up-and-coming consumers about the origins of their wines and build loyalty and relationships on the positive experience of drinking wine.

Then there is the oversupply of grapes. Throughout the domestic wine industry, from California to Washington, there are vineyards that are being uprooted because they just are not profitable. And each fall finds more grapes left on the vines and unharvested. For years, vineyard owners were able to sell much of their grape production to bulk wine producers and keep the best juice for their own labels. But too much planting of new vineyards over the last dozen years has led to an oversupply that has met the decrease in demand head-on. And it is not just here. In France the government allocated $125 million to pay vintners to uproot as much as 3.5% of all the vineyards in the country.

Strange days indeed.