No one is quite certain what will happen to U.S. wine prices in the coming year, but one thing is certain: Change is afoot.
Several weeks ago, news stories indicated a strong likelihood that wine prices would come down in retail stores because of scant demand by consumers seeking alternative beverages combined with a prohibitionist movement that seeks to report medical dangers too simplistically.
It has been known for decades by medical science that small amounts of wine consumed regularly are part of a healthy diet. But neoprohibitionists’ recent messages attempt to counter that notion.
As a result of slow sales of wine, it is estimated that more than 25 percent of all the grapes grown in California either were not harvested this year or were never made into wine because of the lack of demand.
This is not just a domestic problem. Literally hundreds of thousands of grapevines worldwide have been targeted for removal this year in significant wine country regions, including France, Italy, Spain, and Australia.
France announced last week that roughly 120,000 acres of vines would be pulled out!
However, wine prices also hinge on political considerations. When President-elect Donald Trump promised that he would impose tariffs on foreign goods, it brought back memories of the tariffs he imposed on French wines in his first term.
Should this occur again, it could trigger higher prices for French wine. This might be seen as good news for domestic wines, but it remains to be seen if any tariffs levied on European goods include European-produced winery and vineyard equipment that’s needed here.
Americans seeking lower prices for wine might take advantage of a relatively new category of wines.
California produces more than 85 percent of all the wines made in the United States. Most of this wine is labeled as “California” wine. But a federal law permits wines produced here to contain up to 25 percent of wines produced outside the country.
These “import-blended” wines cannot be called “California” but may carry the designation “American.”
Several large wine companies, taking advantage of really inexpensive imported wine coming here in bulk, now produce lower-priced wines that say “American” on their labels. Federal law prohibits such wines from carrying a vintage date.
Companies are charging very low prices for these blends. I sampled three of these wines recently and found them to be decent values even though their prices were lower than $6 per bottle!
They were not memorable. They didn’t make me forget quality wines. They were simply ordinary table wines that were better than I had anticipated they would be.
