Wine Economist in Wonderland

April 27, 2010 By Mike Veseth in globalization, wine brands, wine history, wine markets, wine tourism Leave a comment

Alice entered Wonderland by jumping down a rabbit hole. I got there by walking through this doorway.

It happened 30 years ago and inside the door I met a famous winemaker who was as interested in economics was I was in wine. The result of our chance conversation was my fascination with wine economics and, ultimately, this blog.

Through the Oak Door

This is not an ordinary door. It is made from the planks of a huge oak cask. I rediscovered it a few days ago when I visited Napa Valley to attend the annual Stags Leap District Winegrowers Vineyard to Vintner (V2V) seminar, tasting and celebration.

The Stags Leap AVA can understandably be viewed as Wonderland by wine lovers. It is famous for its distinctive Cabernet Sauvignon wines, including some of the ones that did so well in the famous 1976 Judgment of Paris commemorated in George Taber’s excellent book of that name and the more recent somewhat dubious but nearly always entertaining film, Bottle Shock.

I was in Stags Leap at the invitation of the growers association to attend the events and to consider how wine has changed in 30 years, using the terroir of this region as my test bed.

One Side Makes You Grow Larger …

It was hard to know how Stags Leap and its wines would develop when I first opened the door thirty years ago. There were a lot of indications that the area might turn into what some critics say the whole of Napa Valley has become — the over-commercialized Disneyland of wine.

Although it was only really “discovered” as a winegrowing area in the early 1970s, a lot of money was already focused on Stags Leap when I made my first visit. Clos du Val (first vintage in 1972) was the result of a collaboration between American businessman and wine industry investor John Goelet and Bordeaux winemaker Bernard Porter. It was just the sort of thing that gives Mondovino fans screaming nightmares.

Chimney Rock Winery (1980) looks like a South African Cape Dutch estate because its founder Sheldon “Hack” Wilson made his money selling Pepsi Cola in South Africa. He was the largest volume Pepsi bottler in the world at one point, according to my copy of James Halliday’s Wine Atlas of California.

Silverado Vineyards (1981) — a beautiful winery with a beautiful view — unintentionally reinforces the Disneyland theme because the family of Walt Disney built it, starting with a vineyard purchase in 1976 and continuing today.

It was easy to imagine in 1980 that this trend would continue — and the wines would suffer — as more money flooded into the tiny Stags Leap area.

… And the Other Makes You Grow Smaller

But capital is not always blind (to paraphrase Walter Bagehot). Some of the early Stags Leap investors were the sort of people I have labeled terroirists who value wine for its somewhereness.

I suppose that Dick Steltzner would fit into this group. An experienced viticulturalist, he planted what might have been the first vineyard at the base of the Stags Leap palisade in 1965, finally making his own wine at Steltzner Vineyards in 1977.

Warren Winiarski, the guy who won the red wine competition in the 1976 Paris tasting with his Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, strikes me as a terroirist, too, although perhaps he was just a stubborn, philosophical wine perfectionist. So all the pieces were in place for a battle for the soul of Stags Leap wine.

And Now Which is Which?

Looking back to 1980, it seems like it could have gone either way. Globalization money and media creating Coca Cola wine … or the revenge of the terroirists, preserving the distinctive quality of Stags Leap.

How did the story turn out? Check back in a few days to find out what I think I learned from my fieldwork.

Malbec Boom … and Bust?

April 18, 2010 By Mike Veseth in Argentina, Supply and Demand, wine markets 6 Comments

Malbec is hot and Argentinian producers are harvesting the benefits of a boom market. The Nielsen Scantrack multi-vector retail sales data reported in the April issue of Wine Business Monthly tell the story.

Total U.S. table market sales up 3.0 percent in dollar value over the last 12 months and up 3.5 percent in the quarter.

Argentinian wine sales (mainly but not entirely Malbec) are up 41.4 percent for the year and 36.6 percent in the last quarter. That’s a rate of growth unmatched in the current wine league table — much higher than other New World producers like Chile (5.2 percent growth for the year), South Africa and Australia (falling dollar volume sales).

Only New Zealand is remotely in the same sales growth ballpark with an 18 percent increase in the last quarter.

That’s Why They Call It the Dismal Science

Only an economist would look at this picture and wonder if Argentina’s Malbec boom might foreshadow a coming Malbec bust. Sorry to be so gloomly … can’t help it. That’s why they call it the dismal science. When economists see silver linings they start looking around for the dark clouds that come with them.

Personally, I hope the boom continues for a while at least. It has to come to an end some day, of course, since 30+ annual percent growth quickly compounds its way to All The Wine in the World. Only someone named Ponzi could sell that vision of Argentina’s future.

The idea that bust follows boom isn’t just my dismal side talking, it is a persistent feature of agricultural markets. High prices are great, but when everyone expands production the result is a collapse. Low prices convince producers to invest elsewhere, so supply fails to keep up with demand the prices rise again. Rinse and repeat.

World Wine Wheel

I learned about this cycle back in Econ 101 in the form of the cobweb model of market dynamics. The Turrentine Wine Business Wheel of Fortune (click here for the pdf version) applies this idea to the U.S. wine market in particular.

The 2007 version of the wheel shown above predicted that the U.S. wine industry would be deep into the Emerging Shortage zone in 2010. This obviously didn’t take into account the Great Recession, which has created substantial surpluses of wine today, but I think the general logic still holds.

Data suggests that vineyard plantings are down (at least one major grape vine nursery has shut its doors). My sense is that wine producers have scaled back supply to the level of current demand and that the persistent overall market surplus is mainly the overhang from previous years. Once that is dealt with (easier said than done!) and demand begins to come back, that “emerging shortage” situation could come to pass.

Having a Good Crisis

Meanwhile, Argentina is having a good crisis, at least in terms of wine, as their good value Malbecs have benefited from consumer trends to trade down and trade over. WineSur (a great source for Argentinian wine news) reports new vineyard plantings and winery expansions, calling it “a risky supply and demand game.” Risky and high stakes.

The Catena Family group exported 12 million liters of wine in 2009, according to the article, but has expanded its capacity so that it can produce 19 million liters this year to sell in 2012. “We are running a risk and investing according to our estimates,” chief winemakers Alejandro Vigil reports, “We also continuing buying vineyards … This year we’re planning to implant around 200 hectares … 75% of which will be implanted with Malbec.”

You’ve got to think five or six years ahead in Argentina’s dynamic Malbec market. New vineyards today, more grapes in three years or so when the vines have matured, market-ready wine a couple of years after that. I wonder what the wine market will look like then? No wonder they say that the only person crazier than a winery owner is his banker! Easy to get caught leaning the wrong way under these circumstances.

Will Argentina’s Malbec boom lead to bust? Possibly, but there is reason to think it might not. Nicolás Catena, head of one of the largest firms, is a recovering economics professor (he taught at UC/Berkeley at one point). He came back to wine and Argentina at his family’s request. If, as I think, skepticism is hardwired into the economist’s brain, then perhaps Catena’s big investment in the future is more cautious than it seems and will pay off handsomely.

Conventional Wisdom versus Mark Twain

The decision to expand output and exports forces a second risky choice: focus (on Malbec) or diversify? It is conventional wisdom not to put all your eggs in one basket. But Mark Twain once advised the opposite: Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!

A new article on WineSur addresses this question and the majority viewpoint seems to be with Mr. Twain but this is perhaps understandable since it is Malbec that has put Argentina on the world wine map. Malbec has established Argentina’s identity and reputation and winemakers are understandably reluctant to bet against their own success.

But it must be said that rapid export expansion focused on a single varietal does magnify the risks. I would advise Argentinian wine industry leaders to watch that basket very carefully — invest in their markets so that Malbec becomes a durable phenomenon with good length and not a short sharp boom/bust fad.

Myth of the Level (Vineyard) Playing Field

April 11, 2010 By Mike Veseth in Economic impact, EU wine market reforms, speculation, Supply and Demand, trade policy, wine investment, wine markets 4 Comments

Terrain matters, both in wine and in markets. Many of the world’s best vineyards cling to hillsides or follow natural contours (like the famous Pewsey Vale vineyard shown here).

While wine people seem to appreciate the challenges and opportunities that complicated terrain presents, economists are drawn (at least metaphorically) to tabletops. We think of the world in competitive terms and seek out “level playing fields” where our favorite theories are most applicable.

The Difference Between Vineyards and Soccer Fields

As a wine economist, I can appreciate the flat and the steep of the wine world and I have come to upon a particular irony. Wine market reforms in the European Union are intended to create a level playing field and to encourage, induce and sometimes force winegrowers to compete. The days of big subsidies and routine “emergency” distillation are gone, or will be soon, we are told.

But wine markets are as complicated as the vineyard shown above and establishing a flat competitive arena is not a simple matter. Wine markets are more like vineyards than we like to think. Tariffs, quotas, subsidies and selling regulations can be brought into line, of course, but that is just the beginning. The uneven contours of the market run very deep.

Whither/Wither the Vines?

I was reminded of this by a recent post on the Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog titled “Whither inexpensive, artisanal California wine?” (Tablas Creek is a well regarded maker of Rhone-inspired wines in California’s Paso Robles area.)

The question that the article posed was whether it made economic sense for the winery to develop a new vineyard property to produce high quality reasonably priced wine (the $20 price point plus or minus a few bucks). The answer? Probably not, but with a rather thorough cost analysis provided so you can see how the various factors (land cost, debt service, planting cost, operating cost, even opportunity cost) factor in.

It’s a really good article for anyone who thinks that the decision to start of vineyard or a winery is an easy one. (The sommelier in the video above would do well to read it!)

At the end of the day, the single most important factor was the cost of the land. Even in a depressed market, land costs create a hurdle too high to overcome in Paso Robles.

(Note: I was also struck by planting and operative cost differences associated with dry farming the vines. Much lower cost, somewhat lower yields — worth serious consideration where feasible given the growing water shortage.)

Why are vineyard land prices so high that they make the vineyards themselves uneconomic? Well, the land has many uses aside from the obvious one of growing wine grapes. Speculators might want to buy it to hold and resell, not operate for the long run. Lifestyle investors push up the price because they consider the amenity value of a vineyard home more than the economic value of its grape crop. These alternative demands can push the price above the level growers can afford.

Tilting the Playing Field

This distorts the playing field on which international wine markets operate. Land costs are a big factor for many expanding New World wineries because those costs are so recent that it is difficult to ignore them.

Land costs are often ignored for Old World producers, I am told — especially the thousands of small winegrowers who have owned their land for several generations. Ignoring the cost of capital allows them to sell for less, depressing prices (and therefore, ironically, the value of their land, too). Poor economic choices in the Languedoc tilt the playing field against Paso Robles.

But the loudest cries I have heard in this regard are from Australia, not California, where vineyards that produce grapes for bulk wine find themselves more directly in competition with those economically untutored Languedoc vignerons. The low prices that result when French winegrowers ignore the cost of vineyard capital are not the only or even the biggest source of Australia’s current crisis, but they are certainly a contributing factor.

Stag’s {Stags’} (Stags) Leap

April 4, 2010 By Mike Veseth in Wine Competitions, wine festivals, wine history, wine law, wine research, wine tourism Leave a comment

The Stags Leap District Winegrowers Association has invited us to their V2V (Vineyard to Vintner) program later this month and we are looking forward to the event.

I have a particular interest in the Stags Leap District. My study of wine economics can be directly traced to a conversation with one of this area’s leading winemakers in his cellar many years ago. I’m looking forward to this focused opportunity to learn more about the Stags Leap District today and see what has changed since my last visit.

Money, Wine and Lawyers

The first stage of my research to prepare for the Stags Leap trip took an unexpected turn that reminded me of Warren Zevon’s song “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Most stories of famous wine regions are about places, faces and wine. They start with places (the terroir), then move to faces (of the famous winemakers who helped establish the region’s reputation) and end with the wines themselves.

Stags Leap AVA certainly has the terroir. The district, about six miles north of Napa on the Silverado Road, is marked by a 1200 foot vertical basalt palisade that is both landmark and a source of the particular soil and microclimate that helps define the district. The growing season is longer in Stags Leap than in other parts of Napa Valley, with bud break coming two weeks earlier. The grapes ripen more slowly during their longer time on the vine, which seems to have a positive effect.

Stags Leap has it famous wine faces, too. The most notable is Warren Winiasrski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. A former lecturer in Greek at the University of Chicago School of Social Thought, he was one of the early movers in Stags Leap. His second vintage, a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, was declared the red wine winner at the famous 1976 “Judgment of Paris” wine tasting that Steven Spurrier organized to test California wines against the French originals. (You know about this event if you’ve read George B. Taber’s excellent book on the subject or seen the fictionalized film version, Bottle Shock.)

(Incredibly, the winning wine was made with grapes from three year old vines — infants! Unfortunately, according to my sources here, the vineyard was not in the Stags Leap District but rather farther north in Napa Valley. It established the winery’s and the region’s reputations at once.)

There is even a hallmark Stags Leap style — “perfumey fruit” according to Bruce Cass, although not every wine is made in a way that highlights this.

Lawyers, Wine and Grammar

So where do the lawyers come in? Well, the first thing I did when I started this project was to grab my copy of James Halliday’s classic Wine Atlas of California. Halliday devotes seven pages to Stags Leap places and faces and its distinctive Cabernet Sauvignon wines. But he begins his report with the most controversial part of the AVA’s history: its name and the legal battle over the the valuable intellectual property rights (IPRs) associated with it.

The area takes its name from the legend of a prodigious jump that a stag (or maybe several stags) took on the palisade while fleeing hunters. Warren Winiarski naturally included this colorful reference in the name of his winery, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, when he founded the operation in 1972.

But so did Carl Dounami, who started founded Stags’ Leap Winery just up the road, also in 1972. Two wineries, two strong personalities — they battled for years over the right to the Stag’s / Stags’ Leap name. More than an apostrophe separated them, of course, although any grammarian can tell you that where the apostrophe is placed makes all the difference.

The right to label your wine with some variation of Stag’s/Stags’ Leap had obvious economic advantages and both winemakers wanted clear title to the designation. The IPR battle reemerged and intensified when the AVA was formed and its geographic lines drawn.

Clashing economic interests made the process of choosing a name and drawing AVA lines particularly contentious, according to Halliday. The compromise name — Stags Leap (no apostrophe anywhere, purely plural, nowhere possessive) settled the legal squabble, leaving the real task clear: making great wine.

Challenges Old & New

The old wine economics story of Stags Leap was about intellectual property. The new one — the one I want to explore when I visit later this month — is how the winegrowers are dealing with the current economic challenge and will respond to the future ones.

The current challenge, of course, is the continuing economic crisis, which has hit some upscale producers especially hard.

The future challenges? The future is hard to predict, but I’d suggest globalization (with its many threats and opportunities) and climate change, which would seem to be an especially scary prospect for a micro-region like Stags Leap. But maybe I’m missing an even bigger story? I guess I’ll have to go there and find out!

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