Monthly Archives: November 2020

Thanksgiving Flashback: Great Seattle Wine Heist

November 24, 2020 By in wine, wine fraud 6 Comments


It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States, a time to relax, enjoy, and be grateful. But that’s not always easy to do in these difficult times.

Do you need something to take your mind off worries about the election, Covid-19, and the Seattle Seahawk’s unpredictable defense? We have just the thing: a dramatic wine crime story. Here is a flashback to Thanksgiving 2013: The Wine Economist’s report on the Great Seattle Thanksgiving Day Wine Heist.

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Wine Economist: CSI Fine Wine Edition

  • Crime doesn’t pay.
  • The best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a big one.

What happens when you combine these two old sayings? Well, you would think that it would add up to the fact that if crime doesn’t pay, then wine crime really doesn’t pay. But that may not be true. How else can we explain the recent fine wine crime wave, which may well be just the tip of the iceberg.

Wine Crime Wave?

Most of the attention has been focused on Rudi Kurniawan’s recent conviction for wine fraud — the first federal criminal prosecution and conviction for wine counterfeiting. This dramatic crime and the revealing trial has really captured the public’s imagination in part, I think, because of the romance associated with rare wine and the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” environment of the crime, the criminal and the victims.

There’s also a bit of what you might call a “Lance Armstrong” effect. The crime went on for years along with accusations, defenses and denials. Then suddenly there was the trial, the conviction and the house of cards collapsed. Now we are left to wonder how widespread this sort of wine fraud might be and what wines are true and which are false. The conviction isn’t the end of the story, only the beginning of the next chapter in the mystery.

Thanksgiving Day Heist

The Thanksgiving Day wine heist in Seattle was a grittier affair but perhaps equally interesting to wine crime buffs. I’ve been trying to piece together what happened from published reports and private sources. The more I learn about it the more this crime reminds me of something from a television show — CSI or maybe Mission Impossible!

Here is what I think I know.

Two “common thieves” (plumbers by trade, according to the Seattle Police) broke into the wine storage facility operated by Esquin wine merchants in the SoDo neighborhood (SoDo stands for South of the Dome — the Kingdome sports stadium in this case, which was demolished by implosion in 2000). They ransacked 15 of the 450 private storage lockers in the climate-controlled facility and made off with more than 200 cases of wine valued at more than $600,000.

If you are doing the math, that’s an average of more than $3000 per case or more than $250 per bottle. I’m guessing that no Two Buck Chuck was taken!

The break-in was ingenious — the perpetrators apparently cut a hole through a wall and brought the wine out case by case. Police report that the crooks spent  13 hours selecting their wines and then driving the loot to another warehouse less than a mile away. Their SUV getaway vehicle had limited capacity, so they had to make 9 round trips. Although they blacked out all the security cameras that they could, apparently this was not completely successful and some images of the crooks and their SUV’s license plate were captured.

You would think that “common thieves” would not be terribly discriminating wine shoppers — after all I suspect that most of the bottles and cases at this storage facility were of some value. Why not just smash and grab? But that’s not what happened.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

The bad guys apparently worked from some sort of shopping list, taking specific wines and vintages and leaving the rest. I’m told that the only Washington State wines taken were Quilceda Creek and Corliss, for example. Leonetti and Andrew Will? Apparently not up the discerning crook’s standards! I understand that wine was not just stolen, but also moved around and mixed up during the extended shopping spree and a few of the victims are apparently having to sort out which wines are theirs and which belong to someone else as well as which bottles have gone missing.

A good old-fashioned paper trail of evidence helped solve the crime and now opens the door to other possible heists. The first criminal captured had apparently kept receipts from a home improvement store — great idea in case you need to return an item! — and police used the day/time information on the paper to access security camera footage showing the suspect and his accomplice buying  the hardware used in the criminal act.

According to the Seattle Times a second paper trail opens the door to an earlier wine crime.

A shipping label found in Harris’ wine-storage locker led detectives to a San Francisco wine consultant, who told police he purchased $100,000 of wine from Harris and another man in April or May, charging papers say. Through an online search, Detective Don Jones determined there had been a large wine theft in the Bay Area in March, the papers say.

Covering Their Tracks

A KOMO news report added a another Mission Impossible-style detail about the carefully plotted plan to crack the wine storage facility.

New details from the charging documents filed Monday reveal police found a journal labeled “The Plan” in Harris’ SUV. The journal reportedly included a step-by-step guide to the crime, a list of needed equipment, steps to destroy any evidence, steps to ship the wine and how to leave the country.

In addition, police found a book titled “Thinking  About Crime,” as well as printed out documents called “Is it Accidental Fire or Arson?” and “How to Commit the Perfect Crime,” inside Harris’ house, according to the charging documents.

Where does the arson come in? Well, the thieves planned to cover their tracks in the most comprehensive possible way. They cut  gas lines and expected the building to blow up. Good fortune prevented any loss of life and good police work captured the criminals. Some of the victims are more upset about the idea of the flaming cover-up plan with its potentially tragic consequences than the actual robbery.

So case closed for now — the thieves in custody and a good chance that most of  the wine (minus one  empty Champagne bottle) has been recovered. But are these two common thieves the whole story? Or is there a criminal mastermind (not necessarily Rudi K) still at large making up a shopping lists for clients too smart to buy fakes but maybe not too smart to avoid stolen goods? Good question!

So welcome to the new era of wine crime where the questions a fine wine enthusiast needs to answer now range from red or white and Burgundy or Bordeaux all the way to real or fake, stolen or legit? Cheers!

Wine, Tariffs, & Globalization

November 17, 2020 By in coronavirus, economic crisis, globalization, recession, trade policy, trade wars, wine, wine exports, wine markets Leave a comment

 

The wine trade has always been as global as transportation technology and political economy have allowed. So it is no surprise that the economist David Ricardo sought to make his theory of international trade based on comparative advantage clear and obvious by choosing an example that all his readers would appreciate — Portuguese wine exchanged for British wool.

A World of Wine

If you want to get a sense of wine’s global reach today I suggest you visit your local upscale supermarket or wine shop and survey the landscape there. I had my university students do this back in 2011 and reported the results in a Wine Economist column.  The local Safeway store carried about 750 wines from a dozen different countries back them, which caught the students by surprise. The store has expanded its wine wall since then, with even more offerings, and the supermarket across the street has an even larger set of wine choices. Globalization delivers a world of wine to your doorstep!

Global trade in wine, both bottled and shipped in bulk, is incredibly important to wine producing countries. The largest producers — France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, South Africa — could not possibly sell all the wine they produce in their domestic markets. The collapse of global wine trade would be a global wine catastrophe.

And the trade in wine isn’t the whole story. Global markets exist for corks, capsules, winemaking services (think “flying winemakers”), and bottles, too. We’ve visited wineries in South Africa, for example, that import glass bottles from Europe and then export the finished wine to the UK, China, and the US. That’s globalization! Chinese glass has an even broader global reach.

Peak Wine Globalization?

By some measures globalization generally — taking into account goods, services, and people — reached a peak about the time of the global financial crisis and has since shrunk as a percentage of global GDP. Global wine resisted the de-globalization trend, however, but perhaps now is catching up.

Some of the macroeconomic drivers of wine imports and exports such as rising disposable incomes and stable exchange rates have been impacted by the Covid recession. And of course Covid restrictions and behavioral changes have negatively affected both on-premise wine sales and travel and tourism vectors, too.

There are attractive pockets and niche markets for wine sales all around the world and smart producers have sought them out. But the three big wine targets in recent years have been the UK, US, and China and each of these has become more challenging.

The UK issue is Brexit and it is shocking that there is so much uncertainty about the nature of future trade arrangements with just a few weeks to go before the exit from the EU is final. Britain’s unsuccessful attempt to navigate the twists and turns of Covid have pushed the country into a recession that is likely to grow worse before it gets better — a bad thing for income- and price-sensitive wine demand. Add to this the possibility of a botched Brexit and you might see Britain’s status in world wine trade diminish substantially.

Tit for Tat

The US market is suffering from Covid and recession problems as well and its own set of trade issues. The Trump trade wars have increased tariffs on wine imports from the EU, for example, but also generated retaliatory tariffs on US exports to China.

Wine has been caught in the crossfire in the Boeing-Airbus trade dispute, as The Wine Curmudgeon recently reported. The WTO has ruled that the US can impose tariffs on EU products in response to Airbus subsidies and that the EU can put tariffs on US products because of subsidies to Boeing. Wine figured prominently on the US tariff list, but the EU plans to focus on US spirits instead of wine, with new duties on vodka, rum, etc. on top of previous tariffs on U.S. bourbon.

How did the US wine industry dodge the tariff bullet in this case? Trade policy is sometimes very personal when you think about it. EU tariffs on US wine would fall heaviest on California producers — think for a moment important politicians from California. (Does the name Nancy come to mind?) Not necessarily someone the EU wants to upset.

Tariffs on US spirits fall heavily on Kentucky bourbon producers. Can you think of an important political leader from Kentucky that EU officials might enjoy roughing up a bit? Maybe some guy named Mitch? Just thinking out loud …

China vs Oz

And then there’s China. Down in Australia there is more than a bit of concern about wine trade with China. China has grown to be Australia’s largest wine export market, so rumors that the Chinese government might impose tariffs on or even ban imports of Aussie wine entirely are serious concerns. It is not clear that the US and UK, the other big export markets, could easily absorb the resulting flood of  unsold wine.

Since tariffs are as political as they are economic, there is hope that, with a changing US administration, the troops in the wine trade wars might stand down and a truce be agreed. This could start with both sides backing down over the Boeing-Airbus duties. That would certainly be a good outcome and I don’t think it is impossible.

No Easy Fixes

But tariffs aren’t the only factor preventing a return to the previous era of wine globalization as noted above, so don’t expect a quick fix. International producers seeking to penetrate the US market in particular need to be aware of how much the on-trade to off-trade shift has changed which wines American consumers buy, where they buy them, and how much they are willing to pay.

The process of restoring wine’s global reach seems likely to be a process and probably a slow one, with some firms and regions more successful than others. The faster the global economy returns to health, the faster the clouds will clear for global wine.

Vino-ligopoly: Zero-Sum Wine Game Strategies

November 10, 2020 By in coronavirus, economic crisis, recession, trade wars, wine, wine markets, wine price 1 Comment

Last week’s Wine Economist column was a thought experiment. What if the Covid recession was a game changer like the oil crisis of the 1970s? Both crises undermined fundamental economic assumptions and generated long-lasting impacts. In particular, drawing upon the work of MIT economist Lester Thurow, the oil crisis changed the nature of the game from positive-sum growth to zero-sum competition for shares of the pie.

Maybe the parallel is off base and maybe the game hasn’t really changed. But let’s think about the future the wine industry in the sort of slow growth, low inflation, high debt economic environment that many see on the horizon, with a focus on gaining market share in a stagnant economy.

Wine’s Zero-Sum Dilemma

Zero-sum market environments are nothing new for wine. As this OIV graph of wine demand volume shows, growth in the global wine market pie was once quite strong. Imagine a trend line for 2000-2007 and you’ll see what I mean.

Now draw a trend line for 2008- 2019. It’s pretty much a flat line, isn’t it?  The picture improves if we look at value and not volume because of the premiumization trend, but the the weight of stagnant volumes is still heavy.

So the focus is on gaining market share or raising margins rather than taking advantage of a growing overall market and this creates winners and losers. New Zealand has been a victor for many years. Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc sales have increased year after year, a trend that has continued in the Covid crisis environment. Imports from other countries have struggled here in the U.S. market with even powerhouse Italy under pressure. But the Kiwi wine wave rolls on.

Trading Spaces: On and Off

Perhaps the most obvious example of Covid’s zero-sum impact on the wine market is in the shift from on-premise to off-premise sales. Bars and restaurants have suffered both because of government restrictions on opening and also because concerned consumers have avoided crowded places in general even when not officially restricted. Wine consumption overall has not changed very much, but where consumption takes place and where products are purchased has shifted significantly.

The shift to off-premise consumption has many impacts, especially for wine companies that have worked very hard to place products on restaurant wine lists and for emerging brands that use on-premise sales to get a foot in the door. Shifting your restaurant sales to shops and supermarkets is not as simple as throwing a switch. Supermarkets especially favor big brands and broad product lines and there is some evidence that consumption patterns have moved in this direction, too.

One important impact of this shift, as I explained in an April 2020 Wine Economist column, is consolidation throughout the supply chain. Consolidation is a trend that extends far beyond the wine sector, of course. In an increasingly zero-sum market environment, large firms want to get even larger both in order to reduce margin-sapping competition and also to be able to negotiate better terms and lower costs. It’s not exactly wine-opoly — more vin0-ligopoly (insider joke for economics majors who remember the difference between monopoly and oligopoly, which is competition among a few big players).

Wine Wars / Price Wars

Econ 101 teaches us that one way that firms try to gain an advantage in a zero-sum game scenario is by cutting prices. This can quickly degenerate into a price war, of course, which is the ultimate negative-sum game for sellers (and a bonanza for consumers), especially if overall demand is price inelastic.

Are we seeing price wars on the wine aisle? As I explained in a May 2020 Wine Economist column, wine prices may be falling and rising at the same time, making it tricky to pick out net effects. If you are like me, your email inbox or Facebook news feed usually contains at least one discount offer from a winery or wine club — sometimes at incredibly low prices.

Looking narrowly at off-premise data, it appears that price premiumization continues. Sales of $25+ wines surged early in the pandemic period, for example. But, as I noted in May, these high price sales replace even higher-priced on-premise purchases at least in part. Those consumers were actually trading down as they shifted from restaurant meals and wine to home consumption. This is not a price war because it is cross-channel consumer behavior, but it will have that feel for wineries that cannot easily shift sales from on- to off-premise markets.

Game Changers

It isn’t easy to win if you think of the market in zero-sum terms (although not everyone agrees on this — President Trump famously proclaimed that trade wars were easy to win). Although there are many different strategies to consider, three stand out in my mind.

The first strategy is to analyze changes in market conditions and focus closely on growth segments. There is no single wine market, so a stagnant environment can a bit like a duck on a lake — quiet on the surface, but turbulent underneath. I wrote about Precept Wine in 2019, for example, highlighting their “Willie Sutton” strategy of putting resources into growth segments.

The second is simple: accept that the game is zero-sum and play hard to win on those terms. This means being very aggressive in terms of cost and price and making sure you are on the winning side was consolidation unfolds. Being big doesn’t guarantee success (small can be beautiful in a profitable niche), but there is no great advantage to being middle-sized.

The final strategy is to try to change the game. If wine vs wine is zero sum, try to shift the game to one with better odds. Don’t sell wine, sell a lifestyle. Don’t sell wine, sell community, culture, celebrity, or culinary connections. Ship the wine, sell the dream. Hitch your wine to a horse that can carry it to new market niches. Product differentiation — that’s what it’s all about.

What’s new about this? Nothing. The most popular wine magazines, for example, have long featured food, travel, and lifestyle as hooks for their wine stories.

In fact, using product differentiation to create and protect a profitable market niche is standard “monopolistic competition” theory.  But now might be a great time to think about what makes your wine’s offer distinctive and what you can do to protect yourself from head-to-head zero-sum competition.

Wine, Covid-19, and the Zero-Sum Dilemma

November 3, 2020 By in coronavirus, economic crisis, globalization, trade wars, wine, wine markets 1 Comment

Last week’s Wine Economist column presented a “Guide for the Overwhelmed” that analyzed the current crisis in terms of its perfect storm of component parts. This week begins a short series of articles that try to put the pieces back together in order to better see the outlines of the future of global wine in the post-Covid era.

Zero Sum Economics

MIT economist Lester Thurow’s 1980 book on The Zero-Sum Society argued that America and the world had reached a turning point. An era of growth, where an expanding social and economic pie made it possible for many to gain without corresponding losses for others, was coming to an end, Thurow argued. This change in the economic environment would have broad and lasting consequences.

Example? Under the right circumstances (which can be tricky), open trade is a recipe for positive-sum growth while protectionist trade wars are zero-sum at best and negative-sum at worst. The 1980s proved to be a fertile decade for trade barriers, competitive currency devaluations, and other protectionist policies.

What caused the sudden shift from positive-sum growth with rising overall living standards to zero-sum stagnation? It was complicated, of course. But the 1980 answer in a single word was oil or rather the oil crises of the 1970s and the higher costs and restricted supplies that resulted.

The world, it seems, had organized itself around the assumption of cheap, plentiful petroleum. Scarcity and higher costs shocked the system in ways that few even imagined and helped set the stage for a generation of stalled living standards and frustrated expectations.

The focus of the zero-sum society, Thurow argued, would shift from equity and growth to distribution and conflict. Everyone would struggle for an increased share of the stagnant or shrinking pie and some would succeed better than others, increasing inequality. I recall that Thurow grew up in Montana and he must have imagined his Big Sky world of open opportunity closing down around him.

Covid Crisis / Oil Crisis

It is easy to see in retrospect that the 21st century B.C. (Before Covid) world was organized around the assumption that people could safely gather together and cheaply move about. Spending on travel and tourism, for example, increased dramatically as a proportion of total expenditure in the past two decades. Wine tourism and cellar door sales were important sources of growth in our industry. The post-Covid world will be different indeed, although just how different and for how long remains to be determined.

Is it reasonable to compare the Covid-19’s world economic shock with the oil crisis of the 1970s and its aftermath? Everyone knows the oil crisis was a game changer. The Covid crisis is different in many ways, so it is not a simple apples-to-apples comparison. From a macroeconomic standpoint, the oil shock was a supply-side event that produced stagflation. The Covid shock is more of a demand side disruption that risks a deflationary cycle. It is obviously too soon to know what the final picture will look like, but I would argue that Covid could prove in the end to be the bigger crisis in the long term.

The New Zero-Sum

Even if you accept that the Covid crisis shock is as serious now as the oil crisis shock was in its today, you might still disagree with the idea that the new world that it is creating will be more zero-sum than in the past, with a greater focus on how the pie is divided than in its growth. Why is the future likely to be a zero-sum environment?

One argument is that many parts of the economy are already zero-sum and that Covid simply magnifies and accelerates existing trends.  The recovery from the initial Covid recession in the U.S., for example, wasn’t the V-shape that many hoped for but more of a K-shape. Some parts of the economy (especially the financial sector) recovered very quickly. Other sectors continue to struggle, a situation made worse by the lack sustained economic stimulus. The rising tide did not lift all boats and the financial pages are full of multi-billion dollar M&A deals as businesses bulk up to grab market share.

If you saw the strong Q3 U.S. GDP figures that were released last week, you might think that the economy has rebounded and will resume previous growth quickly. But those numbers are the result of literally trillions of dollars of stimulus (and debt), which are unlikely to be sustained. And they don’t take into account the Covid second wave tsunami, which seems to be sweeping across the globe.

The second argument for stagnant economic growth can be found in the financial news, where the yield curve hugs the zero axis for at least a five year time-frame and monetary policymakers have pledged their support for the foreseeable future even if fiscal actors hesitate to renew stimulus measures. The overall economy is on life support and monetary authorities who lack the power to shock it back into life are determined to at least prevent flat-lining.

The likely result, according to the most recent Q4 2020 global forecast by the Economic Intelligence Unit, is the “zombification” of the global economy characterized by slow growth, low inflation, and high levels of debt. Does this sound like a zero-sum environment?

Wine and the Zero-Sum Economy

It goes without saying that the economic environment I’ve just described is not favorable to the growth of the global wine industry. This is especially true because of the importance of on-premise wine sales, which are most directly affected by the Covid pandemic.

Is the global wine market now zero-sum? And what are the implications if it is? Come back next week for thoughts and speculations.