2021 Wine Scenarios: Good, Bad, or Ugly?

January 26, 2021 By Mike Veseth in coronavirus, Economic impact, new normal, recession, wine, wine markets 4 Comments

What will the wine world look like a year from now? Will our assessment of 2021 be good, bad, or ugly? Last week’s Wine Economist column briefly explored a “Roaring Twenties” scenario that is making the rounds both for wine and for the economy generally.

The Roaring Twenties theory holds that the pandemic has created pent-up demand for all the things that we’ve had to sacrifice in the last year but that will soon become available again. Parties and celebrations. Gatherings in bars and restaurants. Travel and tourism. They won’t all necessarily come roaring back at once, but the rebound will be substantial and be fueled by a corresponding rebound in economic activity.

The Roaring Twenties scenario is what I call a “ceteris paribus” (holding all else constant) theory. That is, it assumes that pretty much everything remains the same except that the covid vaccine lets people come out and play. With interest rates pegged near zero, fiscal stimulus doubling-down, and financial markets soaring, the good times will surely roll, or at least that’s what some hope and others firmly believe.

The Wheel’s Still in Spin

But it is important to keep in mind that a lot of positive events have to line up all at once for this to happen. I was reminded of this by the cover of The Economist newspaper’s The World in 2021 issue, which features a casino slot machine device (and not a crystal ball) as its symbol. The future isn’t written and waiting to be perceived is the message here. There is a lot of risk and uncertainty ahead.

The future, whatever it turns out to be, won’t be just one thing. It will be the combination of what happens on the politics wheel, the economics wheel, the public health wheel, the environment wheel, and so on. Our experience in 2020 shows that these wheels can sometimes align in terrible ways — think pandemic, recession, wildfires, and social and political unrest. There is even the chance of problems in one area cascading through the system in a vicious cycle.

We might feel we deserve the happy flip-side of things in 2021, but the odds of a golden Goldilocks outcome are longer than we’d like. We should anticipate problems as well as potential good times. Not trying to be unnecessarily gloomy — just realistic.

To simplify, let’s imagine that 2021 depends on four variables or spinning wheels: public health, economy, politics, and the possibility of “black swan” wild card events Clearly there are many different possibilities for public health. The hope for very fast roll out of vaccines is no longer realistic, although there is a sense that officials are learning quickly about troublesome bottlenecks. Fingers crossed …

Attention is focused on vaccines, but the virus surge continues in many regions with record case counts and deaths. It isn’t clear how quickly vaccination can overcome community spread and whether this third infection round is the last or will be followed by more surges or echoes of this one into the future.

Spinning the Economic Wheel

Clearly a lot is riding on where the public health wheel settles, especially for the travel and hospitality sectors, which are economically important both in general and for the wine industry. Then there is the economy wheel. to consider.

The relatively strong economic recovery in the United States is built on heroic levels of government support, which will end at some point, but when? Will monetary authorities hold their nerve and keep the spigots open as the economy begins to open? Will fiscal stimulus continue to preserve incomes and employment? What about the high levels of debt that corporations and governments have taken on?

This will depend to a certain extent on politics. Each of the major economies is currently experiencing its own unique brand of political instability or crisis. It is easy to imagine scenarios where political crisis in one country creates contagious economic or social problems elsewhere. Here in the United States there is widespread disagreement about what a good political result would look like. Many observers, for example, were happy when it looked like Republicans would control the Senate and gridlock would prevail. Gridlock, to this way of thinking, would mean that only the most moderate policy actions would prevail.

The Curse of the Black Swan

Now, with Democrats in the White House and majorities in the House and Senate, more aggressive policies are possible, at least in theory. Is this good or bad? Opinions vary according to political persuasion and the particular programs considered. So you can see that ceteris is unlikely to be paribus in 2021. And that doesn’t take into account any “black swan” wild cards that might be on the deck.

A Black Swan event is something with very low (but not zero) probability, but very high impact. The covid pandemic of 2020 is a good example of a Black Swan event. The possibility of a global pandemic, originating in Asia and spreading through international travel vectors has been known for some time. Indeed several of my university students studied the situation in the aftermath of earlier Asian pandemics and a number of government- and non-government agencies worked on detailed response plans.

It seemed pretty clear that there would be a problem eventually, but the particular path and specific consequences were not clear. Looking back it appears that countries that had previously experienced such a pandemic took the possibility more seriously and acted more decisively than others did. In any case, the low-probability event happened and the cost has been very high.

Black Swan Inflation

Inflation is the Black Swan event I most worry about for 2021. (Although I am not sure which kind of inflation — see Neil Irwin’s recent New York Times column.) Most economists acknowledge that there is a chance of an inflation spike is 2021 or 2022, but most assign a very low probability to the threat. Nothing to worry about. And probably they are right. However …

Literally trillions of dollars (and other currencies) have been pumped into the global economy recently and so far inflation in general has remained very low Governments and businesses have borrowed enormous sums at the resulting low or even negative interest rates. A resurgence of inflation would push interest rates higher and alter dramatically the economic landscape.

In a way, an inflationary surge would make the covid pandemic crisis a bit like the oil crisis of the 1970s. The initial impact of the oil crisis was harshly disruptive, but the long term effects, including both high inflation and the draconian policies needed to contain it, were challenging, too, and cast a long shadow over global events.

Good, Bad, or Ugly?

So you can see that the Roaring Twenties is just one of many possible economic scenarios and, even if it comes to pass as many hope, there are still many possible pathways and denouements. Good, bad, or ugly? Too soon to tell.

I know that some people believe that wine is immune to economic cycles, but wine businesses are businesses with debts, interest payments, counter-party risks, and so on. What happens to the economy happens to all of us in one way or another and it is wise to think about the possibilities.

Times are changing and perhaps that’s as much as we can confidently predict. This kind reminds me of an old Bob Dylan song. Listen up!

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Return of the Roaring Twenties? Anatomy of Wine’s Next Chapter

January 19, 2021 By Mike Veseth in economic crisis, new normal, wine, wine markets 8 Comments

Will wine’s next chapter be characterized by continued crisis and austerity? Or is a return of the Roaring Twenties on the cards? Herewith some thoughts about the changing wine market and where it might be going next.

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I became an economist because I’m interested in change and economics provides a logical framework to study cause and effect. I gravitated to the study of wine economics as I began to learn more about global wine markets and saw in them case studies of the sort of dynamic forces that fascinate me.

There are many ways to think about the economics of change. The first formal model that I discovered in my first year university economics course was the “cob web model” of agricultural markets, which explains why some markets are in constant flux and seldom static or idle. Under some conditions markets will gradually converge to equilibrium, but sometimes they can blow up! Change is the rule, not the exception. It is no surprise that the cob web model applies to the wine market as the Turrentine Brokerage wine business “wheel of fortune” aptly illustrates.

The Dynamics of Change

I studied globalization for many years and developed an analytical framework to help me understand global change. It isn’t original by any means and doesn’t apply to every situation, but it is a way of thinking that helps me work things out. Here’s a way to think about change. Start with a dynamic force, the source of change. Could be a change in policy, technology, or even nature. The dynamic force stimulates responses in the form of actions, which attempt to accommodate or exploit change. The actions further disrupt existing systems and bring forth reactions to both the initial change and the actions it produced. If the reactions are strong enough, they can produce another wave of change.

Change. Action. Reaction. Change. Once you think about it you start seeing these forces everywhere.

The Wine Wars Scenario

If you’ve read my book Wine Wars you can already see how this analysis can be applied to the wine industry. Globalization is the dynamic force in this case and it comes in many flavors and has many impacts both positive and negative. Globalization has spread wine around the world and fostered the exchange of international investment (think Chandon China), expertise (think Flying Winemakers like Michel Rolland), and grape varieties (Rkatsiteli in the Finger Lakes of New York, Gruner Veltliner in Australia’s Adelaide Hills, Chardonnay and Cabernet just about everywhere).

Globalization brings a world of wine choices to your doorstep, inducing many actions is response. The one that I focused on in Wine Wars was the commodification action. With so many choice at so many price points, consumers can feel overwhelmed. Risk and uncertainty discourage wine consumption, so a logical action is to simplify wine. I identified “the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck” as a particularly successful example of this action. Consistent commercial quality wine plus low price backed up by Trader Joe’s bulletproof reputation equaled a phenomenon. Two Buck Chuck gave millions of Americans the confidence they needed to try wine and to enjoy it. It helped democratize wine, if you see my point.

But not every attempt at commodification grows the wine pie the way that TBC did. And sometimes simplification can go too far, as the current hard seltzer phenomenon attests. It is no wonder that there is a reaction that I called “the revenge of the terroirists.” The reaction also took many forms, with the natural wine movement just one highly visible aspect.

What Next?

We have experienced a lot of change in the last 12 months in terms of the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis. This prompted a flood of actions ranging from dramatically aggressive monetary policies and fiscal stimulus packages to lockdowns of bars, restaurants, cities, regions, and sometimes whole nations. It’s been a “K-shaped” situation: some people have profited from the pandemic syndrome while others struggle and sometimes fail to hang on.

Now there is relief in sight with the emergency release and slow roll-out of vaccine. How will people react when the dark clouds begin to lift? I have argued that we are unlikely to see a sudden return to what we used to call “normal” life. You cannot simply flip a switch and bring back business and lives that have disappeared.

The Punch Bowl Overflows

But not everyone shares this cautious view and there are plenty who look forward to a “Roaring Twenties” of fast growth and exuberantly high times as Financial Times columnist Martin Sandbu recently noted in an op-ed titled “Goodbye virus-ridden 2020, Hello Roaring Twenties.” One hundred years ago the world was traumatized by a bloody world war and the devastating Spanish flu. When the fog cleared, people looked around and decided it was time to celebrate — to live for now since tomorrow is always uncertain.

From a financial standpoint, there is reason to think that the twenties might roar, at least for a while. I used to teach my university students the conventional wisdom that it was the role of the Federal Reserve to take the punch bowl away just as the party was really getting rolling. But these days central banks are pledging to keep interest rates very low and easy money available far into the foreseeable future. It is easy to see how this could pump up a bubble (for bears) or sustain solid growth (for bullish types).

Sandbu writes that

Public health restrictions have disproportionately hit the more hedonistic end of the consumption spectrum: what we have stopped doing is eating together, drinking together, entertaining one another and going on holiday together. Vaccine-induced herd immunity will, quite literally, make it OK to party again. And my goodness will we have reason to party.

It is not just the numbers that point to a consumer boom; behind them lies something less tangible but yet more convincing. You do not have to be an economist, only human, to understand the desire to let loose, get together, and take risks after a year of cautiously locking down at home and distancing ourselves from one another.

This scenario suggests a roaring decade for wine, too, as the travel and hospitality sectors take flight. It won’t be a simple reset, however. As any Marty McFly fan can tell you, the future changes when you tweak its past. But the wine sector should share the good times in Sandbu’s roaring economy scenario.

There are no guarantees, however. The roaring 1920s didn’t end very well. The current economic expansion depends upon both good health policy and good economic policy. What happens when fiscal stimulus ends, as it much eventually, and the monetary punch bowl runs dry? What will the receding tide reveal?

And then there is inequality to consider. Sandbu notes that

What all this calls for are measures which ensure that everyone feels the economic and social system has their back. A dark underbelly was, of course, also as much a feature of the previous Roaring Twenties as the glitz of its Great Gatsby surface.

The economy and the wine economy, too, have been K-shaped so far, with some sectors rising sharply while others struggle or fall. That’s not a recipe for sustainable growth.

Wine 2021: The Good News is the Bad News Could Be Much Worse

January 12, 2021 By Mike Veseth in Australian wine, economic crisis, Economic impact, exchange rates, wine, wine markets 5 Comments

Australia’s export dilemma.

As the door to 2021 slowly swings open, the landscape looks both familiar and transformed at the same time. When the U.S. wine industry entered 2020, for example, the problems seemed to be stagnant demand on one side and excess wine grape supply on the other. Not a good situation for the world’s largest wine market, but not something beyond our ability manage, either.

Those problems are still with us, although they’re a bit lost in the fog. Structural wine production capacity is still too large, but this is disguised a bit by a smaller 2020 harvest in California and widespread smoke damage, which took some grapes off the market.

Overall wine demand is still under-performing, too, but that is hard to gauge exactly because of the way that wine channels have been disrupted by the covid pandemic in general and bar/restaurant restrictions in particular. Consumers are buying much more through retail channels, a good deal more direct-to-consumer and much less in the on-trade. Whatever the net impact, which seems to be negative, the effects on individual wineries in particular sales channels is significant.

The Unified Sine & Grape Symposium‘s “State of the Industry” session is about two weeks away so those of us on the panel are working to put our thoughts about 2021 in order. Here are some of my working notes. The theme here is that, while there is plenty of bad news going into 2021, if you take an international perspective on the U.S. situation, it quickly becomes clear that things could be much worse. If that sounds like a “glass half full” perspective, well it is.

Take the loss of on-premise sales. These lost sales are costly indeed, but producers in Europe had it much worse because they depend much more on bar and restaurant sales. No wonder their industries are hurting to badly and that crisis distillation is back in some E.U. countries.

Unlucky Australia

If people in the U.S. wine industry are looking for something to be thankful for, they might consider how lucky they are not to be Australia. The U.S. industry has been caught in the trade war crossfire to be sure. Importers and distributors have been hit by U.S. tariffs on many European wines, for example, and China has imposed tariffs on the relatively small amount of U.S. wine sold there.

As if matters weren’t bad enough, the U.S. recently imposed 25% tariffs on French and German still wines above 14% abv, which had been spared in earlier rounds of the trade wars. U.S. firms that import, distribute, or sell these wines are collateral damage in the bigger trade fight, which has nothing to do with wine. These are daunting challenges, to be sure, but nothing in comparison to what Australia is experiencing.

The Australian wine industry invested heavily in opening the door to the Chinese market and moving up-market once inside. And they were remarkably successful. As you can see above in data from Wine Australia, China was by far Australia’s largest export market by revenue in 2019, accounting for $1.3 billion of the $2.9 billion of wine exports. China bought almost three times as much as the #2 export market, the United States.

Australian wine is #1 in China, too, measured by value. Australia overtook France in the Chinese sales league table in 2019.

This was good news for Australian producers back with economic relations with China were happy ones, but now a variety of tensions exist and China was imposed up to 212% tariffs on Australian wine. I don’t know if sales will go to zero immediately, but that is a lot of tariff to absorb. Although anti-dumping measures are cited in this case, the real conflict is elsewhere. Economist have long held that anti-dumping tariffs, ostensibly designed to deal with damage from predatory pricing, are often subject to political abuse.

Australian producers hope to be able to divert previously China-bound production to other Asian markets and some of it may end up in the U.S. and U.K., too. But realistically there is just too much wine for these markets to absorb and margins in the pivot markets are unlikely to match those in China.

But things could be even worse. What if Australia was even more dependent on Chinese market? The turn of the political screw would be even more painful then. And that is what happened in the past to Moldova and to Georgia when their biggest wine export market, Russia, decided to use wine as political tool.

The Good News is That the Dollar is in the Dumpster

You can find another good news story by looking at the foreign exchange markets. Typically when there is any kind of crisis around the world there is a rush to the security (and liquidity) of the U.S. dollar. Uncertainty drives the dollar in turbulent times. Or at least that’s what we thought.

A strong dollar translates into cheaper imports, which would not have helped in any way restore domestic balance in the U.S. wine market. A strong dollar isn’t the worst thing for domestic producers, but the negatives outweigh the positives for many firms.

As I noted in a Wine Economist column back in August, this crisis is different and the dollar didn’t soar, it plunged as this graph (above), which shows the dollar versus the euro, indicates. And then, after bouncing around for a while, it plunged again.

Now this is bad news for consumers who want to buy imported wine because a cheap dollar buys less on international markets, so European wines, many already subject to U.S. tariffs, are even more expensive. But it is good news for U.S. wine producers who compete against euro-priced imports. The cheap dollar gives them a cost advantage in the domestic market. There is also a theoretical advantage in export markets, but honestly those markets are pretty congested right now with lots of unsold wine (some of it from Australia) looking for a home.

But foreign exchange news isn’t completely sunny for U.S. wine because the dollar isn’t falling against all currencies. As this graph shows, the Argentina peso is even weaker, so the U.S. dollar steadily increased in relative terms, making wine from Argentina a fierce competitor where price is the key factor, especially bulk wine trade.

Economics is often called the dismal science and these examples of good news have a decidedly glass-half-empty feel. Stay tuned for glass-half-full analysis in coming weeks.

Wine Future 2021, Idaho Wine, The Unified: Wine Economist World Tour

January 5, 2021 By Mike Veseth in climate change, coronavirus, economic crisis, globalization, recession, Shameless Self-Promotion, Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

The Wine Economist World Tour is back on the virtual road in 2021. We hope for the return of in-person events before too long, but until that’s possible virtual events will do very well. Here are the first three stops for the new year.

The Unified: State of the Industry

The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium (January 26-29, 2021) is going virtual this year, including both the seminars and the amazing trade show. It will be quite an experience.

The program addresses a host of important issues, with special attention to wildfire threats and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Several sessions analyze changing wine market conditions including the State of the Industry session on Wednesday, January 27. Danny Brager, Glenn Proctor, Jeff Bitter, and Jon Moramarco join me on the virtual panel.

Idaho Wine Commission: State of the Industry

The Idaho Wine Commission’s annual meeting goes virtual this year, too, with half-day sessions on February 22-23, 2021. This is the third time I’ve spoken at this event and I am sad that I won’t be able to visit Boise in person to refresh friendships, exchange insights, sample great Idaho wine, and enjoy Boise’s amazing Basque food scene.

I will anchor the first day’s program with a special take on the State of the Industry. Greg Jones, the world’s foremost viticultural climatologist, will speak the following day. Economic change, climate change. Food for thought for Idaho’s dynamic wine industry.

Wine Future 2021: Challenges & Solutions

WineFuture 2021, an incredibly ambitious international event, will happen on February 23-26, 2021. This big international conference boasts an all-star cast. I will lead a panel on the economics of the crisis on February 23.

The folks behind Wine Future 2021 think big. The theme of the first day is the four crisis challenges facing wine (and the world): climate, economy, pandemic, and inequality. Day 2 focuses on solutions and sources of inspiration. The final two days look to the future from many different points of view.

Wine Future 2021 has been hosting a pre-conference webinar series since November to get ideas in the air and discussion flowing. You can view previous webinars (including one I did with Rabobank’s Stephen Rannekleiv) and register for upcoming broadcasts on the Wine Future 2021 Webinar home page.