The New Wine Wars

April 20, 2021 By Mike Veseth in economic crisis, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine, Wine Wars 1 Comment

We are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the publication on my book Wine Wars here at Wine Economist world headquarters and I want to use this opportunity to reflect on how the wine world has changed since 2011. As I explained in last week’s column, Wine Wars is organized around a trio of strong forces that together (along with other factors, of course) shape the wine sector and many other industries, t00. In very simple terms …

Globalization drives change. Commodification is a commercial response to these disruptive forces. Together globalization and commodification provoke grass-roots reactions that I call “the revenge of the terroirists.” I think the framework still applies. But things have indeed changed. Here are some notes.

Wine and Globalization

Globalization continues to be a driving force in the world wine sector. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that more different wines from more different places are now available to more different consumers than at any point in history. World wine is truly an embarrassment of riches! Wherever we have travelled in the world of wine we’ve met producers anxiously seeking new opportunities.

But while the globalization pulse remains strong, there have been important qualitative and quantitative shifts. The first is that the fundamental nature of the market has changed from positive-sum to something much closer to zero-sum. As I was writing Wine Wars the world wine market had just come to the end of an era of expanding global wine consumption. I am not sure any of us where really aware of this sea change at the time. It was easy to blame the down-tick in consumption on the global financial crisis. But the recovery up-tick didn’t follow.

As this OIV graph shows, in place of rising year-on-year global wine consumption, we entered what I have called global wine’s lost decade. (The most recent OIV data, which will be released later today, show dramatic further consumption decline in 2019 and 2020.) Global wine consumption reached a high plateau and flat-lined. Demand bumped up and down a bit from year to year, but that rising trend line that was so powerful before had vanished.

This doesn’t mean that wine demand was flat everywhere, of course. Among the major markets, structural demand declines in the old world — Spain, France, and Italy — was offset by rising demand in some new world markets, especially China (from a low base) and the United States (slow growth, but still growth). I profiled what were then the three most important wine markets in Wine Wars: the UK, Germany, and the United States. Today you would need to add China to that list. In Wine Wars I speculated about what the rise of China might mean and some readers wondered why I even asked the question. There are still plenty of questions about China and wine, especially since recently sharp declines in both production and consumption in China ,but no one seriously doubts its importance any more.

Caught in the Crossfire

Global wine has changed in another important respect. Globalization in pre-Wine Wars was all about expanding international trade. Free trade agreements were the order of the day and the more of them that a country could negotiate the better. Chile was a big winner in this competition and its wine industry benefited enormously from easy access to the most important markets.

Now wine is caught in the crossfire of tariffs and trade barriers. The U.S. has imposed tariffs on some European wines, for example, and China has raised trade restrictions on wine from both the U.S. and Australia. U.S. wine sales in China were relatively small, so the economic loss was limited, but China was Australia’s #1 export market and the pain is hard to over-state. In the meantime, the British withdrawal from the European Union — a.k.a. “Brexit is Brexit” — has thrown sand in the wheels of what was once a very efficient set of trading arrangements.

What is interesting about the new political economy of wine tariffs and trade is that it isn’t really about wine at all. Wine is simply caught in the cross-fire in other disputes. Why pick on poor innocent wine? Probably because wine has a clear identity and national association. Sanctions on wine from a particular place send a clear message. And of course with so many wines available from other places, the harm to consumers who are willing to accept substitute products is pretty limited.

Globalization is built on many complex structures including especially global communications networks, so it is easy to forget about supply chains and logistics until they break down — and that’s the most recent challenge that wine and other global goods confront. Global supply chains have recently shown themselves to be less reliable and most costly than many supposed when plans were made just a few years ago. The benefits of global reach must always be weighed against the security of local linkages. How much this trade-off has changed and to what extent it will impact the global wine sector is still to be determined.

Wine and Commodification

Commodity wine is only one side of the industry, but it has been an area of growth in the decade since Wine Wars first appeared. One way to appreciate this is to look at wine branding trends. There are many different types of brands, of course. Champagne is a brand, for example, and the producers are diligent in protecting their brand’s intellectual property. More broadly, there are collective brands (appellations, AVAs, etc.) and private brands (Mouton Cadet, Barefoot, etc.). Brands are successful when they encourage demand by providing an indicator of consistent value and quality.

As the market has become more congested, brands have become more important and evolved in interesting ways. One of the most important trends, which Wine Wars anticipated, is the rise of private label wines (which some call “exclusive label” wines in a nice bit of marketing). The maker’s brand is generally replaced or supplanted by the seller’s brand. British supermarkets like Tesco made private label wine an important category and now it is everywhere. Here in the U.S. Costco, Walmart, and Target have their own wine brands, for example. But the phenomenon isn’t limited to large-multiple sellers. The upscale supermarket down the street (which appeared prominently in Chapter 3 of Wine Wars) is part of a small local chain (nothing like Kroger’s vast network), but it has its own private label Champagne.

As the wine market has stagnated over all in many regions, the demand for private label wine has grown. Buyers look for value, retailers see higher margins. Growers and producers get the business they need even if they don’t control branding. Some of these wines are very high quality. Others, of course, are drawn from lots of generic bulk wine from sources that vary from year to year and lot to lot depending upon price among other factors.

Take It To the Limit

What happens if the trend towards generic wines is taken to its logical extreme? In Wine Wars I joked (sort of) that we’d be left with Bud Red and Bud White — a threat that is more potent today with wine-in-cans gaining popularity. But I could never have imagined that we’d be staring at the specter of hard seltzer!

Wine today competes for a share of the stagnant overall beverage alcohol market. That means the growth in total wine sales need to come from other alcohol categories. And the toughest competitor in this space — the one that has been eating market share for lunch — is hard seltzer, a.k.a. flavored alcoholic fizzy water. I may be wrong, but this seems to me to be the real least common denominator threat to the idea of wine that most readers of this page likely share. Yes, I know that we’ve always had products like wine coolers, which may have served as a first step on the wine ladder. But if hard seltzer is the first step, I’m not sure what the second step might be!

Ultimately Wine Wars counted on what I called “the revenge of the terroirists” to keep wine from jumping the branded goods shark. How has that worked out? Come back next week for my thoughts.

Wine Wars: Curses, Miracles, and Revenge

April 13, 2021 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine, Wine Wars Leave a comment

Wine Wars 2011: the first books arrive.

As I explained in last week’s Wine Economist column, this is the tenth anniversary of the publication of my first book on the wine business, Wine Wars. Although the catchy title (suggested by the smart marketing people at Rowman & Littlefield) gets your attention, it is the long subtitle that outlines the book’s argument. This is a story of “the Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists.”

Here is a quick sketch of the book’s argument. I’ll return next week with thoughts about how things have changed (and how the argument has held up) in the decade since publication.

Curse of the Blue Nun

Blue Nun was arguably the world’s first global wine brand, so it represents the argument that globalization has been a powerful force in the wine world. What’s the curse? Well Blue Nun began as a very high quality German wine but, as it and other wines like it became more successful, eventually quality suffered. Blue Nun continued to sell, but it wasn’t the same. The curse of globalization is therefore that success on the global market can be double-edged, both creating and destroying.

Globalization has brought a world of wines to our door, which is also good and bad. This is the paradox of choice. No choice is bad. It is like the old Soviet joke where everything is either mandatory or forbidden. But too much choice is bad, too, and can be a particular problem for wine. It is not unusual for upscale supermarkets to have more than 1000 different wines on the shelf at prices ranging from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars. Wow! Not always easy to make sense of such an over-whelming selection.

Miracle of Two Buck Chuck

One way that many consumers react to this, the most confusing aisle in the store, is to confuse price with quality. Cheap wines must be bad. Expensive ones must be good. Clever marketers take advantage of this misconception in all sorts of ways that I discussed in the book. Hence the miracle of Two Buck Chuck. For many years Trader Joe’s stories in the U.S. sold a wine called Charles Shaw for $1.99 (do you see the two buck Chuck in that)? And millions of people who might otherwise have drifted away from the wine wall bought it and enjoyed it. TBC is an important element of the democratization of wine in America.

People think the miracle of Two Buck Chuck is its price, but let me assure you that you can make and sell a wine for $2 if you want to. In Europe I saw a wine that was one euro for a liter in tetra-pack carton. That’s equivalent to one buck Chuck! No the miracle is that consumers would buy it despite its bottom shelf price. They bought TBC because they trusted Trader Joe’s to sell good value products and then, having tried it, they trusted Two Buck Chuck to deliver consistently. Trader Joe’s and the Bronco Wine Company that makes TBC created a powerful brand that has sold millions and millions of bottles.

Commercial brands are one way to help consumers break out of the paradox of choice by economizing on trust. You don’t have to trust the grape variety or the appellation or the vintage year. You only have to trust the brand. That simplifies things for sure. But there’s a risk. Albert Einstein said that everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. And that’s true of wine, too. If branding and commoditization simply wine too much and undermine its quality, then the miracle can quickly become a curse!

Revenge of the Terroirists

What is there to keep wine from becoming just another branded commodity? I am an optimist, so I proposed a counter-force that I called the revenge of the terroirists. This term, taken from the French terroir, has caused a little confusion over the years. I am sure that Wine Economist readers know what I mean, but auto-spell programs always try to correct it and there was even one case where a gentleman came to one of my talks thinking that I was speaking about terrorists and wine. Terroir. Terror. Hmmmm. Easy to see how that could happen.

In fact, some terroirists back then were terrorists, or at least they used terrorist tactics to oppose the incursion of industrial wine into the south of France. But I wasn’t counting on violence to hold back the commodification tide. No, I put my money on the dedicated few who opposed industrial wines the same way that the Slow Food movement (which I wrote about in my Globaloney books) opposes industrial food — by fostering an alternative rooted in and celebrating tradition but using the best appropriate modern practices.

Would the terroirist resistance endure? It wasn’t a sure thing then (or now either, I suppose) but I was cautiously optimistic. As the last line of the book says, I still have grape expectations.

A Trip to Napa Valley

Each of Wine Wars’s three sections ends with an invitation to taste some wines that illustrate the relevant part of the argument. The final tasting re-creates a trip that Sue and I took just as work on the book was coming to an end. We were in California for a meeting of academic wine economists at the University of California at Davis. We skipped the sessions one afternoon and drove to Napa Valley. We made three stops: a small family winery, a larger and more famous firm — Frog’s Leap — whose winemaker John Williams is world-famous for his terroirist work. We ended the day at the Robert Mondavi Winery where our academic colleagues had gathered for the conference closing banquet.

Frog’s Leap is still going strong, principles in-tact, with the next generation hard at work. That small family winery no longer exists. The wine business is hard and every year new wineries spring up while old wineries quietly fade away. Robert Mondavi is still there, of course, but it is no longer owned by the Mondavi family. They incorporated their winery in order to get resources for new projects and then lost control of it. Constellation Brands is the owner now.

The China Syndrome

The penultimate chapter of Wine Wars is called The China Syndrome and it provides an interesting perspective on how much things have changed in just ten years. China was best known in the wine world back then as place to sell Bordeaux wines, both the iconic first growths but also lesser wines, even from questionable vintages. The Chinese couldn’t get enough Bordeaux.

Submerged under that sea of Bordeaux, however, was a growing Chinese wine industry — that’s what caught my eye. I reported on my first taste of a Chinese wine and it wasn’t very pleasant. Ashtray, coffee grounds, a whiff of urinal crust. Ugh! Bad Chinese wine was very bad indeed, as bad wine is everywhere.

But I also reported on a much different experience — a bottle of Grace Vineyards Cabernet Franc that we shared at an Open That Bottle Night dinner. Very nice indeed and it made me wonder where Chinese wine was headed (a question that continues to interest me — I’ve written about China in each of the subsequent wine books). Not good vs bad — I was pretty sure that better wine would rise to the top. No I wondered if Chinese wine would try to copy-cat the French as wine has done in so many other places. Or would the wine industry there develop in a way that reflects its particular terroir — wine with particular Chinese characteristics?

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I do think that the overall argument of Wine Wars has help up pretty well, which is a bit of a surprise given how much has changed. What would I change if I were writing it again now? Come back next week to find out.

Ten Years of Wine Wars

April 6, 2021 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion, Wine Wars 8 Comments

2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of my first book about the business of wine, Wine Wars: the Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists.

Wine Wars was written to encourage readers to consider how market forces help shape what’s in our collective wine glass. The book received very positive reviews upon publication and it remains popular (and, people tell me, still relevant) today. Indeed, it still occasionally shows up on Amazon.com’s Top 100 Wine Book Best-Seller list. Amazing.

The Tables Turned

The story of Wine Wars begins many years ago when Sue and I were taking a short vacation break in Napa Valley, which I describe in the book’s first chapter. Our final tasting room stop on the final day of the trip made a lasting impression. The weary winemaker poured the usual tasting flight and I tried to ask intelligent questions. Then I let slip that I was an economics professor and suddenly the tables turned. The winemaker had many questions, very serious questions, and he wanted answers from me.

The investments he was making in vineyards and cellar would not begin to pay off for years. What was going to happen to the interest rates on his loans and to the economy and wine market? Wine economics to him wasn’t an abstract academic exercise. Economic factors conditioned the kind of wine he could make if the monetary stars aligned or what he would be forced to do if they did not. It was an unexpectedly intense experience that made me appreciate that economic analysis could make a useful contribution to the wine industry.

Globalization vs. Terroir

My first stab at writing about wine economics was a chapter called “Globalization vs Terroir” in my 2005 book Globaloney: Unravelling the Myths of Globalization (still available in the updated 2010 edition called Globaloney 2.0: The Crash of 2008 and the Future of Globalization).

I wrote Globaloney in reaction to the popular idea that globalization is a homogenizing one-size-fits-all phenomenon — think Coca-Cola-ization or McDonalds-ization. The book is a collection of case studies of how globalization has unfolded in different ways in different countries and industries.

By comparing globalization of basketball and soccer, fast food and slow food, second-hand clothes and fine wine, I tried to make the case that globalization reflects its terroir and that people sometimes have more ability than many acknowledge to shape it.

Globaloney gave me the opportunity to study the global wine industry and to travel to New Zealand to learn more about that country’s unlikely rise as a global wine powerhouse. Kiwi wine really is the “mouse that roared,” if you know what I mean.

Open Source Research

I wanted to learn more and my next step, which wouldn’t have been possible just a few years before, was to start this blog, The Wine Economist. I sensed that the best way to sharpen my thinking wouldn’t be to just attend academic conference and write journal articles. Using the web, I could try out ideas in a public space and get feedback from smart people around the world and in every corner of the global wine industry.

At about the same time I gratefully seized the opportunity to teach a university class on “The Idea of Wine” that traced wine from dirt to vine to cellar to market and all around the world. Nothing forces you to get your thoughts in order like the necessity of explaining them to others (in this case a diverse collection of very smart university seniors).

The result of this clear thinking attempt was Wine Wars. I enjoyed writing this book, but I wasn’t really sure if anyone would want to read it. So I was surprised and delighted when it found an enthusiastic audience. Wine business people tell me that it helps them connect the dots of what they do with the rest of the product chain. Wine students find that it fills in the business-side gaps in their preparation in an interesting way (a surprising number of Masters of Wine have cited it as a resource).

Wine consumers seem to like it too, since it adds a new dimension to their favorite beverage. Wine is good, but wine and a story — even an economic story — is better yet. It has been used as a text in a wide range of university classes including international business, international relations, and globalization studies.

Wine Wars has been followed by three more wine books. Since Wine Wars focused on the mainstream wine markets, for example, Extreme Wine (2013) explored the edges, where change often happens first.

Ten Years After

Money, Taste, and Wine (2015) asked the question “how does wine change when there is money involved?” and answered it in as many ways as I could find. Finally, Around the World in Eighty Wines (2017, paperback 2020) tries to understand the source of wine’s fascination by taking a Jules Verne-inspired wine-fueled adventure that mirrors our own “Wine Economist World Tour” wild ride traveling the world to speak at wine industry events.

Both Wine Wars and Around the World in Eighty Wines have been published in translation (Romanian and Russian respectively with a Portuguese edition of Eighty Wines pending). The blog and books have received many awards including best wine blog, best wine book, and best wine writing. Incredible that all this should evolve from that Napa tasting long ago.

A lot has changed in the economy and the wine world in these ten years. How has the argument I made in Wine Wars held up? Come back next week to find out.

Institute of Masters of Wine Webinar: Climate Change & Global Wine Trade

February 11, 2021 By Mike Veseth in climate change, Masters of Wine, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine Leave a comment

The Institute of Masters of Wine is continuing its webinar series next Wednesday February 17, 2021 with a session on “The Impact of Climate Change on the Global Wine Trade.”

The panel includes

Dr Greg Jones – Chair, Evenstad Center for Wine Education / Wine Studies
Lulie Halstead – CEO Wine Intelligence
Jane Masters MW (moderator) – view MW profile
Mike Veseth – Wine Economist, Professor emeritus of International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington)

The session is open to all, but capacity is limited. Follow this link to register. You can track future webinars and view previous ones by following this link. Hope to see you on the zoom screen!

Anatomy of WineFuture 2021: Think Big

February 9, 2021 By Mike Veseth in climate change, coronavirus, economic crisis, recession, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

WineFuture 2021, an ambitious virtual wine conference, is just two weeks away and I am excited to be part of the program. The wine industry has embraced the necessary pivot from in-person events to on-line programs, so there are lots of virtual conferences these days. What makes WineFuture 2021 different?

Thinking Big

One distinguishing factor is the expansive vision of the organizers. This program thinks big, with global reach and broad societal focus. The gist of the program is this: the world is facing not one, not two, but at least four crises and the future — of wine, but not just wine — depends on what we do to address these challenges. The four crises are these.

Coronavirus Pandemic Crisis. The global health crisis comes first if only because it is an inescapable fact of daily life today that is likely to cast a long shadow into the future.
Global Economic Crisis. The pandemic and policies to address it have pushed the global economy into crisis, which some regions suffer more than others. China seems to be recovering pretty well, for example, while Europe looks likely to slip into another recession in 2021.
Inequality and Social Justice Crisis. The health and economy crises have accentuated many serious underlying issues. Inequality and social justice problems are not new, but they, along with the political reactions and social responses to them, have captured our attention.
Climate Change Crisis. Climate change is an existential threat and no serious attempt to address other problems can afford to ignore it.

Each of these crises demands our attention. And although there is a natural desire to prioritize the crises and tackle them one at a time, it is important to consider that they are interdependent and can’t really be unstirred, to use a phrase from Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia.” It is a dauntingly complicated situation. But that’s not a reason to ignore complications and uncertainties. It is a reason to try to unravel the threads to increase understanding so that effective action is possible. That’s what WineFuture 2021 is about.

Beyond Davos Man

Looking through the many sessions and keynote talks it occurs to me that this is the sort of ambitious agenda that I normally associate with the World Economic Forum, that insanely expensive gathering of the global elite that takes place every winter in Davos, Switzerland (except this year, of course, because of the pandemic). What’s different about WineFuture 2021 is that it focuses on the wine industry, of course, and is open to a much broader audience and pressing practical concerns. “Davos Man” has become a derogatory synonym for a certain insulated attitude toward the world and its problems. I don’t see much evidence of Davos Man at WineFuture 2021 … and that’s a good thing.

So what is it about wine that provokes ambitious projects like this? I pondered this question a couple of years ago at the equally ambitious Porto Climate Change Leadership Conference. Maybe it is because wine is an agriculture product, and so rooted in nature in a way that finance capital and some manufactured goods are not? Maybe it is because so many of the largest and most important wine firms are family businesses, which bring a generational perspective to their thinking. Maybe it is wine’s special ability to bring people together — especially thoughtful people like Adrian Bridge, who was instrumental to the Porto project, and Pancho Campo and David Furer, who are the organizing forces for WineFuture 2021.

And then there’s this. WineFuture 2021 will benefit three non-profit initiatives, with funds from the program plus an auction of items donated by speakers going to the charitable causes. The non-profits are SOS Cape Town, which works to address water issues in South Africa, The Porto Protocol, which promotes sustainability in wine, and North Bay Jobs with Justice, which supports initiatives to improve worker conditions in California.

Unfolding Wine’s Future

The four day conference begins with analysis of the challenges, then dives deep into particular areas of concern, focusing on workable solutions, before gazing ahead to the future. Here is how the first day unfolds.

Francis Ford Coppola opens the show — and with his experience in film I know he will do this in dramatic fashion. Coppola is famous for his cinema work, of course, but also for his important efforts in wine and for the values that guide his many and varied efforts. The first formal panel, moderated by the wine industry’s most famous MD — Laura Catena — will address the inescapable topic of the health crisis.

The second panel examines at the economic crisis. I’m speaker and moderator and am delighted to have Rabobank’s Stephen Rannekleiv, South Africa’s Carina Gous, and Professor Eugenio Pomarici of the University of Padova join me for this discussion. Together we plan to break down the economic impacts and reactions in ways that generate useful insights. We are followed by important panels on reviewing and reversing discrimination, how to deal with the unexpected, and then a keynote by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova.

The program on days 2, 3, and 4 follow with more important programing by global leaders and wine industry luminaries including keynote talks by Pancho Campo, UNWTO Executive Director Manuel Butler, and OIV Director General Pau Roca. Click here for a list of all the speakers and here for the complete program.

WineFuture 2021 is kind of a big deal. It thinks big, acts big, and seeks to set a high standard for the wine industry as we move into the future. I am proud of the wine industry for its support of and commitment to big ideas and big initiatives like this one.

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.

Save the Dates: Wine2Wine 2020, WineFuture 2021, Unified Symposium 2021

October 22, 2020 By Mike Veseth in Shameless Self-Promotion, Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, wine, wine education, wine markets Leave a comment

The Wine Economist’s World Tour will be back on the (virtual) road in the next few months. Here are preliminary details about upcoming events that might be of interest to readers of this newsletter.

Wine2Wine 2020

The 7th edition of Wine2Wine, Focus 2020, will take place November 23-24, 2020. Usually held in beautiful Verona, this year’s program will be virtual. The wine business in the post-COVID-19 era is the over-arching theme.

Focus 2020 features a quite fantastic group of speakers and topics. The program is wide-ranging and of course economic topics are accorded due attention. I will be talking about the problem of unstable exchange rates in the new normal economic environment, for example, and another session will analyze the prospects of peace in the US-EU trade war, where wine is caught in the crossfire.

WineFuture 2021

WineFuture 2021 is an ambitious event designed to help wine industry actors make sense of the perfect storm caused by simultaneous economic recession, COVID-19 pandemic, and global climate crisis. The event is scheduled for February 23-25, 2021. I’ll be speaking about economic challenges and opportunities. The list of speakers is a who’s who of the wine world, so I’m flattered to be invited to participate.

Although the official event is a few months away, the important issues that need to be discussed won’t wait, so WineFuture is organizing a pre-conference series of free weekly webinars on key topics. Rabobank’s Stephen Rannekleiv and I will analyze some of the key economic issues in the first webinar on November 4, 2020.

Unified Wine & Grape Symposium

The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium is North America’s largest wine industry gathering. Both the conference and trade show, scheduled for January 26-29, will be on-line in 2021. The program, still in development, will be released in a few weeks and I get the impression that it will be even more ambitious than in previous years if that’s possible.

I will once again be moderating the State of the Industry session and making brief comments about the global wine economy. I wish we could all meet up in person in Sacramento, but that’s not really an option this year. So I look forward to seeing everyone on-line.

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Use the links above to learn more about these events and check back frequently to get updated information.

Around the World in 80 Wines: New Paperback & 30% Discount Offer

August 13, 2020 By Mike Veseth in Shameless Self-Promotion 1 Comment

discount

The paperback edition of my award-winning book Around the World in Eighty Wines is due out next month and Rowman & Littlefield is celebrating by offering a 30% discount off the list price of hardback, paperback, and Ebook editions.

You can order to book on the R&L website and apply the discount code RLFANDF30 during checkout. All the details (including five different ways to order) can be found in this pdf: 80WinesDiscountFlyer.

Inspired by Jules Verne’s classic adventure tale, Around the World in Eighty Wines is perfect for anyone who likes wine, travel, discovery, or just enjoys a good story. I’m glad Rowman & Littlefield is making the paperback available at this discount so more readers can join me on this wine-fueled trip around the world of wine.

Wine, Coronavirus & Recession Podcast

May 5, 2020 By Mike Veseth in coronavirus, recession, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine Leave a comment

covid19 COVID-19: Commonsense conversations on the Coronavirus Pandemic is a series of informative podcasts that help listeners understand the medical, public health, and social, political, and economic elements of the current coronavirus pandemic.

Hosted by Dr. Ted O’Connell, they are required listening if you want to broaden and deepen your understanding of the coronavirus crisis. I encourage you to click on the link above and sample the growing list of podcast topics.

I was flattered to be asked to join Dr. O’Connell on April 15 to discuss how the coronavirus impacts the economy in general and the wine economy in particular. The podcast was released a few days ago. Listen here:

INDUSTRY: Recovery from a Recession, Supply Chains, The State of the Hospitality and Wine Industries | Mike Veseth, PhD

Here’s a summary of the podcast:

In this episode, Dr. Ted O’Connell and Mike Veseth discuss various economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the questions covered include:

Is the United States currently in a recession?
What can we learn about the economic effects of the virus from Italy and China?
How has the pandemic affected the economics of the wine industry?
What industries related to wine have been affected by the pandemic?

Thanks to Ted O’Connell and his associates for the opportunity to speak to the podcast audience. They are doing a great service by helping those of us outside the medical and public health professions better understand the forces that are shaping our lives. Special thanks to Pedro Fernandes for facilitating this project.

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Are you listening to more podcasts and audio books while you shelter in place? I am guessing that people might especially appreciate the sound of a voice these days. I started thinking out this when I noticed the sales trends of my book Around the World in Eighty Wines. I think we expected that e-book sales would rise when everyone went into semi-isolation, but it looks like the audio book is the most popular format, followed by the hard back and then e-book. Paperback due next month.

Liquid Assets Podcast: Can U.S. Wine Win Back Its Mojo?

February 19, 2020 By Mike Veseth in Rabobank, Shameless Self-Promotion, wine, wine exports, wine markets 5 Comments

“Can U.S. Wine Win Back Its Mojo?” That’s the title of the lastest Rabobank Liquid Assets podcast, which I recorded along with Rabobank’s Global Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and Analyst Bourcard Nesin in Sacramento during the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium meetings earlier this month.

The mojo question was at the front of our minds because earlier that day the speakers at the State of the Industry session had painted a complicated picture of American wine’s prospects. There are still opportunties in the U.S. market (the rumors of wine’s death are exaggerated, I said in my presentaiton, paraphrasing Mark Twain), but there are undeniable problems, too.

The best guess is that 200,000 tons of wine grapes were left on the vines in California in 2019 for lack of buyers. Perhaps 30,000 acres of wine grapes need to be taken out of production to balance demand and supply. So it is no surprise that our discussion centered on ways to boost demand and therefore lesson the supply-side pain.

The podcast is fast-paced and raises interesting points about the potential for wine exports (my contribution to the discussion), the need for increased attention to e-commerce sales (Bourcard’s point) and Stephen’s analysis of the challenges of building brands for a changing market environment.

Interested? Follow this link to “Can U.S. Wine Win Back Its Mojo?”