Three Things I Learned at the Unified Symposium’s “State of the Industry”

February 2, 2021 By Mike Veseth in coronavirus, economic crisis, Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, wine, wine markets 9 Comments

I’m the luckiest person I know and one aspect of my good fortune is that I have had the opportunity to moderate and/or speak at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium‘s “State of the Industry” session each year since 2012. Last week’s program was therefore my tenth appearance on the “State of the Industry” panel. How time flies!

Each year’s session brings together leading wine industry experts to talk about key trends and opportunities, recognize unresolved problems, and celebrate success. No wonder the big room (see photo above from a few years ago) is packed with industry leaders from around the world each year — until 2021, of course, when the pandemic moved us on-line.

I get a ringside seat for both the formal presentations and the backstage banter and discussions. I always come away with fresh ideas and a better understanding of the wine industry. Herewith a few observations from the 2021 program.

#1 Elusive Market Balance

A year ago one of the biggest concerns in California and Washington state was the structural surplus of wine grapes and bulk wine. With new vineyard acreage coming on-line,= a couple of big harvests already in the tank, and demand hitting a plateau, growers were encouraged to take a realistic look at their options and proactively manage supply until demand had time to catch up.

The market is much closer to balance as we enter 2021 and the big bulk wine hang-over seems to have receded. The 2020 harvest was short in California and Washington, too. The market hasn’t flipped, but things have tightened up constructively.

But that structural surplus is still there. The short term balance is more about a short crop and smoke taint issues more than long term strategies. And price is a factor, too, with coastal fruit selling for California appellation prices in many cases. That’s supply and demand, of course, but it only works in the long term if costs adjust to the new price realities.

#2 The Mandela Rule

“They say that time changes things, but sometimes you have to change them yourself.”

I first encountered this saying when I was on a speaking tour in South Africa. I heard it attributed to Nelson Mandela, which pleased me, although the interweb thinks that Andy Warhol said it first. Either way, it seems to apply to today’s wine industry.

Jeff Bitter of Allied Grape Growers advocates a proactive approach to the supply side of the market, for example. Last year he called for growers to take a hard look at their vineyards and pull out marginal vines sooner rather than later. Better to turn the page than to leave fruit unpicked when prices drop too low or demand dries up.

Cost can be addressed, too, at least in some market segments. Higher yields don’t necessarily mean lower quality any more. The same is true for machine harvesting, which addresses both cost and labor availability issues.

There is still a lot of work to do, but it has been inspiring to see the industry rise to the occasion of all the challenges that we face in these “perfect storm” times of pandemic and recession.

#3 Pathways to Success

The “State of the Industry” panel concludes with a brief presentation by market guru Danny Brager where he spotlights “best of the best” wine firms that have been especially successful in the previous year. The awards are modeled on the Olympic games awards, with bronze, silver and gold medals. It is always fun to try to guess who will get the prize.

The specific criteria for the gold medal means that it generally goes to big firms that have achieve high levels of both absolute and relative sales growth. This years winners were Riboli Family, Delicato Family, Deutsch Family wineries. If you are familiar with these firms you know that they are very different in terms of their product lines and marketing strategies. Their success proves what Jon Fredrikson always told us when he was on the State of the Industry panel: there are no one-liners in wine.

This point is even clearer if you look at the wineries that received silver medal recognition this year. Regional, national, and international wineries. Iconic brands alongside firms that fill private label needs.

What do they all have in common? Wine, of course, but it is obviously more than just fermented grape juice that connects this diverse list of successful wineries. Let me make this a discussion question. Give this some thought and leave a comment below with your ideas.

I don’t want to discount the hardships that many wine businesses have faced. I know a number of wineries, distributors, and sellers that have been forced to close their doors or dramatically reduce operations. I wish there was more support available for these businesses and that counter-productive policies like the U.S. wine tariffs could be reversed quickly. But Danny Brager’s lists of most successful wineries suggests there are still good opportunities for growth if you are in the right place and the right time with the right products and strategy.

#4 Bonus insights

Bait-and-switch alert: there were a lot more than three key points presented at the State of the Industry session last week. Herewith a few of them in quick-fire bullet format.

Cab Bubble Deflates? One of my concerns in recent years is that Cabernet Sauvignon has been over-planted and that the bubble would eventually pop. Well, it looks like the Cab bubble is losing pressure, at least in California (I’m not sure about Washington state) as some vines are being replaced with other grape varieties. But …
Pinot Noir Over-Inflated? All the attention to Cabernet may have hidden irrational exuberance in Pinot Noir plantings. Is this a bubble ready to burst?
Sauvignon Blanc the Next Big Thing? Sauvignon Blanc sales have been growing steadily for many years. Initially this phenomenon was associated with New Zealand wine imports, but now it seems to be a broader trend. Will growers move out of over-supplied Cab and Pinot and away from Pinot Grigio to Sauvignon Blanc?
It’s a War Out There. Both Danny Brager and Jon Moramarco made an important point about the nature of competition strategy. Wine, beer, and spirits are all segments within the broader beverage alcohol category. It is typical to think about competition within each segment: wine vs wine, beer vs beer, etc. It makes sense that you would target customers of close substitutes for incremental sales. But really the bigger war is between and among the segments: wine vs beer (wine does well here) and wine vs spirits (a tougher battleground). Overall beverage alcohol sales have been and likely will be flat, it is a battle for market share.
And the Winner is … Hard seltzer! Hard seltzer sales have boomed in recent years and continued to rise during the pandemic, the fastest-growing slice of the beverage alcohol category. What’s the appeal? Single serving size. Low calorie, low alcohol. Maybe even a healthy image (because they have low alcohol, hard seltzers feature nutritional labels that most wine brands don’t have). The low alcohol sweetish wine segment has done very well — Stella Rosa sales have boomed, for example, and Indiana-based Oliver wines have thrived here as well.

That’s all for now. Looking forward to 2022 when (fingers crossed) we will be able to meet in person in Sacramento in the new and improved convention center.

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.

Wine and the Dry January Syndrome

December 22, 2020 By Mike Veseth in alcohol, coronavirus, popular culture, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

January is just around the corner and that means Dry January, the month when many people pause to assess their alcohol consumption. If a lot of people have been indulging as much during the covid pandemic as their social media feeds suggest, Dry January could be particularly traumatic this time around.

Not Just January Any More

But it is a mistake to think of the interest in low- and no-alcohol beverages as being strictly seasonal. The marketing gurus at Heineken beer haven’t invested a fortune promoting Heineken 0.0 because they are looking for a short-term January sales bump. There are lots of reasons for consumers to seek out alcohol-free alternatives and the beer industry, always on the lookout for growing market niches in a fairly stagnant category, has responded with gusto.

If you don’t believe this, take a trip to the beer aisle of your local upscale supermarket. You might be surprised by the number of low/no abv products you find there and the range of styles. When I first explored this question in a Wine Economist column earlier this year I was impressed by a number of German products that had real beer flavor without the abv that usually goes with it.

My favorite among the half-dozen products I tried was Dry Hopped Clausthaler. It ticked the boxes for me: single serving container, affordable price, and it tasted so authentic that I didn’t miss the alcohol. Very impressive. I’ve got some in the fridge now.

Another appealing product that I stumbled upon is All Out non-alcoholic stout by Athletic Brewing Company. It’s an oatmeal stout and it tastes like an oatmeal stout — very satisfying. Because it is non-alcoholic, the usual nutritional information is provided on the can. Ingredients: Water, malt, oats, wheat, hops, yeast. 90 calories per can. If you like oatmeal stout, you’ll like this, too.

Beer makers have an advantage over wine producers in that they can produce many different batches of beer over the course of the year. Winemakers generally have one shot and that’s it. So seasonal beer products are available and for the winter months Clausthauler made a non-alcoholic holiday beer, Santa Clausthaler (Santa Claus-thaler — get it?) shown above dressed in miniature Santa hats. It is a 50-50 blend of their non-alcoholic beer with a cranberry cinnamon drink. Interesting! Kinda reminds me of mulled wine.

Fear of Missing Out

My earlier column on Dry January worried that wine was missing out on the low/no abv beverage trend. I know there are good wine products out there, but I don’t see the same investment in this category that the beer industry has made. Every bar or restaurant that I visited (when such visits were possible) had a non-alcoholic beer option available. None had non-alcoholic wine.

So what I am looking for? Single serving container is important. Affordability is important, too. And a non-alcoholic wine needs to remind me of wine as much as the best of these non-alcoholic beers remind me of beer.

A new product that seems like a step in the right direction is called H2/Heart Sonoma Soft Seltzer, which comes in Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Rosé flavors. Although the target is non-alcoholic seltzer, not wine, these carbonated drinks contain de-alcoholized wine and grape juice, too.

Sue and I received samples of the sparkling Pinot and Rosé flavors. Sue thought that the Pinot tasted like Black Cherry soda and didn’t see it as a wine substitute at all. The Rosé tasted like sparkling raspberry lemonade to me and, while I can’t say it especially reminded me of Rosé wine, I think I would be happy with this sparkler in my glass at some future post-covid holiday party. Festive, refreshing, enjoyable.

So clearly some people are hard at work bringing wine to the low/no abv party and that’s a good thing because I think this market niche is only going to grow. I’d like to think that wine can play in this arena because I suspect there are many people like me who sometimes want a high-quality low/no abv option, but would like to stick with wine.

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That’s it for 2020. The Wine Economist will be back in 2021. Happy Holidays to all.

Portuguese Wines in the Age of Discovery

December 15, 2020 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, Portuguese wine, wine, wine markets, wine tourism 3 Comments

A 1971 television advertisement for Mateus Rosé invited viewers to pour themselves a glass of the popular wine and take an imaginary trip to Portugal. I have been wishing that it was as simple as that this pandemic year when travel is general is so difficult and the idea of a trip from the U.S. to Portugal and back seems out of the question.

Discovering WoW

There are more than a few reasons to wish that a Star Trek transporter could beam us down in Porto, for example. The World of Wine (WoW) opened along the Villa Nova de Gaia riverside over the summer and I can’t wait to explore its many venues. Adrian Bridge and his team have transformed a collection of warehouses on the downhill side of the Taylor winery and Yeatman Hotel, creating a labyrinth of exhibits, cafes, restaurants, and shops.

Portuguese ships sailed to the four corners of the world during the great Age of Discovery. Now that world comes to Portugal and especially Porto to learn about wine.

Five “Worlds” or experiences await the visitor who is interested in (1) wine, (2) the history of Porto and the Douro, (3) planet cork, (4) chocolate, and (5) the Bridge collection of drinking implements, which spans 9000 years. I signed up for the email newsletter, since that’s about as close as I will get to Porto in 2020, and each week I receive notice of concerts, programs, and tempting offerings at the nine restaurants, bars, and cafes. I’d leave for WoW and Porto today if I could!

Discovering Richard Mayson’s New Book

If imaginary travel is the only option, then Richard Mayson’s new book, The Wines of Portugal, is an excellent guide. Mayson knows Portugal and its wines like the back of his hand and he generously shares his knowledge.

The book is organized in the conventional way, with chapters on history, the grapes and wines, the main winemaking regions including the islands such as Madeira, plus specialized chapters on Rosé and sparkling wines. Yes, Mateus makes the book as does Lancers, because they really are important elements of Portuguese wine and its history, but if that’s how you think of Portuguese wine you have much to learn.

I found the regional chapters especially interesting and the producer profiles, though necessarily brief, more detailed and revealing than in many other “Wines of … ” books. Mayson’s Wines of Portugal is highly recommended for detailed study or a wine travel (imaginary or real) reference.

If We Can’t Go to the Wines …

If we can’t go to the wine country, then the thirst for discovery means that it will have to come to us, even though something is lost in trading places this way. We have been fortunate to be able to sample some very interesting Portuguese wines in recent weeks.

Bartholomew Broadbent has imported a bright, refreshing, and very popular Vinho Verde for a number of years (alongside his famous Port and Madeira wines) and he has recently added three new wines to the stable: Broadbent Douro Red, Broadbent Douro Reserve, and Broadbent Dao white wine. The wines are delicious, fairly-priced, in relatively wide distribution, and recommended with enthusiasm.

Portuguese wines are having a moment of discovery just now. Some consumers have never thought of them before or associate them with their parent’s Lancers and Mateus experiences. Others think inexpensive Vinho Verde or stuffy Vintage Port. But (as Mayson’s book explains, of course) there is a world of wine in Portugal’s right borders.

The new Broadbent wines are a great way to learn more about the intriguing red wines of the Douro and the bright whites of the Dao region.

Thanksgiving Discoveries

Thanksgiving was our excuse to sample four wines from the Douro that we received as gifts from friends in Porto. A bottle of stunning Casa Ferreirinha Quinta da Leda was perfectly paired with our festive meal. Elegant and sophisticated. We are looking forward to see how this wine develops over the next few years. It shows what the Douro is capable of at its best.

The final act was an opportunity we’d never had before — to taste cask samples of the new 2018 Vintage Port wines. Winemaker Luis Sotomayor sent us small bottles of his Offley, Sandeman, and Ferreira wines, which we tasted along with chocolate Sue bought in Porto specifically to pair with Port wine.

Yes, I know, Vintage Ports are supposed to be put down for 10 or 20 years before you carefully pull the cork. But that’s not the only time to drink them. Very young Vintage Ports have a charm of their own — a dark intensity that can be quite stunning. You really should try it especially, like me, if sometimes you just can’t wait!

The three wines showed distinct personalities immediately and they changed and developed over several nights. Sue found her favorite of the three shifted as the wines unfolded. An experience I hope to repeat!

Age of Discovery

As you can tell there is a lot to discover about Portugal and its wines and this just scratches the surface. With Mayson’s book and our Porto friends as our guides we plan to continue exploring Portugal’s wine treasure map.

We are not alone in our interest in Portugal and its wines. The most recent Nielsen data published in Wine Business Monthly, for example, shows surging sales through the measured retail channels. Portuguese wine sales measured by dollar value increased by 13.9 percent in the 52 weeks to 10/03/2020 and by an incredible 35.1% in the month of September.

Fingers crossed that travel and tourism will return to some sort of normal sometime in 2021 so that we can go back to Porto to visit the World of Wine and continue our exploration of Portugal and its wonderful wines.

Wine, Tariffs, & Globalization

November 17, 2020 By Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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.