Book Reviews: Sacred Wine, Stikky Wine, Kinda Like Wine

December 16, 2025 By in book reviews, wine, wine education, wine history Leave a comment

A lot of the wine books we receive fall into a few familiar categories. Here are brief reviews of two “category buster” wine books (plus one about Sake) that give a new spin on tried, true formats.

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Emily Stimpson Chapman, Sacred Wine: The Holy History and Heritage of Catholic Vintners. Marian Press, 2025.

The history of wine and the history of the Catholic church are deeply intertwined. Sacred Wine wants you to understand and appreciate this history and learn a few lessons along the way.

The lure (if wine isn’t enough) is the collection of beautiful photographs that makes this a book that’s probably going to start off on the coffee table. But the stories, which are well told, are so interesting that it is likely to move to your nightstand or reading chair before too long.

Twelve wineries scattered over France, Italy, and Spain provide twelve opportunities to explore church and wine history. All of the wineries have been molded in some way by the Catholic faith, often starting as monasteries, but in other respects they are quite different. Some are famous (Burgundy’s Chateau de Vougeot). Some make wines that are nearly impossible to taste unless you visit the winery, but others (Abbazia di Novacella) are widely distributed. Some of the wineries are very old indeed while others are unexpecxtedly modern. All are beautiful, as these photos demonstrate. Each tells a different story about God, wine, and history.

The Marian Press is the imprint of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception and they intend with this book to inform about wine and the church and to encourage readers to perhaps visit these wineries and to sample their wines or ones like them.

It is kind of inspiring to think, as Sacred Wine encourages you to do, that the liquid in your glass means something more; that it connects you somehow to something altogether more important. Not your typical coffee table wine book.

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Andrea Reibel, Stikky Wine. Laurence Holt Books, 2025.

There are a lot of variations on the “introduction to wine” book genre, but Stikky Wine is a new twist. Or new to me, in any case.

The idea is not to teach novice wine drinkers everything they need to know about wine. It is to give them a few basic tools that they use to each themselves. It is part of a small series of “stikky” books on different topics that focus on information that “sticks” and not the stuff you read and forget.

The concept reminds me of Father Guido Sarducci’s famous Five Minute University, which promised to provide a complete college education in five minutes time. How? By only teaching the stuff that sticks; the things you still remember after five years.  As a recovering professor I have mixed emotions about the Five Minute University, but I find the idea of Stikky Wine very appealing.

Stikky Wine introduces the idea of wine tasting through wine’s aromas, initially focusing on fruit aromas that most readers will be familiar with. There are some aromas closely associated with white wines and other for red wines. These aroma ideas are then applied to three red wines (Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon) and three white wines (Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay).  The simple framework permits a number of variations and applications so that the reader has some idea of how wines differ and why. Significantly, readers are encouraged to set their book down and do wine instead of just thinking wine.

The second section builds on this by adding sensory concepts like body, acidity, tannins, and other types of aromas (including those associated with wine faults). Six aroma families, three sensory elements. Pretty basic tools, but important ones. An epilogue ties things together followed by Next Steps with more detailed information and references designed to propel the reader forward.

The format is user-friendly. It is almsot a flip book, with lots of illustrations, minimal text, quizzers, reviews, and so forth. It reminds me a bit of the sort of flash cards you might use to study a foreign language except the focus is on doing, not just memorizing.

Stikky Books says its products are tested thoroughly and really do help readers get from zero to sixty in wine understanding in about an hour. I can’t vouch for that because I’m not a beginner making new discoveries, but it seems like a plausible claim.

The thing to do would be to give the book to someone starting out and see what happens. It might be an excellent $12 investment, don’t  you think?

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Eric C. Rath, Kampai: The History of Sake. Reaktion Books, 2025.

Sake isn’t wine. It isn’t rice wine either, although I have heard it explained that way. Sake is Sake.

Sake is one thing, but it is also many things and that’s what makes it kinda like wine (as this article’s heading suggests). Some people are drawn to the complexity and variety. Others are turned off (or even freaked out) by the myriad variations. Wine is the same in many ways. How do we invite the intimidated into the tent without scaring them away? It’s a problem.

Eric C. Rath’s new book opens the door with history, told is an approachable way. Readers get drawn into the story and pretty soon the complications start to make sense. It doesn’t hurt that the heavy coated stocks makes the beautifuyl illustrations pop of the page.

Rath is a professor of premodern Japanese history of the University of Kansas. I’ll bet he is an excellent teacher because his book is clear and interesting and taught me a lot I didn’t know about Sake and about Japan. Rath uses history very effectively to teach about Sake and, I suppose, Sake to teach about history. Sacred Wine (see above) uses wine to teach about history and faith. Glad to welcome both these books to the wine (and kinda like wine) bookshelf.

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Three Faces of a Neighborhood Wine Renaissance

December 9, 2025 By in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Last week’s Wine Economist reported on an unexpected development in our local wine scene. Against all odds, interest in wine seems to be growing in our part of Tacoma, Washington. A number of new businesses have opened recently raising wine’s profile in the neighborhood. What’s going on?

We surveyed the situation last week and promised you a deeper dive. Here it is.

Metropolitan Market

Our story begins in 1990 when the Metropolitan Market opened on Proctor Street on a site that had been home to a variety of supermarkets over the years. It always had a wine aisle, but as the Met upped its game (and as supermarkets evolved in the U.S.), the wine wall changed with it. Here’s what I wrote about it in Chapter 3 of Wine Wars II.

The Metropolitan Market on Proctor Street in Tacoma, Washington, is a typical upscale American supermarket. It has all the upscale basics: a delicatessen and a fishmonger, fresh seasonal local produce, a coffee bar and gelato stand. You can buy cat food, corn flakes, and laundry soap at competitive prices. There is sushi, too, along with various panini, and espresso drinks that pair nicely with a proprietary chocolate chip snack called The Cookie. Or, for $6.99, you can take home a quarter of a 1.9 kilogram loaf of Polâine whole grain sourdough bread, flown in fresh from Paris every Wednesday. Eat it plain – it is delicious – or top with European butter and a swish of raw monofloral Manuka honey from New Zealand. You can find them all on the Met’s generous shelves.

The Metropolitan Market is the kind of store that is increasingly common in American cities, patronized by people like me, who take their culinary cues from celebrity chefs on the Food Network. It is to foodies what Home Depot is to the DIY set: an adult toy store where imaginations can run wild.

You probably have a store like the Met in your town and, since you are reading this book, you probably go there frequently so that you can check out the wine wall. I’d like you to go there now (or if that’s not convenient, to imagine that you are there) because this chapter requires your participation. I don’t really want to tell you what the wine world looks like, although that’s easy enough to do. I want you to see for yourself—and to be surprised.

I’m sending you to the supermarket because that’s where the battle for the future of wine is being waged. It isn’t the only battlefield; the idea of wine is contested wherever and whenever wine is bought and sold. Restaurants and bars. Wine shops and auction floors. Tasting rooms and cellar doors. Shoot, I’ve even bought wine in the middle of the night, directly from the maker, from the back of a pickup truck on a dark city street. (Don’t ask.)

But the supermarket is the central stage of this story and that’s where we need to begin. And to understand what’s going on there we will need to inspect it closely, looking for the key to its secret code.

Upscale supermarkets like the Met are about many things: service, selection, and maybe even opulence (The Met’s Cookie is certainly opulent). Significantly, they are also about identity, and wine fills an important niche, reinforcing and differentiating their identities and linking them to the lifestyles, both actual and aspirational, of their customers.

Maybe the most important thing about the Met over the years has been the people who make it happen. Patrick (aka  “the wine guy”) was, until his semi-retirement, a key element of the local wine culture. He was particularly important to us at The Wine Economist because of his knowledge of the wine business and trends. The Met helped raise the profile of wine in the neighborhood and establish it as part of the local culture.

Browne Family Vineyards Tasting Room

Precept Wine was rated as the 12th largest U.S. wine company by Wine Business Monthly earlier this year with an estimated 2.75 million cases sold per year. The company produces wine under many brands, but the current focus is on Browne Family Vineyards, Gruet, and House Wine according to the WBM report.

CEO Andrew Browne reports that his team was drawn to Tacoma and the Proctor District when they were planning tasting room locations. The Proctor Safeway and the Metropolitan Market had very strong wine programs and the neighborhood was both growing and developing a distinctive vibe. “We always viewed being near great retailers and bringing the ‘storytelling / nice setting / friendly people’ quality approach would lift all boats—a rising tide,” Browne says. “That is exactly the result we have seen in Tacoma.”

“When we opened in 2020, ‘jumpstarting’ the wine scene wasn’t on our radar,” comments Precept chief marketing officer Alexandra Evans. “Our goal was simpler: create a NYC-quality experience right in our backyard. Andrew had just moved to Tacoma—a place dear to many of our hearts—and we wanted to build a gathering spot where people could enjoy great local wine and feel at home. A place that genuinely brought value to our home community. Seeing the momentum build with more tasting rooms, wine bars, and shops has been thrilling.”

Like the Met Market, Browne Family Vineyards is all about investing in people, both the tasting room staff and the neighborhood. As Browne notes, “We believed in Tacoma’s potential—the food culture, the highly engaged community thirsty for quality experience, it was a safe bet. What our tasting room proved is that you don’t need to be in wine country to build wine culture. You just need to show up authentically and honor people’s choice to spend their hard-earned time and money with you. We feel deeply responsible for delivering on that promise!”

Sue and I like to meet friends and colleagues at Browne Family Vineyards. There is a feeling that is both comfortable and sophisticated. The wine flights are great conversation starters. And I like the fact that in Tacoma, the “City of Destiny,” you can order wine from a collection that proclaims “Do Epic Sh*t!” An inspiration. And an important step in the evolution of the neighborhood wine scene.

Corbeau Restaurant

Corbeau opened in the Proctor District a little more than a year ago and caught our attention by positioning itself  as a “Franco-Tacoman” restaurant, which translates to French cuisine and sensibility with local Tacoma-area ingredients. We intended to give it a try, but somehow something always came up. That changed recently when we looked at their wine program.

Corbeau is the creation of Tacoma native Trevor Hamilton, whose restaurant wine resume includes spells at Canlis in Seattle and The Table in Tacoma, and executive chef Craig Tronset, whose experiences include Bastille in Seattle and The Table in Tacoma.

Corbeau took over a spot that was the long-time home of an Italian-American restaurant and I suppose it has taken a while for people like us to find out what’s going on. What we’ve discovered in recent visits is a warm environment with friendly staff, excellent service, and food that is both distinctive and delicious. You can sense the personal touch at every turn.

On the beverage side, Corbeau is about wine but not just wine. The cocktail and mocktail menus are interesting and many of the tables we’ve seen have brightly colored drinks on display. But, of course, it was the wine that drew us in. The wine list is long but not encyclopedic, about 70 percent French, and includes a special list of bottles priced at less than $60. So it is serious about wine.

But Corbeau is also playful about wine and inviting. This becomes clear when you consider the by-the-glass page of the wine list. There are more than a dozen choices and they are presented in an unusual way (see above). The coded wine references are arrayed along two axes: delicate to powerful and natty to nice.

Natty? Well, low intervention (natural wine depending upon how you define that). The idea is a play on the Santa Claus “naughty and nice” idea. What this does, according to wine director Mason Pack, is start a conversation about what you are interested in trying and the many different faces that wine can present. It’s a different way to think about wine. What fun.

Our first visit (with friends Zari and Greg) focused on Natty and Nice wines paired with happy hour burgers, fries, and salad. But we soon returned, drawn by the arrival of a bottle of Pignolo, a red wine from Friuli that is so rare that it is almost invisible. 

Anatomy of a Renaissance

So how does a wine renaissance happen in  a world where news reports constantly reinforce the wine industry’s struggles? I can’t answer that question in general terms but I have a couple of ideas based on wine businesses covered last week and above in these Wine Economist columns.

The first observation is simple. It’s not about the wine. It’s about the people. Growing a wine culture or any culture has to start with people and their dreams and visions.

The second thing is that a renaissance doesn’t happen all at once. Change happens gradually and then suddenly as momentum builds. You can’t always be sure that a first step will be followed by others, but it is terrific when it works.

The thing that these businesses (and the others we wrote about last week) have in common is that they are different. Different from other businesses in some ways and different from each other. Wine isn’t a single thing. It is many things. This means that there are many ways for wine to connect to the community.

Our little neighborhood has developed a vibrant wine scene. Can it sustain its identity and maybe even continue to grow in the current unfavorable environment? Fingers crossed that wine’s light will grow brighter in the coming year.

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Thanks to everyone we talked to about the Proctor wine scene. We couldn’t really do justice to what’s happening in a short column like this, but we tried.

Against the Tide: A Town Where Wine is Cool

December 2, 2025 By in wine 3 Comments

Most of the news we read about the wine market is depressing. Consumers are drinking less wine, buying less wine, and seemingly less interested in alcoholic beverages in general. The world has hit “peak wine,” according to The Economist newspaper. It’s all downhill from here. Many different causes are cited, but the bottom line is almost always the same. The rising tide that lifted wine to higher levels in the past has reversed course.

We see evidence of this trend everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except in our backyard, where wine seems to be cool and getting cooler. A puzzle! Here is our report about the unexpected rise of wine in our little neighborhood. Are there broader lessons here? Read on and make up your own mind.

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Tacoma, Washington, a wine destination? Huh? We wouldn’t have thought so, and yet …  A new wine bar, Valo, opened in our neighborhood, a block from an existing and popular wine bar, Browne Family Vineyards. Two tasting rooms/wine bars? In our little neighborhood?

We started looking around and were surprised. From Wine Economist World Headquarters, we can walk 15 minutes to those two winery tasting rooms, at least two restaurants that feature wine, and two wine-friendly supermarkets. A little further afield, within three miles of World HQ, we have several wine shops, more tasting rooms, and restaurants, and a farm store that features 3000 different wines on its shelves.

What’s going on here? Is wine cool again?

Context: The Neighborhood

Sue and I live in a neighborhood called the Proctor District (Tacoma is as much a collection of neighborhoods as it is an identifiable city). Our little shopping district was born years ago when two streetcar lines intersected at the corner of North Proctor and North 26th Streets.

The economic nexus thus created grew to include two supermarkets, two public schools, a church, a library, bowling alley, a firehouse, a post office, an historical movie theater, Saturday farmers’ market, and a collection of small shops, salons, offices, restaurants, and bakeries lining the city streets in the old way that predates strip malls. I am not sure how many places there are to buy coffee drinks in the Proctor District, but you are never far away from a caffeine fix.

The campus of the University of Puget Sound is less than a mile away and the University Washington Tacoma is not too far by bus or Uber. The population of the area has grown in the past decade through construction of several apartment buildings and a zoning policy that looks favorably on auxiliary dwelling units. Housing costs are not low in absolute terms, but look affordable compared with the Seattle area.

The domain of this report also includes a neighborhood called Old Town, which is about a mile away. It is a much smaller collection of businesses located, as the name suggests, in the historic home of Tacoma where Commencement Bay with its docks and mills met up with the railroad line.

Supermarket Wine

The first hint that wine is cool around here can be found in the two supermarkets that sit on opposite sides of Proctor Street at the entrance to the district. One is a Safeway store that fits the profile of a typical good supermarket of its type, except that is is perhaps a bit smaller than many stores today because it is constrained by the limited footprint of the original store lot.

Directly across the street is the Metropolitan Market, which featured in Chapter 3 of my Wine Wars books. It is is part of a small regional chain of upscale supermarkets of the Whole Foods/Wegmans genre but more compact than newer stores, again because the smaller scale of the original store’s footprint.

The stores are very different in terms of their scope and focus, but they both have strong wine departments and we see lots of wine going through the checkout stands. The two wine walls seemed to have evolved to complement as much as compete. The Met has a better selection of wines from smaller producers in Washington and Oregon, for example, and its range of European wines is very good, too.

Safeway features wine from larger producers from California and Washington, but with many unexpected gems scattered on the shelves, a tribute to the talented Albertson/Safeway wine team. When I sent students to Safeway to study the economic geography of the wine wall a few years ago, they found prices that ranged from about $2 per bottle equivalent to over $200 per bottle, so something for everyone.

Winery Tasting Rooms

But that’s just the beginning. The fact that our neighborhood has supermarkets that feature good wine programs is important, but not necessarily exceptional. More noteworthy is the rise of tasting rooms, wine bars, and wine shops. They provide evidence of a changing, rising wine scene.

The Browne Family Vineyards tasting room opened in late 2020 and immediately drew good crowds for flights, glasses, and bottles of Andrew Browne’s wines along with snacks and other beverages from the Browne portfolio. It is the third Browne tasting room to open after Walla Walla and Seattle. Andrew Browne (CEO of Precept Wine) was drawn to the Proctor District’s dynamic vibe. The tasting room is a very comfortable place to meet friends and enjoy wine. It has been busy enough during our recent visits that we reserved tables. Think of the Browne tasting room as “proof of concept” that wine still draws a crowd.

Now there is another winery tasting room in the Proctor District. And a brewery tap room, too. The Valo Wine tasting room opened a block from Browne last month joining Narrows Brewing taproom just a few doors down the street. Gradually, then suddenly, the opportunities to enjoy wine, beer, and other adult beverages have blossomed in the neighborhood. Is this normal?

Shops, Bars, and Restaurants

The Pacific Northwest Shop isn’t really a wine store; it features local arts, crafts, and foods. But it has long been know as a place to go to find a selection local wines, too, especially those from smaller producers.

Tacoma Wine Merchants opened its new store in Old Town in 2022, moving from a much smaller location in the Stadium neighborhood (named for Stadium High School, which you might remember from “10 Things I Hate About You”). It is an attractive wine shop with interesting wines and warm atmosphere. It hosts frequent tastings that draw a good crowd.

The Old Town wine scene gained momentum in 2024 when the Bordeaux Wine Bar opened just a block away from Tacoma Wine Merchants. It is an outpost of the Bordeaux Wine Bar in Enumclaw, Washington. It is a good place to hang out, enjoy wine and food, and take advantage of regular tastings.

There have always been restaurants with interesting wine lists in the Proctor neighborhood (and even more in the 6th Avenue district a short drive away). But things are getting even better. A restaurant called Corbeau opened in the Proctor District a little over a year ago and got attention with a long list of mainly French wines. Corbeau has billed itself as “Franco-Tacoman cuisine,” which can be translated as French cuisine and sensibility combined with Tacoma-area regional ingredients. If you are interested in wine, as we will explain next week, Corbeau takes the local scene to an unexpected new level.

Something’s Happening Here

So what’s the “so what?” here. The wine market has been in decline for most of the last five years. Wine’s tide has been going out. But our little neighborhood has seen a significant bump in wine activity. It is worth noting, celebrating, and maybe analyzing a bit.

How do these new wine establishments work and what do they have in common? Come back next week for business profiles and some thoughts, focusing on Metropolitan Market, the store that some say started the Proctor District renaissance; the Browne Family Vineyards tasting room; and Corbeau, the Franco-Tacoman restaurant.

Wine, Thanksgiving, and the Problem of Deadweight Loss

November 25, 2025 By in Economic impact, wine, wine markets 1 Comment

Weight gain is the problem we most closely associate with Thanksgiving, but this Wine Economist column from 2021 argues that wine lovers need to consider the economic concept of deadweight loss when choosing a wine to bring to the festive gathering.

An Economic Theory of Thanksgiving Wine

The Wine Economist / November 15, 2021

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States and many of us will gather with family and friends for the holiday feast. If you have been invited to share Thanksgiving with others (and if you are interested enough in wine to be reading this column), then you must confront a perennial problem: what wine should  you bring?

Deadweight Loss?

Why is the choice of a gift wine an economic problem? Well, it isn’t much of a problem if you plan to drink it all yourself. Then you should just buy what you like — but don’t expect to be invited back next year!

Since the point will be to share the wine with other guests, the choice is more difficult because just as you can’t be sure exactly what dishes will be served, you cannot be certain what wines the other guests will like the best.

There is a pretty good chance that you will experience what economists call a “deadweight loss” which is more or less where the benefit that the guests derive from your wine is less than what they’d have gained from a simple cash transfer.   The story (which is possibly true) is told about the time Malcolm Forbes threw himself an extravagant birthday party where the guests were served some of the rarest, most expensive wines on the planet. Forbes went from guest to guest pouring the evening’s show-stopper wine. Finally he came to Warren Buffet. Wine? said Forbes with a smile. No thanks, Buffet replied. I’ll take the cash!

Warren Buffet understood the concept of deadweight loss and wanted nothing to do with it!

The Problem of Other People’s Money

The problem is asymmetric information. You know your own preferences and budget situation pretty well and so you have a fairly good idea of what you are giving up when you buy an expensive bottle of wine as a gift. But you don’t know the preferences of the other guests very well or whether they would prefer your wine or a simple cash payment to be spent on something else. You can’t be sure that their gain is greater than  your loss.

This leads (I hope you are following along) to the conclusion that you are most efficient when you spend your own money on yourself because you can fairly well calculate both the gain and the opportunity cost. You are less efficient (in terms of deadweight loss) when spend your money on others. You are even less efficient when you spend other people’s money on yourself. And you are hopelessly inefficient when you spend others people’s money on other people. What do you think?

So it would seem like the most efficient thing to do would be to decline that dinner invitation and stay home with the wine you buy for yourself. How sad! No wonder economics is called the “dismal science.”

It’s Not About the Wine

But here’s the notion that saves the day. Thanksgiving is not really about the wine (or the turkey or the green bean casserole), it is about the sharing. Thanksgiving is more a public or communal good than private good. And so, if you do it well, the particular elements of Thanksgiving including the wine will play a secondary role to the general warmth of the shared experience.

I used to get frustrated when wine wasn’t the centerpiece of gatherings, some of which were actually organized to celebrate the wine. But then I got over it. Wine is doing its job when it makes everything else better. Don’t you agree?

This fact changes a bit how you might approach your choice of a Thanksgiving wine to share. Cost is nearly irrelevant. Picking a wine that draws undue attention to you (and  your fine taste or great wealth) almost defeats the purpose.  A modest wine that makes everyone smile — maybe something with bubbles? — will serve very well. And then you can concentrate on what Thanksgiving is really about.

That said, no one will complain if you bring a nice Port, Madeira, or Sauternes to savor at the end of the meal.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Enjoy the wine and the feast and most of all each other!

A Tale of Two Wine Guides

November 18, 2025 By in book reviews, wine, wine education 6 Comments

Margaret Rand, general editor. Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2026. Mitchel Beazley, 2025.

Rose Murray Brown MW. A Taste for Wine: a new tasting masterclass for wine lovers. Mitchel Beazley, 2025.

Two new wine guides arrived at the Wine Economist mailbox recently, both published by Mitchel Beazley. They both take a very broad view of the world of wine and address some of the same topics and questions, but do so in very different ways. “There are no one-liners in wine,” as Jon Fredrikson says, so there’s probably not a single clear path to guiding readers through the world of wine.

Herewith a brief comparison of the two new books to help you think about the different ways that guides can approach wine and, perhaps, to help you consider what you might want from a book like this.

Compare and Contrast

  • The first difference is obvious: the Hugh Johnson guide is small (about the size of two or three smartphones stacked on top of each other) and densely packed with information with very small but clearly readable text. A Taste for Wine’s format is about twice as large, the pages have a relaxed feel with lots of colorful illustrations. Hugh Johnson’s vibe is “dive deep,” while Taste for Wine feels more “take a look around.”
  • Taste for Wine is brand new this year. After initially wondering if the world really needed another wine book, she decided to write this one to put her own personal stamp on wine education. The Hugh Johnson guide, on the other hand, has been updated almost every year since it first appeared in 1977. It is now a team effort with Margaret Rand leading more than 30 area-specialist wine writer contributors.

  • Both books provide information about wine grape varieties and wine-food pairing suggestions. Both present surveys of global wine regions, too, but there is a big difference in depth of analysis. Taste of Wine provides two-page introductions to each region with illustrations, basic facts, and a brief list of suggested wines plus, in a separate section, a list of the author’s picks of the best wineries to visit. The list just gives names, not detailed explanations, but that might be enough to get the reader digging deeper on the internet.
  • The core of the Hugh Johnson book is in the chapters on the main wine-producing countries. France and the United States are divided into the main regions and states respectively. Other countries such as Italy have one long alphabetical list of thumbnail descriptions of wineries, regions, and grape varieties. Smaller countries and U.S. states have short descriptions. This organization allows the book to pack in lots of information, but I have never warmed up to the alphabetical approach since I tend to think of wine in regional terms, so I’d put all the wineries from Alto Adige together, for example.  I imagine that this organization evolved as the number of wineries and regions grew and grew over the years. I might be happier with fewer wineries in each list with more detail on each, but the depth vs. breadth trade-off is impossible to solve to everyone’s satisfaction.
  • A Taste for Wine’s largest sections are, naturally, devoted to wine tasting itself. Rose Murray Brown hopes that the book will make wine less complex and more approachable. Simplify without dumbing down. She illustrates many of her points through 10 wine tasting flights that readers are encouraged to replicate. Each element of wine tasting is indeed explained in easy-to-understand terms. It is not Brown’s fault that there are many elements to consider, so the complexity problem is difficult to overcome. I suspect her readers, seeing the “masterclass” reference in the subtitle, will be up for the challenge.
  • One thing I like about A Taste for Wine is the way it reminds me of Kevin Zraly’s classic Windows on the World wine course book, now in its 35th edition and still #1 in Amazon’s wine guide ratings. Both books are focused on providing readers with the practical knowledge they need to enjoy wine. I think that practical aspect explains why there is depth in the tasting sections, which apply every time you open a bottle of wine, versus the other sections that apply in specific situations. Give readers what they need to know to make a good beginning and then guide them to take the next steps.
  • The basic structure of the Hugh Johnson guides does not change much from year to year, so I always look forward to the two sections that vary considerably from year to year. The early section on “12 Wines to Try in 2026” gives readers a chance to think about what’s new and interesting in the wine world. Always interesting. And there is a themed section at the back that changes every year. For 2026 the topic is the price of wine, how it is set, what it means, is wine good value? Interesting reading.
  • So which book should you add to your bookshelf? I suppose the obvious answer (and the one that Mitchell Beazley probably hopes you will give) is both books since their strengths are so complementary. Personally, the opportunity to read both books makes me think about what a wine guide needs to be in 2026, especially given the many changes in the wine world today and the availability of so much information via the internet and apps. Thinking about your perfect wine guide is a useful project, but a dangerous one. Rose Murray Brown says it is what provoked her to write A Taste for Wine!

Holiday Flashback: A Guide to Overthinking Thanksgiving Wine

November 11, 2025 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Thanksgiving Day is just around the corner, and planning has started here at Wine Economist World Headquarters. The menu will be traditional (for us) with a focus on the vegetable side dishes more than the roast bird. The real question is, what wines will be served? That’s plural wines because we stretch the feast over several days on the theory that leftovers are the best part.

Choosing wines is often a last-minute affair, and it is never simple (or uncomplicated) because you have to decide what to try to match. The turkey (maybe Pinot Noir)? The side dishes (a crisp white wine or maybe Cabernet Franc)? The festive mood (bubbles)? So many decisions!

But maybe this year’s Thanksgiving wine is hiding in plain sight. Sue has a small collection of older vintages of wines from The Eyrie Vineyards (gifts to her from winemaker Jason Lett). Any of those wines would elevate the holiday. Maybe Sue will open her Eyrie Pinot Meunier Estate. Wouldn’t that be a treat?

But it is too soon to tell what will happen and I am sure we will end up overthinking the wines again this year. I used to assume it was just us but a 2023 Wine Economist column on the problem (reprinted below) is especially popular during Canadian and U.S. Thanksgiving periods, so there must be many others trying to figure out what corks to pull. I hope this helps you navigate the holiday better than we do. Cheers!

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A Guide to Over-Thinking Thanksgiving Wine

The Wine Economist / November 14, 2023

Sue and I always give some thought to what wines to serve with our Thanksgiving feast and over the years I have reported on our deliberations here on The Wine Economist. Our thinking has evolved over the years. Although we are often “wine first” diners, who choose the wine first and then pick pairings that will complement, we’ve more or less decided that Thanksgiving should be an exception to our rule.

Thanksgiving isn’t really about wine, is it? And it is not actually about food, either, although a lot of attention is pointed in that direction. (I acknowledge that Thanksgiving is about football to some people, but that’s another story.) Thanksgiving is about the relationships that bring us together over the food and wine (and football, I guess). Honoring and deepening those relationships is the thing.

So it is important not to overthink Thanksgiving wine. Wine should make everything better, but it should not be the star. If all you can remember is that glass of wine, the holiday hasn’t fulfilled its potential.

So we pledge not to overthink Thanksgiving wine, but that doesn’t mean we can’t think about it at all. Here is a brief history of our experiments and how our thinking has evolved this year. In each case, we paired wines with a meal that evoked the spirit and flavors of Thanksgiving without cooking  a whole turkey each time.

Test #1 Joseph Phelps Freestone Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir.

We love Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon wines, but we hadn’t really explored the other varieties in their lineup, so jumped at this opportunity to test out this Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. It was restrained, elegant, and deftly balanced. And it paired very well with the poultry (seasoned roast chicken) on our test plate. We have often served Pinot Noir at Thanksgiving and this would be a great choice.

But Sue started thinking (danger! danger!). The Pinot Noir was perfect with the bird, and that’s generally the centerpiece of Thanksgiving tables, but what about the side dishes? When you ask people what part of the Thanksgiving meal they could not do without, it usually isn’t the turkey that they name. It is always a traditional (or not-so-traditional) side dish. Maybe, Sue said, we should be focusing on the side dishes in our tests.

Test #2 Joseph Phelps Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc.

White wine makes lots of sense for pairing with the classic Thanksgiving side dishes, many of which are rich and cry out for something with a little acidity. Sauvignon Blanc is the hottest white varietal wine at the moment and this Napa Valley was an excellent choice.

If you’ve grown accustomed to the stereotypical Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc style, the Joseph Phelps Sauvignon Blanc will come as a bit of a surprise. It is elegant and restrained (the Phelps house style at work?). It didn’t try to take over the show but did exactly the job we were looking for as an ensemble player.

Sauvignon Blanc is a great Thanksgiving choice, but it comes in so many styles that you’ll need to think about which one you choose (without over-thinking it, of course).  That Marlborough style might work depending on the side dishes, but it could be too dominant in some cases. Ditto with a heavily oaked fumé style. Think. But not too much. That’s really hard!

Test #3 Chateau Ste Michelle Indian Wells Yakima Valley Riesling.

Sue and I recently attended a German wine dinner at Ricardo’s Kitchen and Bar in Lacey, Washington and it was such a treat that we’ve been thinking a lot about Riesling wines. Those wines went so well with the robust German cuisine we were served that it makes sense that they would play well with Thanksgiving sides.

We chose the Indian Wells Yakima Valley Riesling from Chateau Ste Michelle. The Chateau is the world’s largest maker of Riesling wines and a lot of the focus is on the entry-level Columbia Valley Riesling, which is one of the great American wine bargains. There is a reason that you see it so often on restaurant by-the-glass lists. It over-delivers on flavor at a price point that works for both buyer and seller.

But there is a lot more to Ste Michelle Riesling than the entry wines, so we were interested in how the Indian Wells wine would work for our Thanksgiving test. The wine was elegant, restrained, and well-balanced. Sue said it would be an excellent role player with the holiday meal. I think it might be fun to try the entire Ste Michelle Riesling range throughout the long Thanksgiving weekend, from the entry-level Columbia Valley wine all the way through the iconic Eroica.

Side notes:  Glad to see winemaker David Rosenthal’s name on the front label because he made so much great white wine at the Chateau before moving to his current work with Partnership Wine Consulting. I am also happy to see that the wine lists the Yakima Valley appellation, which doesn’t always get the respect it deserves for the wonderful wines that are grown there.

Test #4 Zonin Orange-Cran Riviera Spritz.

I did not expect that our experiments would take us in this direction, but once I learned about Zonin’s Orange-Cranberry Riviera Spritz I could not resist. Orange-Cranberry. Those are real Thanksgiving flavors at our house. Sue makes a dynamite orange-cranberry sauce and its tart-sweet brightness really works alongside the savory roast vegetables and, of course, classic green bean casserole. How would those flavors work in a wine?

Sue was very suspicious of the Zonin spritz and accepted her glass reluctantly. I thought it might look and taste something like an Aperol spritz, but I was wrong. The color was bright rosy pink and the aromas and flavors very cranberry and orange, especially on the second day, with a pleasant orange leading the way. Very refreshing!  It would be a great sparkler to serve with Thanksgiving desserts and I think anyone would smile if you gave them a glass of this spritz as they walked through the door because they would know at once that they were going to have fun.

Sue declared herself a fan of the  Zonin Orange-Cranberry Spritz before that first glass was empty. What a surprise!

Thinking About Overthinking

Sue and I have learned a lot through these experiments, which will continue through the Thanksgiving weekend and beyond. Thinking about Thanksgiving wine in terms of the ensemble of flavors on your plate has merit, even if some combinations may work better than others.

Once she started thinking about wine and the side dishes, Sue quickly moved on to other questions. Pairing wines for particular guests? Maybe different wines for leftovers? Because leftovers (like turkey on rye with cream cheese and cranberry sauce) are the highlight for some of us. Next question: what wine to serve with turkey soup?

Wait! Are we starting to over-think this? Nah. That would never happen. So what do you think? Use the comments section to tell us what you are planning for Thanksgiving wine.

 

Small is Beautiful: Bulichella’s Distinctive Tuscan Coast Wines

November 4, 2025 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

This is not an easy time to be an Italian winemaker. There is climate change to deal with, of course, and the global fall in wine (and alcohol in general) consumption. Add to this the dramatic 28 percent decline in shipments of Italian wine to the U.S. market that has been reported recently by the Unione Italiana Vini. U.S. consumers love Italian wines, which is why they are the biggest import category, but the combination of tariffs, unfavorable exchange rate movements, and pre-tariff stock-building have taken their toll.

The headwinds are the same for all wine producers. Small wineries may lack economies of scale and scope, but small can be beautiful in a crisis. A small winery doesn’t have to push vast numbers of bottles and cases through the distribution pipeline to balance its books. They need the right customers to find them in just the right number to balance the books. It’s a problem and the current economic environment doesn’t help, but it is a human-scale problem.

Italian by Design

This is one of the lessons we have taken away from our recent discovery of Bulichella, a wine estate in Suvereto on the Tuscan coast between Grosseto and Livorno. The Suvereto appellation may not be large or famous like many others in Tuscany, but it boasts DOCG status, so its quality is recognized.

Sue and I were surprised to be invited to a Zoom tasting of Bulichella wines with the winemaker Nico Miyakawa because this didn’t seem the moment to take Italian wines to the U.S. market. But I guess we were thinking big wine. So we listened, sipped, and learned.

Bulichella is a project that Hideyuki Miyakawa began in 1983, first in partnership with friends and eventually as a family project of his own. Miyakawa is Japanese by birth and, I guess you could say, Italian by nature. He was a cofounder of ItalDesign, the famous automotive design practice. ItalDesign achievements include cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, DeLorean, Volkswagen, Maserati, Lotus, BMW, and Audi. The designs, both limited-output and mass-market, have helped define the modern auto era.

The Labels Tell a Story

So it is not entirely surprising that Miyakawa brought a certain style to Bulichella (named for the locality within the Suvereto appellation), which continues today with his grandson Nico Miyakawa. Sue and I found ourselves attracted to two very different ideas of design when we sat down to try the wines.

The labels, which were created by members of the Miyakawa family, are very personal and can almost be read like parables. The label of the Coldipietrerosse — a Cabernet, Merlot, Petit Verdot blend — shows  the winery, organic farm and vineyards, the sea, and the island of Elba in the background. All the pieces seem to fit together naturally, without tension or conflict.

The label for Rubino, a blend of Sangiovese, Merlot, and Cabernet, shows a family of wild boar in the vineyard. Are they the Miyakawa family? That’s my guess, especially when I look at the label for Tuscanio, a 100 percent Vermentino wine. Two generations of wild boar look down on the vineyards and territory. What are they thinking? What should we think?

The thing that is hardest to make out on the Bulichella labels shown here is the name of the winery! Bulichella, Suvereto, Tuscany is printed in teeny tiny type. The story is the brand, not the winery name. An interesting design choice, don’t you think?

Designed by Nature

So there seems to have been much thought given to how nature and family fit together at Bulichella. Would this design influence the wines themselves? The only way to answer the question was to pull corks.

We started with Rubino. At about 15,000 bottles per year, it is the winery’s flagship and largest production wine. The wine was fresh, elegant, and restrained. The heavy hand of a winemaker was nowhere to be found. The finished wine didn’t really taste like its components (we would not have guessed Sangiovese), so what did it taste like? The place? The terroir? Hard to tell, since we’ve never been there.

Tuscanio, the Vermentino wine, confirmed our suspicions. It was different from any Vermentino we have ever tried. Nothing like Sardinia. Could we sense the rocks and the sea that define Bulichella’s domain? Yes, that’s how it seemed to us. And the wine didn’t just hold up as time passed, but it seemed to become more and more like itself.

This prepared us pretty well for the limited production Coldipietrerosso, which is named for the hill with the red rocks that you see on the labels. Seamless, elegant, refined. Not quite like anything else.

Small is Beautiful

Before you ask, you won’t find these wines in the United States. Not yet, at any rate. Nico and company are looking for the right distributor partners to bring their wines to America. They don’t need a big mass-market pipeline because they couldn’t possibly fill it. And the wines are so particular to place that they are best seen as hand-sells.

So the tariffs and the falling dollar are problems, but not the most important challenge. Find the right people to drink the wines, to distribute the wines, to import the wines. That’s the human-scale problem these wines were designed for. Small really is beautiful sometimes, don’t you think?

Uncorking the Hidden Diversity of the Sparkling Wine Category

October 28, 2025 By in Chile, wine, wine markets 3 Comments

The sparkling wine category has been one of the wine market’s winners of the last 20 years. Although sparkling wine sales are struggling right now along with the rest of the wine market, bubbles are much more of a thing than they were in years past.

Much of this success is driven by Italy’s Prosecco, which in many ways redefined sparkling wine. If you think of bubbles as French and expensive, saved for ritual consumption at serious celebrations, then Prosecco is a revelation. Bubbles can be fun and suitable for all occasions, both serious and frivolous. Hard to resist!

More to Sparkling Wine

But there is much more to sparkling wine than the European Big Three: Champagne, Prosecco, and Cava. There are dozens of other sparkling wines in France, Italy, and Spain and around the world. Sparkling wine production is diverse both geographically and in terms of wine grape varieties used and methods employed.

It is a shame, really, that all these very different sparkling wines from so many places tend to be lumped all together in the “sparkling wine” section of the wine wall. They all look pretty much the same as you stare at them. What’s the difference? A lot! It’s time to uncork the diversity of sparkling wine today and appreciate what an opportunity it is to explore the world of bubbles.

Here are a few examples of sparkling wines that we have enjoyed. What ties them together? Bubbles, of course, but they were all also both delicious and surprising. Feel free to use the comments section below to tell us about your own recent discoveries.

Enchanting New Mexico

Most people don’t think of New Mexico when they think about wine, so they are surprised to learn that the state has a small but active wine industry and positively shocked to learn that wine was first produced in 1629, nearly 400 years ago.

New Mexico is especially know for sparkling wine because of the Gruet Winery, which was founded in 1984 by members of the Gruet family, producers of sparkling wine in a place called Champagne (you might have heard of it!).

Sue and I were recently introduced to wines from the Vara Winery & Distillery in Albuquerque. Our first taste was the Vara New Mexico Sparkling Brut 2023, which was made by winemaker Laurent Gruet using the traditional method and a unique blend of grapes: 72% Chenin Blanc 18% Listan Prieto 10% Pinot Meunier. Listan Prieto? It is a very old Iberian grape variety that came to Mexico (and then New Mexico) early on. It goes by many names, but you might know it as the Mission grape. It is just my imagination, I know, but I think it gives the wine both flavor and a sense of history.

The wine was declicous and distinctive.  Many of the Vara wines are made with grapes from California and Washington State because New Mexico just doesn’t grow enough grapes to meet the demands of local wineries.

Bubbles from Wine’s Birthplace

Sparkling wines from Georgia and Armenia? Probably not the first thing you think of. Georgia is better know for its traditional still qvervi wines and Armenia is better knows for its excellent brandy. But the sparkling wines are there and worth seeking out.

We’ve recently sampled Pet-Nat sparkling wines from Georgia’s Mtsvane Estate. The sparkling Saperavi was stunningly beautiful and delicious. It is joined by a Pet-Nat blend of 70% Chinuri and 30% Goruli Mtsvane.

Meanwhile Armenia’s wine industry is returning to its roots, as has been documented recently in the film SOMM: Cup of Salvation. We have been serving Keush sparkling wines made with indigenous grapes including Areni and Voskehat to our surprised and delighted friends.

Shiraz and Grenache?

We are always interested in trying sparkling wines made with unexpected grape varieties. There was a memorable sparkling Riesling at our very first Open That Bottle Night dinner, for example.  And a visit to Rockford winery in the Barossa Valley gave us an opportunity to try a sparkling Shiraz so good it has achieved cult status among wine lovers Down Under.

The latest addition to our growing list is a Cava Brut Rosé from Dibon made from Garnacha grapes. Garnacha (a.k.a. Grenache) is such a versatile wine grape, so it is great to taste a sparkling version.

Southern Comfort

Have you tried many sparkling wines from Southern Hemisphere producers? There are lots of sparkling wines produced south of the equator, but you might have not find them on your local store shelves.

The French have clearly known about the Southern Hemisphere’s potential for a long time. Chandon Argentina was founded in 1956 and Chandon Australia was established in the Yarra Valley in 1986. The wines are made in the same way using the pretty much the same grape varieties that Chandon uses in France, California, and China, but have their own personality.

Cool climate Tasmania is a natural fit for sparkling wine production and a wine we sampled a couple of years ago from House Arras was one of the most distinctive and delicous sparkling wines we have had in a long time.

Chile has such a tremendous range of terroirs that it makes sense that it would produce sparkling wine, too, but I don’t remember drinking one … until now! We recently received a traditional method Carmen Brut Nature from the Limari Valley. Very excited to pop the cork.

I’ll finish this intentionally incomplete survey with Brazil. Most people don’t associate Brazil with wine, much less sparkling wine, but that’s a mistake. Brazil attracted immigrants from many wine-producing countries (Portugal, Italy, Germany, and more) and they brought both a love of wine and the ability to make it with them when they arrived.

The second Brazilian wine we ever tried was a Prosecco-style sparkling wine made by the Aurora winery, Brazil’s largest wine cooperative. It was as refreshing as it was surprising.  (The first Brazilian wine was a Marcus James Zinfandel, which was for several years a a popular brand of wines sourced from Brazil.)

If you are interested in trying a Brazilian sparkling wine, look for a brand called Bom Dia (that’s good day in Portuguese). Bom Dia Brazilian Bubbles are canned sparkling wines and, although they have only been on the market since 2024, they are already getting attention. The brand has been nominated for Wine Enthusiast’s Innovator of the Year award.

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I have only scratched the surface of the world of sparkling wine. Looking for a project for the holiday season? See how many different and interesting sparkling wines you can find and pull some corks. You won’t regret it.

Designer Wine Glasses (and their Discontents)

October 21, 2025 By in wine 5 Comments

Today’s Wine Economist column is inspired by sample wine glasses we received from the folks at Glasvin. Glasvin makes all sorts of hand-blown glassware, but the particular products they sent us were designed by Raj Parr, the famous sommelier, author, and winemaker. Our experience with these wine glasses has made us think a bit about what we want in and what we think about wine glasses generally. Here’s the story.

One Glass to Rule Them All?

The Raj glass was designed to be the one glass you need for wine. There are several universal glass designs on the market, some of them created by wine celebrities. We tried the glass when it arrived a couple of years ago and had mixed emotions about it. It was light and delicate, a thing of beauty: largish bowl, shortish stem, sort of like a tall snifter. Click here to see a video about the Raj glass.

Here’s what Glasvin said about the design:

    • Designed to taste and drink all wines – young and old, sparkling, white, pink, red and orange – objectively and expressively.
    • Designed to have a wide, snifter-like bowl that tapers to a narrow rim, for the purest expression of the vine.
    • The unique shape brings a wine’s aromas and texture into focus as they travel through the bowl.
    • The narrow rim drops the wine perfectly on the tip of the tongue. With a shorter stem (1.5”) and lower center of gravity, the RAJ Glass will stay upright, so you can move around the cellar, your kitchen while cooking, or get comfortable at home.

Interesting for wine tasting, we decided, but not what we wanted from wine drinking because it seemed to draw our attention more to the glass than the wine. And the short stem wasn’t always easy for us to grasp. We set them aside in the glass cabinet and have rarely used them. We liked the idea of these elegant glasses but, as the video explains, they just weren’t designed with us in mind.

A Daily Drinker?

Then earlier this summer we received a set of the new Parr glasses (shown below), which are part of the Glasvin GV Home collection. Still light and beautiful, these glasses are meant for daily use by a broader audience than the Raj glasses.

The Glasvin design literature had this description:

    • Designed in collaboration with Raj Parr
    • Part of the GV Home collection, Glasvin’s durable, elevated glassware line.
    • A universal bowl that highlights aroma, texture, and balance
    • Slightly thicker glass for increased durability
    • Handblown, lead-free, dishwasher safe

The Raj and Parr glasses are much alike to the casual observer, with largish bowl and narrow rim to concentrate aromas, but the Parr’s stem is a bit longer, which makes it easier to pick up and hold. Sue and I enjoyed using these, but still felt like they somehow drew our attention away from the wines as much as they enhanced them. They come out of the cabinet occasionally these days (mainly for white wines for some reason), but they haven’t become our daily drinkers.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

Is the problem the glasses? Or is it us? To try to find out the answer to this question we invited two seasoned Wine Economist research assistants to lunch and had them try out the glasses throughout the meal. Their reaction was completely different. They loved the jewel-like qualities of the light glasses and thought they enjoyed the wine experience.

I found an informative video on the Glasvin website where Raj Parr explains exactly what he wanted to create with the Parr glass. You can view it here along with more information about the glass series. You and I might not be looking for the same things in a wine glass as Raj Parr, but no doubt it is useful to have someone so focused and passionate doing this work.

I guess wine glasses, like many things in the wine space, are a matter of taste and we should welcome a diversity of options. To each his (or her) own! Sue and I seem to use different types of glasses in different situations. Sometimes we break out the INAO tasting glasses, for example, and sometimes (pizza night!) we use simple juice glasses to drink our Costco-sourced Portuguese Red Blend wine.

Barriers to Entry

A problem with wine glasses, however, is that sometimes they can be one more barrier to entry for new consumers. Wine already has many disadvantages for anyone starting out. It usually comes in inconveniently large packaging that often requires special equipment (corkscrew) to access. There is a lot of waste (cork, capsule, bottle) that isn’t always easy to recycle. You are supposed to drink it at certain temperatures with certain foods.

And then there are the glasses. You need specialized glasses that you hold in a certain way and taste in a prescribed pattern. Yes, I know that it is all part of the mystery and romance of wine and I actually love the rituals as much as anyone. But I don’t blame the young person we met recently who, when faced with all these complications, just turned and walked away.

So two cheers for designer wine glasses like the Raj and the Parr that elevate the wine experience for the enthusiasts who like them. In fact, we seem to have added the Parr glasses to our regular rotation for white wines and Sue commented a couple of days ago that they were kind of growing on her.

But give a cheer, too, for rustic juice glasses (and other simple drinking vessels) that give pleasure to many and might present one less barrier to wine newbies.

Wine Industry Uncertainty 2025 Update

October 14, 2025 By in Economic impact, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

Nine months ago today, The Wine Economist published its annual column that, inspired by the upcoming Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, looks ahead to the future. The theme was sort of anti-climactic at the time, but it seems pretty much on the mark at this point: the future of wine is always uncertain, but 2025 is special. There are more unknowns and even unknown unknowns than ever before.

Frozen by Doubt

That’s a problem because fear, uncertainty, and doubt tend to freeze businesses in their tracks. It’s hard to know what to do, so the tendency is to wait until the smoke clears. The air is still far from clear both for the wine market generally (see this recent Wine Economist report) and for key international variables.

Many predicted that the dramatic increase in tariffs would lead to higher retail prices and this has happened to a certain extent. However, many firms have delayed raising prices until they know for sure what the tariff rates will be and which products and countries will be exempt. U.S. tariff policy has changed course several times and there is no assurance that the tariffs in place on the day you sign a contract will be the same ones in force when the shipment arrives and payment is due.

The Pasta War?

There was a surge in wine imports prior to tariffs coming into force. Now it seems to be wait and see because the situation could change yet again. Just last week, for example, we learned about the 107% “pasta war” tariffs that the U.S. threatens to impose on Barilla and some other Italian pasta makers. Thirteen Italian producers are accused of “dumping” pasta in the U.S. market and will be subject to a 92% pasta tariff on top of the existing 15% “reciprocol” tariff. The Financial Times reports that the import taxes will go into effect in January, so you might want to stock up.

Wine. Pasta. What next? I have no idea.

November is an important month in this regard because that’s when the Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the tariffs that apply to wine were legally imposed. Sectoral tariffs (steel, aluminum) may be legal, but general tariffs such as those that apply to wine may have been incorrectly applied, with unclear consequences. For what it is worth, the Economist newspaper’s AI-powered SCOTUSbot predicts that the broad tariffs (including wine) will stick.

In the meantime retaliation against U.S. products in foreign markets continues. The loss of much of the Canadian market for U.S. wine is especially damaging as Canada was the #1 export market. Wine’s problems mirror in a small way the situation of much of U.S. agriculture, which is heavily focused on exports. There is talk of $10 billion in federal aid to farmers to offset some of the negative effects, but I don’t know if any of this is earmarked for winegrape producers.

Dollar Dilemma

Uncertainty permeates other economic variables. The dollar has fallen this year, for example, when many thought it would rise. The logic (see below) was that tariffs would increase inflation and force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. The inflation has been less than expected so far, but the economy seems to be weakening. The Fed is now lowering interest rates, accepting the risk of higher inflation in order to reduce the chances of slower or negative growth.

Inflation or unemployment? That’s a lot to worry about. But there’s more. But what will happen in the future if, as the Treasury Secretary has suggested, the U.S. does “whatever it takes” to support Argentina’s economy and its tenuous debt situation? I don’t have an answer to that question. More uncertainty!

The list of uncertain factors goes on and on. Here’s the original article from earlier this year.

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2025: Wine & the Age of Uncertainty

The Wine Economist / January 14, 2025

The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, North America’s largest wine industry meeting and trade show, is only a few weeks away. I will be in Sacramento to moderate the State of the Industry session, which features an impressive lineup of wine industry experts:

  • Jeff Bitter, Allied Grape Growers
  • Glenn Proctor, The Ciatti Company
  • Stephen Rannekleiv, Rabobank
  • Danny Brager, Brager Beverage Alcohol Consulting

The panelists have decades of experience in the wine industry, which informs their analysis of current problems and future prospects. It is a tremendous opportunity to hear what the experts are thinking now and to talk about it with the other attendees.

There are many other sessions at the Unified covering all sorts of topics in winegrowing, winemaking, marketing, and business operations. I am particularly interested in the Thursday general session on Crafting a Positive Narrative: Promoting Wine in the Face of Challenges, which will be moderated by New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov. One of the biggest challenges, of course, is the rising anti-alcohol movement. Telling wine’s positive story is as difficult as it is important in the current environment.

There is something for everyone at the Unified (click here to view the complete program and click here to read the speaker bios). Sue especially appreciates the big trade show where more than 900 exhibitors will highlight what’s new in the wine industry from the biggest machines, smartest technology, and best products and services from vineyard to cellar to bottling line all the way to market.

Always the Age of Uncertainty?

I always start the State of the Industry session with a few remarks to set the stage and this year I have chosen a theme, the Age of Uncertainty. This is a time of great change in the wine industry and change makes people nervous.

Age of Uncertainty? I know what you are thinking. It is always the Age of Uncertainty in the wine business. Growing grapes is risky, making wine is risky, and selling wine is risky. There is no part of the wine business that does not have an uncertain component. Wine is a global business, too, and while global markets create opportunities they also introduce additional layers of risk.

I specialize in international and global wine markets, so I am especially concerned with how international economic policies add more layers of uncertainty to wine business today. We have been told to expect high tariffs (on wine and just about everything else) in 2025. Depending upon how they are structured, and how our trading partners react to them, tariffs can have a number of direct and indirect effects.  There’s a lot at stake and the final outcome is difficult to predict.

Indeed, the International Monetary Fund recently identified the threat of tariffs as a major global economic concern. The possibility of tariffs has driven up long-term borrowing costs around the world, according to the IMF, which will release its new report on the global economy later this week.

And this week’s Economist newspaper highlights uncertainty about tariffs and other policies as a main cause of global instability.

It is easy to see why uncertainty has spread. Will Donald Trump deport millions of people? Nobody knows. But if he succeeds inflation could jump as employers lose workers. The story is similar for tariffs, which would also increase prices. At the same time, potential Chinese counter-measures in a trade war, such as a devaluation of the yuan, could prompt a global deflationary shock.

The rising perceived risk, according to the Economist, helps explain falling bond prices, rising mortgage interest rates, and many other current trends. They say that what you don’t know won’t hurt you, but uncertainty clearly has a cost.

Not by Wine Alone

I know many people who think a tariff on imported wine would benefit American growers and producers and others who strongly oppose the idea. But it is important to remember that we aren’t talking about tariffs just on wine. Although it is hard to know right now (that uncertainty thing), it looks like the new administration will impose tariffs on most imported products from many or most of our trading partners, with the highest tax rates on China, Mexico, and Canada, the countries with whom we trade the most.

Border taxes on such a long list of imports have different effects than a tax on a specific product category like wine. That’s part of the uncertainty problem. U.S. producers may gain from protection from imports but lose from higher costs for imported supplies, equipment, and technology. Labor costs, interest costs, and insurance costs would all likely be pushed higher by rising inflation.

And U.S. tariffs aren’t the end of the story. How will other countries react? Will European nations retaliate with tariffs on U.S. wine? Probably not. I think they’d focus on spirits, not wine. Would Canada target U.S. wine? Yes, I think they might and that’s a problem because Canada is a good market for U.S. wine exports.

The  Dollar Also Rises

President Trump favors a falling dollar value on foreign exchange markets because that would reinforce his trade policy by discouraging imports and promoting exports. But tariffs tend to push the dollar higher as we have seen since the election results were announced. The dollar’s value rises when it sounds like tariffs will be used as a blunt weapon to keep out imports. The dollar falls, however, when the rhetoric suggests tariffs as targeted strategic tools to gain specific concessions. Which way will tariff policy lean in 2025? I don’t know, do you?

How are tariffs and the dollar related? Here’s one way. Tariffs tend to increase inflation, which forces the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates higher than they otherwise would be. This attracts foreign capital that boosts the dollar’s value, making imports cheaper in dollar terms and U.S. exports less competitive abroad.

Immigrant policies are the third element of the Age of Uncertainty for wine in my analysis. It is too soon to know how border controls and deportations might affect labor both generally and in industries such as agriculture and construction that are most exposed. So wine’s Age of Uncertainty is a complicated matter. What’s the bottom line? I’m saving that for the State of the Industry session.

Galbraith’s Uncertainty Principle

Why did I choose this theme for my remarks? The idea was inspired by an old book that strikes me as still relevant today. The Age of Uncertainty is the title of a 1977 BBC/KCTS television series and an accompanying book by the distinguished Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The book and videos, which survey two hundred years of economic history and the history of economics, were timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

People tend to remember Galbraith as the sophisticated author, public intellectual, and Harvard professor that he became, but his personal story is more complicated. He grew up on his family’s small Ontario farm and seemed set for a farming career, graduating from Ontario Agricultural College in 1931. But the 1930s were not the best of times for farming and Galbraith soon found himself doing PhD studies in agricultural economics at the University of California and then working for the U.S. federal government’s Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA) trying to prop up farm prices.

I don’t think that wine is mentioned even once in Galbraith’s book, but his agricultural background and experiences are easy to trace. The world has changed a lot in the almost 50 years since The Age of Uncertainty first appeared (and nearly 250 years since Wealth of Nations), but American winegrowers and agriculture generally can certainly relate to Galbraith’s story and the concerns he expressed in this book.