2026: The Year to Change the Narrative about Wine

Welcome to 2026. It promises to be a year filled with both celebration and anxiety. Anxiety is understandable given the many unpredictable political and economic forces at work both here in the United States and around the world.

2026 is a bit like this illustration from the Economist newspaper’s annual review, The World Ahead 2026. The ball’s in play and anything could happen: war, peace, boom, bust, success, failure. It’s (almost) enough to drive you to drink something stronger than wine.

A Year to Celebrate?

Anxiety is easy to understand. But what about the celebrations? Well, several important anniversaries will be celebrated in 2026, some with more enthusiasm than others. Economists like me, for example, will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s book An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s Invisible Hand has inspired many to embrace the power of markets and provoked others to oppose them, but its influence is difficult to deny.

2026 is also the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, an act that gave birth to both the United States of America and to a set of ideas with global implications.

1776 was quite a year. Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence fundamentally reframed how we saw the world. We are still feeling the aftershocks of those events today.

Reframing the Narrative of American Wine

2026 is the 50th anniversary of an event that sent shocks through the world of wine: the 1976 Judgment of Paris, which has been documented in George M. Taber’s famous 2005 book and popularized in a fictionalized 2008 film called Bottle Shock.

Taber, a Paris-based reporter for Time magazine, got wind of an unusual event. A panel of French wine experts was going to compare flights of California red and white wines with roughly similar French wines. The judging would be blind and the result was sure to be a triumph for the French. But if even one California wine did pretty well, there might be a story in it. So California-born Taber got the editorial OK to check it out.

The result, as you probably know, was indeed newsworthy (Taber got the scoop because he was the only journalist there). The top red wine and the top white wine were both from California. What a scandal!

If you analyze the data of the judging closely, as economists like me are prone to do (see “Wine by the Numbers”), the victory of Team California over Team France is not completely clear. But this much is very clear. The Judgment of Paris changed the narrative about California versus France and New World versus Old World.

Fresh Thinking Spreads

The biggest change was in how Americans thought about their own wines. How could the French be wrong about wine? Maybe the critics who had been promoting California wines (with limited success) were right? Interest in California wine, already on the rise, was magnified and accelerated.

The French were also impressed. Maybe not the average French wine drinker, but certainly some people at the top of the industry. Investment by French winemakers in California vineyards and winemaking facilities, already on the rise (Domaine Chandon was founded in 1974), was magnified and accelerated.

As Taber explains in Judgment of Paris, new thinking spread to wine regions all around the world. If California wines are actually very good, maybe we can learn something from them to make our wines world-class, too. The rise of quality winemaking, already under way in many regions, was also magnified and accelerated.

Time to Reframe the Question Today?

It is never easy to change the way people think about the world, but the situation today is more difficult in some ways than ever before. When Taber wrote his Judgment of Paris story (and when Morley Safer made his TV report on the French Paradox) mass communications were much simpler. There were a few magazines that millions of people read every week (Time and Newsweek) and a few TV programs that pulled in viewers every week (60 Minutes). Do you think a magazine article or television program would have the same effect today?

The news cycle was slower in the past, too. An idea might be talked about and turned over in discussion for days or weeks (or more). Ideas today are chewed up and spit out pretty fast. I’m not saying that it is impossible to make a lasting impact, but it is an upstream swim all the way.

It may be hard to change the narrative about wine, but that’s not a reason to give up on the idea. “Reframing the Narrative” is the theme of the 2026 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, North America’s largest wine industry meeting. I hope everyone who comes to Sacramento at the end of the month is ready to pitch in.

Three Wine Economics Questions for 2026

December 30, 2025 By Mike Veseth in Economic impact, wine, wine markets 3 Comments

The year is almost over so it is natural to start looking ahead to 2026. Here are three questions relevant to the wine industry to keep in mind as you pull corks to celebrate the new year.

Question One: Are We There Yet?

It is no secret that 2025 has been a tough year for the wine business both here in the U.S. and around the world. There are bright spots, of course, but the thousands of acres of wine grapes that went unharvested this year are a clear sign of trouble as is the continuing removal of vines and conversion of vineyards to other uses.

Some wineries had enough wine in inventory to cover sales and made little or no wine in 2025. The conventional wisdom is that the industry is not going to begin recovery until that inventory of unsold wine is drawn down (or ages out and becomes unsaleable). Will we reach that point in 2026? Or will this be another bitter vintage for growers, especially those without firm contracts?

It is not something we talk about much in the U.S., but it would speed things along a bit if the government were to consider temporary crisis distillation programs or other policies to help reduce the overhang and bring the wine market into balance. Yes, you can go too far with programs like this and encourage “zombie” vineyards and wineries that exist only because of government support. No one wants that. But there is a useful short-term adjustment role for such programs, too, and it would help draw a line under the current situation and allow the industry to move forward.

Question Two: Will They or Won’t They?

The Supreme Court will soon rule on President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff regime. Will they declare them a valid exercise of presidential power? Or will they rule that many of the tariffs violate constitutional provisions and must be rescinded?

This question has importance that goes well beyond the wine industry, but wine certainly has a dog in the fight. The full impact of the tariffs will start to be felt in 2026 through higher costs and disrupted supply chains, but some of the biggest impacts are already here, transmitted through the political system, not markets. I’m talking about the loss of our largest wine export market, Canada, in response to U.S. tariffs on Canadian products. Tariffs are often a tit-for-tat situation and U.S. wine is suffering from the retaliation effect.

There are many follow-on questions here, of course. If the SCOTUS rules against the tariffs, will the ruling stick? Or will new tariffs appear to replace the old ones to keep the legal limbo going? Will the tariff tax revenues have to be repaid? If so, where will that money come from? The list goes on, but it starts with the Supreme Court’s decision. Stay tuned.

Question Three: What Next?

The U.S. economy is something of a puzzle as we bid 2025 adieu. Is growth booming, as the most recent GDP figures seem to suggest? Or is it slowing down and maybe struggling as jobs data indicate? Is inflation pretty much under control? If so, why is “affordability” the year’s hottest word (and not in a good way)?

There are many different ways to answer these questions and economics nerds like me add one more to the list: who will lead the Federal Reserve in 2026 and how will they react to economic news as the year unfolds? The public focus will be on interest rates. Up or down? But the bigger question is how we will navigate the traps and trade-offs of a complex, highly indebted, rapidly evolving economy.

I think this is a wine economics question because I believe that affordability is a significant explanation for the current malaise in wine sales. It’s not the only issue, but it matters. If you think of affordability as roughly the cost of living divided by disposable income, then what the Federal Reserve does is important because it can affect both the numerator and the denominator in many ways. There’s a lot at stake.

What’s next for the wine economy? And what unexpected events (unknown unknowns in the Donald Rumsfeld taxonomy) will appear? 2026 will be many things, but it won’t be boring!

Wine and the Ghosts of Christmas Past

December 23, 2025 By Mike Veseth in Oregon wine, wine, Wine Competitions, wine history Leave a comment

I was trying to think what Sue and I could give to Wine Economist readers for Christmas. We decided to re-tell this story about a completely different Christmas gift from many years ago. I’m not sure why, but I think it makes sense. We hope you enjoy it.

Grape Transformations: Oregon Origins

The Wine Economist / November 8, 2011

I had a hidden agenda when I visited McMinnville, Oregon a few weeks ago. Ostensibly I was there to talk about my new book at Linfield College and to the local Rotary Club. Those events were great but I would not have been happy if I hadn’t done one more thing: return a minor piece of Oregon’s wine history to its rightful home.

“To Nick, Cheers for all the years — past & future. David Lett, Christmas 1989.”

That is the inscription I found in a second-hand bookstore copy of Vintage Timelines, a neglected classic book that Jancis Robinson wrote over twenty years ago. The idea of the book was to select a group of the world’s greatest wines and examine how different vintages have evolved (and would be expected to continue to evolve) over time. The research required Jancis to taste trough verticals of each great wine (research is such a drag!) and compare notes from previous years to create complex and quite fascinating graphical timelines.

Darn few American wines were good enough (in terms of their ageing potential) to make the cut and only one wine outside of California — the Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve made by David Lett. Lett planted the first Pinot Noir vines in the Willamette Valley and he, along with the group they call “the Pioneers,” set Oregon wine on its present course.

Nick’s Back Room

The Nick in the inscription is almost certainly Nick Peirano of Nick’s Italian Cafe. Lett’s audacious egg was incubated and eventually hatched by the Pioneers and others over countless discussions in Nick’s back room. I’ve loved owning the book, but felt it didn’t belong to me. I needed to take it home and give it back. But to whom?

My first thought was my friend Scott Chambers, a professor at Linfield College and a friend of both Nick and the Lett family. He’d love to have the book, I thought, but it didn’t really belong to him any more than me. Maybe Jason Lett, David’s winemaking son who is carrying on the Eyrie tradition and building upon it? Yes, that would make sense.

But then I learned about the Oregon Wine History Project at Linfield College and that sealed the deal. They were pleased to add our copy of Vintage Timelines to their archive as a document chronicling the Eyrie Reserve’s early international recognition as well as the role of Nick’s back room in the region’s early development. Jeff Peterson, Director of the Linfield Center for the Northwest, accepted the book and both Scott and Jason supported the decision.

A Remarkable Story: David Lett (and the Pioneers)

David Lett is one of my heros and I am including him in my “Grape Transformations” list of people who have changed the way people think about wine or wine regions. He was certainly instrumental in the transformation of Oregon from a place known for fruit and nuts rather than grapes to a region frequently mentioned in the same breath with Burgundy.

Lett’s story is remarkable. Trained at UC/Davis, he came north looking for terroir where he could make Pinot in the Burgundian style. The first Pinot vines were planted in 1965; 1970 was the first Eyrie Pinot vintage. After one or two false starts he hit paydirt. Great wine.

But from Oregon? Rainy old Oregon probably seemed like the last place on earth to make world class wine in the 1970s.

Olympic Gold

Then came the Wine Olympics of 1979. This was a competition, sponsored by the French food and wine magazine Gault Millau, that featured 330 wines from 33 countries tasted blind by 62 judges. The 1975 Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve attracted attention by placing 10th among Pinots. A stunning achievement for a wine from a previously unknown wine region.

Robert Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, a Burgundy negociant and producer, was fascinated and sponsored a further competition where the Eyrie wine came close second behind Drouhin’s own 1959 Chambolle-Musigny. Thus was Eyrie’s reputation set (and Oregon’s, too). It wasn’t long before Domaine Drouhin Oregon (DDO) was built in the same Dundee Hills as Eyrie’s vineyards — a strong endorsement of the terroir and recognition of the achievement.

The Pioneers founded the Oregon wine industry, but now the torch has been passed to a group that you might call the Sons [and Daughters] of the Pioneers. Some of them appear in the video at the top of this post (don’t be discouraged by the poor audio at the start — it gets better quickly). I’ll have something to say about this group in an upcoming post.

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Special thanks to Scott Chambers and Jason Lett for their hospitality during our stay in McMinnville.

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

December 16, 2025 By Mike Veseth 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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Against the Tide: A Town Where Wine is Cool

December 2, 2025 By Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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!

Small is Beautiful: Bulichella’s Distinctive Tuscan Coast Wines

November 4, 2025 By Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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 Mike Veseth 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.