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Wine Blog

As The Economy Turns...

Posted by: Trudy and Rob

Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:20 PM

A good question...who's still buying wine...one that wineries, restaurants, and retailers ask all of the time. I've been asking friends that I know in these businesses just what their particular experience is along these lines and the answers have been fairly consistent. Rather than keep you guessing, here's what seems to be the norm. At the lower end, say the $8 to $20 range, things are still moving. At the higher end, say the $130 or so and up range, sales are are still going OK. It appears that in that range, thems that got still do (with my apologies to Billie Holiday). In the vast middle range of sale, things are pretty stagnant. A vineyard owner friend of ours, Mike Lamborn of Lamborn Family Vineyards, sums things up by saying he has to work twice as hard to make the same amount of sales. He makes a very good zinfandel in the upper thirty dollar range and a high end cabernet that I'm pleased to have a few bottles of...can't afford much more than that. Mike says that, at least in California, cab sales are in the tank. He's a smaller producer, putting out in the 1 to 2 thousand case range at best. For reference, Gallo's output was in the 6 million or so case range last I heard. He has a well known winemaker, Heidi Barrett, crafting his wines. Still, it's a bit of a struggle. I buy some of his wine every year directly from him (Illinois is still mostly a reciprocal state, which means we can buy other folk's wine and people in other states can buy ours). It's worth the trouble to enjoy his wine.

The question for the industry is how many people are wine geeky enough like me to seek out the good but not outrageously priced wines in these challenging financial times. I guess that sales figures answer this question. At some point the economy will undoubtedly turn. As far as I know, no one has repealed the business cycle. It remains to be seen if wine sales recover as the economy does.

As a consumer, it's fortunate there there are better quality wines being made at the lower price points. There's a fair amount of good stuff available here and from other countries if you know where to look...call them value wines if you will. It just takes some effort to separate the wheat from the chaff. The phrase that life's too short to drink cheap (as in badly made) wine still holds. We still enjoy drinking the mid-price wines and still buy them, just not as much of them. What are you drinking these days? Enquiring minds would like to know.