Government Choking Off Wineries
The drinks world has been rocked by dramatic media stories about barren patches of California countryside, abandoned vineyards, and scores of wineries closing their doors. Photos show tens of thousands of vineyard acres being bulldozed and then pulverized into wood chips by large, industrialized grinders across the Golden State. This "Grape Apocalypse" is being framed as the sad but inevitable result of declining consumer interest in wine. That's true, but it's not the full picture.
Unsurprisingly, the wine industry has been hit by inflation. However, the market has also been flooded by spikes in imported wines and grocery store chains preferring their own private-label wine brands (such as Costco's Kirkland Signature wine).
But while all these factors certainly play a role, they glide over the biggest industry-wide issue of all for wine: Being choked to death by government policies. Due to the three-tier system that nearly every state subjects alcohol to, wholesalers or distributors act as government-mandated middlemen connecting alcohol producers to retail stores. The purported rationale for the three-tier system is to prevent Big Alcohol monopolies from forming at the producer level of the supply chain.
And yet, it has essentially done the opposite. For decades there were multiple distributors available for almost every winery. Today, there are fewer than 1,000 distributors for over 8,000 American wineries—and out of those distributors, it's actually just three goliath distributors that control up to 67 percent of all the U.S. wine sales.
This begets a form of government-sponsored collusion, in which the largest distributors disproportionately focus most of their energy on servicing the accounts from the largest wineries. Many smaller and medium-sized wineries are often unable to find distributors who will carry their products. In turn, their wines never even make it to store shelves, severing them from their main market-access channel entirely. When less wine is being produced or sold, fewer grapes are needed—hence the growing epidemic of vineyard desecrations.
It's a lesson the government never learns, especially when it comes to booze: If you create a government-mandated middleman in the name of stopping private alcohol monopolies at one level of the supply chain (the producer level), you inevitably end up creating a government-sanctioned monopoly in another level. Eventually, as Wine-Searcher put it, the "arteries" of America's wine market—the world's largest—become "clogged," with the repercussions flowing all the way back up the supply chain to the grapes themselves.
The way to help independent wineries is to reform the laws to allow more wineries to self-distribute their products directly to retailers, including across state lines. Let’s scrap the three-tier system entirely and allow alcohol to operate like every other industry in America.
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I have been collecting wine for decades now, and while I do not have the depth and breadth of wines some of my friends and clients do, I do have some lovely, interesting wines that I am currently selecting out from my cellar.
I usually do this while having lunch at The Brasserie with two-three circle of friends. Generally, there are four of us at a sitting, each contributing a bottle. We pick a theme for tasting, and sometimes I will have the Chef make a special menu to go with the wines.
The most recent one involved three people contributing an older vintage of Chateau Lynch-Bages, from Pauillac, Bordeaux. I am hoping to share my tasting experiences of these wine with you to further your education and perhaps spark an interest in the benefits of storing wine for future consumption. GP
1961 Chateau Lynch Bages: Very little browning on the edges, looking quite youthful for 63 years old. Made in the +Old=World” style, with alcohol levels around 12%, before the styles of Bordeaux changed with the 1982 vintage to fuller, more extracted, higher alcohol versions of the past. Majestic highly complex aromatics of cedarwood, tea, leather, tobacco and mint. Super smooth on the palate, silken, still a slight edge of acids. Red fruits on the flavor, with chocolate, spice, lead pencil. Still getting more open after three hours. 98+ Points
1986 Chateau Lynch Bages: Twenty-five years younger than the 1961, made with a nod to the Ne-World” style. The color had no signs of browning but was a slightly dull red versus newer versions. Dark cherry, cassis, fresher red fruits. Has tobacco and cedar like the 1961. Very similar flavors to the 1961, just fresher and a bit more brash. Still very complex. 95 Points, drinking beautifully now and for decades to come.
2000 Chateau Lynch Bages: Twenty-four years old and still feeling youthful, fleshy, bigger in style, but still similar in flavors components to the 1961 and the 1986. That means red fruits, tobacco, cedar, lead pencil, just in a fresher, larger version of the other two wines. This wine will continue to improve and gain complexities for many decades to come. 98 Points.
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