Tyler Colman, Ph.D., teaches wine classes at New York University and the University of Chicago. He contributed to the third edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine and his articles have appeared in Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, Trump Magazine, and the New York Times. Colman also writes the award-winning blog, Dr. Vino. In his latest book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (UC Press, June 2008), he reveals the politics and economics behind the wine making business, both domestic and international. For some interesting wine antedotes, here is a blog by Dr. Vino himself. Cheers!By Tyler Colman
A quick quiz: Is it easier to ship wine from Napa to Nashville or from Bordeaux to Berlin?
If you chose the European example, you’re right!
The United States is often considered to have a more liberal market economy than France. But when it comes to wine, the evidence is not always as clear as a glass of Chablis. This paradox is at the heart of my new book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wine We Drink.
Getting wine from wineries to the dining room tables of consumers can be surprisingly difficult and can disadvantage many consumers, reducing choices and raising prices. Those consumers in smaller states or states out of the wine-mainstream are hardest hit. Consider that in Kentucky it is a felony to ship wine from an out-of-state winery directly to a consumer. Or in Pennsylvania, all the wines are selected by administrators in Harrisburg and sold only through state-owned monopoly stores. Or that in Ohio, mandatory minimum markups can make it hard to find a deal.
What makes wine different from, say, ordering a computer direct from Dell is, in a word, politics. Relying on laws that date to the repeal of prohibition, out-of-state wine must pass through a local distributor, making the U.S. look like fifty sovereign countries, not simply states.
Fortunately, there’s a bull market for wine in the U.S. now after fifteen consecutive years of growth in wine consumption. That increasing demand may be what it takes to restructure the quirks of the wine market.
OK, another quiz: which country, France or the US, has prohibited a wine advertisement as too sultry? If you guessed France, a land known for both le vin and l’amour, you’d be, in fact, correct!
Times have changed in France. Wine consumption is declining, particularly among young drinkers. Advertising restrictions make it hard for winemakers to mount even campaigns for awareness of regions, let alone brands. There has been an increase in road safety and cracking down on drunken driving. And that’s just the domestic market: overseas, competition has increased with more countries producing better wine.
All this has led to a glut of wine in France and 2005, for the first time, wine from appellations—originally just the best wines but now over half of all French wine—went to the distillery to be turned into ethanol. In France some cars really do run on cabernet. Some exciting producers have also started to defect from the appellation system, compounding its woes.
France’s crown has slipped. Can it be put right? That’s another question the book explores.
