Mike Veseth's Blog, page 11

Economic Change and the Global Wine Glut

Last week’s Wine Economist probed two influential theories of the emerging global wine surplus that are based in different ways on demographic trends. I call them the “Generation Gap” hypothesis and the “Life Cycle” hypothesis. This week I present a tentative sketch of an economic theory that might also help explain global wine consumption rises and falls.  I am calling it the “Economic Transition” hypothesis for now, although I am not sure that’s the best description.

The Economic Transition h...

Theories of the Global Wine Glut

The world is awash with wine, or so it seems from reading the news. Down in Australia, they are counting up the gallons of unsold wine in a new (to me) measure: number of Olympic-size swimming pools full. Rabobank estimates that the surplus would fill 859 big pools or, if you want a more conventional measure, about 2.8 billion bottles. That’s a lot of surplus wine.

In France, the government has allocated two hundred million euro for crisis distillation. Surplus wine will be bought up to support...

Labor Day Throwback: What to do with all that surplus wine?

The Labor Day weekend has just passed here in the United States and the wine grape harvest is picking up steam. This is always an exciting time of the year, but there is also anxiety this time around because in some cases the tanks are still full of wine from earlier vintages and the new crop, even if it is not unusually large, presents a series of problems.

Recent reports suggest that there is a lot of bulk wine available here in the U.S. market. Even bulk Cabernet Sauvignon is a tough sell bec...

Wine and the Falling Dollar

There are good reasons why it has been a while since I last wrote about wine and the dollar’s foreign exchange value. A lot of things have shaken up the pattern of wine sales here in the U.S. market, especially the channel-shifting that occurred during the covid pandemic and uneven return to what we laughingly call “normal.”

Many factors shaped the pattern of international wine imports and exports, too, especially supply chain bottlenecks that saw the cost of container shipments zoom up by a fac...

Too Much of a Good Thing: Washington’s Wine Woes in Perspective

It has been a little more than a month since executives from Ste Michelle Wine Estates (SMWE) told their Washington winegrowers the bad news. Having already trimmed grape purchases over the past several years, they now planned to cut grape contracts by 40 percent over the next three years, starting with this fall’s harvest. SMWE is by far the largest wine producer in Washington and many of the vineyards that have come into production in the past ten years were planted with sales to “the Chateau”...

Perfect Pairings? Rogue Creamery Cheese Meets El Dorado AVA Wine

Wine and cheese are a popular pairing (there was even a national Wine and Cheese Day last month), but pairings like this can be a tricky business. Sometimes the cheese overwhelms the wine and sometimes it is the other way around. What you really want is a combination that makes both the wine and the cheese taste better. It is not an easy thing to do.

A Match Not Made in Heaven?

I remember a student tasting a few years ago that went spectacularly wrong. We were tasting through some wines from the...

Wine and the Curse of the Inverted Yield Curve

These are uncertain times for the global and U.S. economies and for the wine industry’s economy, too. The International Monetary Fund recently released its World Economic Outlook mid-year update and the story it tells can be as optimistic or pessimistic as you want it to be.

Landings: Soft, Hard, Trampoline

The “glass half full” story is that, for the world economy as a whole, inflation seems to be slowing and global growth is slowing, too. But nothing is crashing … yet. That makes the possibili...

America’s Wine Regions: Surprising Michigan

Sue and I have spent the last two weeks tasting wines from two Michigan wineries, Good Harbor Vineyards and Aurora Cellars (both part of the Simpson Family Estates group). The wineries are located on the Leelanau Peninsula, a short drive from scenic Traverse City.

Michigan wines? Are you surprised? We discovered Michigan wine several years ago at an industry event called Riesling Rendezvous, organized by Ste Michelle Wines Estates, which was a regular stop on top world Riesling producer itinerar...

A Wine Emissary from Planet Bonny Doon

Sue and I had an unexpected visitor recently. He said he was an emissary from another world, a place called Bonny Doon Vineyard. He came in peace, bearing two very interesting Bonny Doon wines.

Was I happy to see the visitor? It doesn’t look like it from the photo shown here (and he looks pretty serious, too), but things aren’t always what they appear at first glance.

Wine from Planet Earth

The wines that the emissary brought were very good. Le Cigare Volant is fresh and delicious, a blend of Gr...

Portuguese Wine is for the Birds

Portuguese wine is for the birds, or at least that’s what we think at the Wine Economist. The birds? Well, duck is the specific bird we are thinking of and duck rice is the pairing we have in mind. Here are some thoughts on the success of Portuguese wine in the U.S. market and a shortcut if you want to check out the duck rice pairing.

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Jancis Robinson’s recent Financial Times column on the rise of Portuguese wine in the US and UK markets focuses on the importance of personal experience in sha...