It’s a Buyer’s Market

The economy has shifted focus back to what’s important, the wine.
By Christopher Chan

Regardless of how “big” you think the Washington State wine industry is ($3 billion total economic impact), it wasn’t until recently that our fair state has become the United States’ second leading producer in terms of volume, far behind the Golden State of California and just last year surpassing the venerable state of New York. Yes, that’s correct, New York has quite the “old” wine industry. How? Well, something about Ellis Island, immigrants and vitis vinifera root stocks stowed in suitcases…the old country folk didn’t need to go far to find a new country for wine.

One of the interesting challenges with the Washington State wine industry has been the investment needed to begin. The infrastructure and capital needed to build, equip, license, bond and develop a winery, especially for red wines because of the 12-28 months it takes to age in barrel, is monstrous. Easy to look past in the good times—remember when?—not many people were concerned about the “value” of a wine as long as it tasted “good.” Now, it seems, all that equipment, vineyard land, French oak barriques and three vintages of inventory add up to a pretty penny for a bottle of, say, Washington Syrah or Bordeaux Style Blend.

Personally, this always posed a difficult decision to consider a new and upstart winery with “great” vineyard sources (expensive), 100 percent new French oak (very expensive) and a brand new facility in any “wine town” that begins with a W came knocking on the door to tout his/her inaugural release at $28 a bottle—I was often fearful of the price tag for obvious reasons. Not that the wine price isn’t justified, for it is by the basis of what goes into it and the cost for making a living, but Washington State is still so young and the 600 wineries are making wine from the same 35,000 acres of grapes. All in all, there is a lot of familiarity in the subtleties of our grand (now eleven) AVAs.

Meanwhile, a similar wine was typically available from an older winery, much more established, certainly not as “cute” or “cult” as the newbie, but they’d paid off their overhead some time ago and were now into their tenth, fifteenth and twentieth vintages. Proven for sure, consistent hopefully, and promising improvement. Please don’t take this as a knock against the newbies; in fact, I take pride in supporting new and old, young and veteran wineries, because there is an incredible amount of talent and potential in this Evergreen, er, Evergrape state.

This economy sucks. Plain and simple. It’s not fun; people are scrutinizing their spending, and enjoying the good life almost seems sinful, even if you can afford it. Well, the silver lining is that the economy pushed its own reset button, and like in real estate, so in wine. I’m honestly happy that we’ve been able to refocus on what’s inside the bottle a little more, rather than how cool the label is or what kind of status I get when showing off the Spectator darling or Parker’s fave and how much of it I can afford. More importantly, it’s brought focus back to the marketplace on relationships with the winery and consumer (and me, the buyer).

In addition, the new “stimulus pricing” offers a great benefit of often over-delivering the experience inside the bottle. There are many wines once rare and unavailable that are suddenly back on the market, and that’s good for us. Many producers have re-evaluated their pricing and are now much more consumer conscious; in fact, they’re actually just like you and me—consumer driven. The good thing is that Washington wines have almost always offered you and me a “bargain” for what goes into the bottle, especially compared to Napa and the Left and Right banks of Bordeaux. Today, there’s a definite stimulus in Washington wine. Celebrate the end of prohibition for the end of the recession cannot be far away, and prices are coming down while enjoyment is on the way up.

Live a little, Washington—heck, we all deserve it.