The USA is underrepresented in independent merchants in the UK according to the head of Wines of California. Well there is a very good reason for that. The wines are too damned expensive, and it is only getting worse!Let me start off by saying I’m a fan of wines from this former colony. I think Ridge is outstanding, Seghesio’s Zins are some of the best I’ve tried and a ‘cheaper’ wine like Peachy Canyon is lovely and well worth the eleven pounds you pay. Oregon and Washington too are providing lovely wines at great prices that can rival the best from Europe and I’d be only too happy to be invited to a USA trade tasting. On the other hand, there is some monumental rubbish, with a capital C, coming across the Atlantic, but this makes them no different from any other wine making nation, so we will not hold the mass produced muck against them in this.
But, with the odd exception, prices for every day drinking wines have been terrible. In the good old days when the US dollar was worth less than the paper it was made from and you got two bucks for a pound, after all of our taxes and duty had been levied, you would, roughly, be paying £10 for a wine you could get in the states for $10. This was already too pricy, as, for example, a £10 Grenache would compete on quality with a French Grenache for around about £7, Now that the world economy has gone to pot, these wines are going to get higher priced, and that is hardly conducive to increasing the number of products on an independent merchant’s shelves.
We all know America produce good wines, but they need a price ladder to scale to get more retailers stocking them and more customers buying them. At a fiver there is nothing worth drinking from the USA, and they don’t have the privileged position that New Zealand has to have their cheapest wines at around the £7 mark. Add in that there is precious little at seven pounds from America anyway, which means the decent wines start at ten, which is too much.
Without good lower priced wines, nobody will stock or buy American wines and things will only get worse if the dollar continues to strengthen against the pound.
Comments
There seems to be much less wine from smaller US producers on the shelves. Other countries either have (or have created the perception they have!) a much greater range. If you asked me about American supermarket wine I'd come up with Gallo & Mondavi. And once you've had one overpriced (or plain not very good) Gallo or Mondavi you're unlikely to experiment with other wines from the same producer (especially at higher pricepoints).
Also, was intrigued to see the Gallo European offerings - Red Bicyclette for Southern French Red! Black Swan for Australia and an Italian that I can't remember the name of. Apparently, there are so many people that won't drink Gallo that they decided to create Euro wines that had no Gallo branding at all - very ordinary from what I remember. Not rocket science, but very clever!