Wine, despite all the mystery and hoopla, is a consumable commodity. And as such, it is subject to external influences, for instance, the performance of competitive products (beer, spirits, etc.), consumer perceptions, and industry consolidation.
Today, I want to take on consumer perceptions and industry consolidation around the topic of size…specifically, are ‘bigger’ wines ‘better’ and are bigger wine conglomerates better for the consumer and the industry.
Ok, BIG wines…what exactly is a big wine, and is it, by its very ‘big-ness’, a ‘better’ wine?
The ‘size’ of a particular wine is really a perception of the ‘weight’ of the wine is one’s mouth, and that is, partially, a function of viscosity. To illustrate viscosity, imagine the ‘weight’ of orange juice in your mouth. Then, imagine water. The orange juice is thicker, fuller, heavier…more viscous. The water is lighter and, well, watery. Is the orange juice better? That depends on context. Maybe water is more thirst quenching. Maybe orange juice is more filling. Maybe the clean, refreshing taste of water (is water tasteless? Hmm, another column!) is exactly want you want at the moment. Maybe the sweet, richness of orange juice is your jam. Clearly, there is room for both water and orange juice in the panoply of beverages.
Back to wines. Wines can be ‘bigger’, more viscous, more like orange juice, due to a few factors; alcohol, sugar and/or tannins. Briefly, wines are made when yeast consumes the sugar in the grape. The byproducts are heat, alcohol and carbon dioxide. Generally, the riper the grape, the more sugar is present, so the resulting wine is either higher in alcohol (if all the sugar is consumed) or sweet (if fermentation stops and sugar remains). And the higher the alcohol level, the fuller the wine feels in your mouth. The presence of sugar also adds to the viscosity of the wine; a small increase in the sugar content of the wine can contribute to a more ‘syrupy’ texture.
Tannins are a bit more complex. Tannins are imparted into wine from grape skins and seeds, as well as from oak aging. They are very sticky molecules and are particularly good at binding to, and precipitating (removing from solution) proteins. Among the salivary proteins that tannins bind are mucins, which act as lubricants in the mouth. They’re really important for keeping the mouth and tongue nice and slippery, and once they are removed, the inside of the mouth feels dry and abraded. It is the tannin-protein complexes, and the loss of this lubrication, that contributes the drying, puckering, astringent sensation of tannins, sensed by touch rather than taste. And as tannins bind to proteins, they create a sensation of fullness. (Tannins do other beneficial things in wine as well: they bind with anthocyanins, the basic color compounds in wines, forming polymeric pigments that ensure long-term color stability. But that’s a topic for another day)
So, are higher alcohol, sweeter, more tannic wines better? Well, the critics clearly think so (Full disclosure; I have to announce here my bias against wine critics, as they are generally lacking in knowledge, unethical and full of shit). In their opinion, a sweeter, higher alcohol wine is better, worthy of a higher point score. I believe this is because these overripe wines are easier to like, tend to standout when tasted alongside dozens of other wines and because wine critics don’t really understand wine (see disclosure above) they oftentimes crow about wines that are bigger and louder. Like wine critics themselves.
However, if you enjoy wines that are balanced, that pair better with food, and that have lower alcohol levels, then bigger is decidedly not better. By balance, I refer to the varying components of a wine; fruit, alcohol, acidity, sweetness, tannins and how they compliment each other rather than overwhelm. Balanced wines pair better with food because they offer higher levels of acidity than bigger, riper wines. The acidity perks up our taste buds, cuts though fats and cleans up after itself. And lower alcohol wines have lower calorie levels than their higher alcohol brethren.
The other part of the BIG question is consolidation. Big wine companies are getting bigger by buying up brands and land. Some recent acquisitions include Jackson Family Estates’ purchases of Oregon’s Penner-Ash and Sonoma’s Copain; Constellation’s purchase of The Prisoner; and Far Niente selling of themselves. Meanwhile, wine, spirit and beer distributors continue to merge, creating ever bigger companies that distribute on a national level. And big retailers, like CostCo and TotalWine continue to grow, So BIG wine & spirit companies sell to BIG national distributors who sell to BIG regional chains. So are the Mom & Pop’s worried? Probably not…yet. Consolidation is a staple of the modern industrial world; so is divestiture. None one remembers Coca-Cola buying Taylor Wines & Sterling Vineyards in the ‘70’s, only to get out in the 80’s. The consolidation of the 80s & 90’s didn’t ruin the wine world; as the big got bigger, the door was left open for newer, younger, more energetic players to emerge and compete.
However, as the big get bigger, pressure rises. Big wine companies pressure big distributors to sell more of their brands (brands becoming more important than wines). Likewise, big distributors bring pressure upon big retailers to focus on brands. Brands become homogenized versions of wines; sleek, round, modern. No sense of place. No place for idiosyncratic, old-school, unique wines. An additional concern is the rising cost of prime vineyard land. An acre on the valley floor in Napa is now going for $310,000. You’ve got to sell a tremendous amount of wine to make money at that price. As US real estate prices continue to rise, Old World wines become an even better value. As brands become more similar, hand-made wines from traditional producers become even more interesting. As the public learns to enjoy traditional wines, more of the smaller, hands-on players jump into the game. The cycle continues.
The real problem with BIG is the lack of diversity. In the world of wine, big is boring. Big, fruity, alcoholic wines are easy to like because they taste good, don’t need food or aging and have easily understood labels. Big wine companies make and market those wines because they are easy to mass-produce, the critics are easy to buy off and supermarkets that sell wine don’t want to invest in hard-to-find, low production, esoteric wines. The big wine companies, big distributors, big retailers (and big critics) all want the same thing; an unchanging, inexhaustible commodity that the unsuspecting public accepts without a moment’s hesitation. Yawn.
To us, however, wine thrills. Wine captivates. Wine challenges. Wine seduces. Wine is ever-changing, ever-unknowable, ever the chameleon. Wine lovers know that wine expertise is a myth; the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn. So we learn, and relearn, fall in and out of love with a particular wine or region, only to discover how wrong we were. Again. Great wine is never about being big, it’s about never being boring.