How the 2017 tax law changed 'table wine' [View all]

[Auggie]

Dan Berger/Vintage Experiences

If you’ve been a regular consumer of wines that typically sell for about $15 a bottle or less, you’re probably happy with the way they taste.

But soon we’ll begin to see more alcohol in our so-called table wines, which will also be higher in calories, will taste sweeter (higher alcohols do that), will be slightly hotter, and won’t work with food quite as well.

This change is a result of the federal government unexpectedly, and unaccountably, issuing new regulations for wine that are not only anti-consumer, anti-moderation, and anti-food friendly, but appears to me to be a cynical way to give large wineries a huge tax benefit while dealing an economic haymaker to smaller wineries.

SNIP

One wonders how such a regulation came about. Inside the wine industry, some cynics suggest this idea came unsolicited, over the transom, from an industry lobbyist who wanted to benefit giant wineries.

MORE: https://napavalleyregister.com/wine/columnists/dan-berger/dan-berger-on-wine-how-the-tax-law-changed-table/article_83a995c1-d967-5b15-a4a4-3a763765af94.html

As climate change warms global temperatures it will be a lot easier for wineries to grow grapes that will produce higher alcohol levels during fermentation. The new law lowers excise tax rates for wines over 14% alcohol. The new level is now 16%.

I'm not sure why this is a "haymaker punch" for smaller wineries, except for this reason: large volume wineries will be able to sell more of their high alcohol wines to distributors and resalers at lower volume pricing now that the excise tax has changed. Most distributors and retailers don't give a damn about wine quality -- all they care about is the lowest price they have to pay per case.

This is perhaps why the author suggests we might see higher alcohol, less food-friendly wines in stores.