Wishing you a happy and healthy 2020 filled with joy and light.

Happy new year!

Family portrait by Lila Jane, from left, Georgia, Lila Jane, Daddy, and Mommy…

Above: empty picking crates waiting to be filled with grapes at harvest.

No two people could be more diametrically opposed in their sentiments and approaches to Italian wine than Ceri Smith, one of our nation’s leading wine retailers and tastemakers, and James Suckling, one of our nation’s leading wine critics and tastemakers.

But this week, the unlikely pair sent messages to their supporters in which their views seamlessly aligned: in urgent tones, both are asking their followers to register their dismay at the thought of 100 percent tariffs on Italian wines and other European agro products currently being considered by the Trump administration.

Read Ceri’s here (on Facebook) and James’ here.

“Proposed higher tariffs on expanded list of European wines could devastate business, say importers and retailers,” according to a piece published earlier this week by the popular wine trade-focused blog SevenFifty.

Michael Skurnik, a leading importer of Italian wines in the U.S., was quoted in the article: “If enacted, these tariffs could have the effect of essentially crippling the importation and sale of European wine in the U.S. This would mean a devastating loss of revenues, jobs, and taxes to many sectors of the U.S. economy.”

Trade wars like this are nothing new to the U.S. nor the global economy. Few in the wine industry are old enough to remember the Banana Wars of the 1990s. During that decade, the U.S. “imposed a retaliatory range of 100 per cent import duties on European products, encompassing everything from Scottish cashmere to French cheese” (the Guardian).

At the time, the U.S. was retaliating for an EU quota on bananas grown in Latin America but sold by north American companies. Today, the U.S. is retaliating for Airbus subsidies illegally doled out to European interests and for a proposed European “digital service tax.”

What do bananas have to do with cashmere and cheese? What do wine and cheese have to do with airplanes and online advertising? That’s how trade wars work.

Earlier this week, I spoke to one of the top sales agents in California for the largest distributor of fine wines and spirits in the U.S. Even his Trump-supporter colleagues share his fear that said tariffs would decimate their business, not to mention many of their suppliers’ and clients’ businesses. He told me that even his boss, an avid “Trumper,” recognized that many of his employees would have to be dismissed if the tariffs were implemented.

Think of your average Italian restaurant in the U.S., he said, where the wine programs are designed around Italian wines that land at “by the glass” prices. The industry rule of thumb calls for wines by-the-glass to be sold at the same price as the wholesale cost of the of the bottle. An $8-9 by-the-glass wine would now cost $16-18.

Would you pay $18 for a glass of Sangiovese that cost $9 the previous day?

The reasoning is oversimplified here for sake of argument but you get the picture.

According to some estimates, 70 percent of the wine grown in Italy is shipped to the U.S. In many cases, Italian wineries sell nearly 100 percent of their products to the U.S. If the Trump administration implements the tariffs, the entire industry would be disrupted — from top to bottom. The people in the middle would devastated as well (including me and my marketing consulting business).

Ceri and James included the following links where Americans can send messages to their representatives in congress and the U.S. Trade Representative to stop these tariffs from taking effect.

To your senators (via the National Association of Wine Retailers):
https://account.votility.com/enterprise/NAWR/ec/697

To your congressperson (via the National Association of Wine Retailers):
https://account.votility.com/enterprise/NAWR/ec/698

To the United States Trade Representative:
https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=USTR-2019-0003-2518

If you love Italian wine and the people who grow, make, and sell it, I encourage you to join Ceri, James, and me in taking action.

Above: the classic “blue label” Brunello di Montalcino from Fattoria dei Barbi. There’s nothing “normale” about it (full disclosure: I consult with Fattoria dei Barbi on media and marketing strategy).

normal, adj. and n. Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional. (The usual sense.)

Etymology: < classical Latin normālis right-angled, in post-classical Latin also conforming to or governed by a rule (4th–5th cent.) < norma norma n. + -ālis -al suffix.

Oxford English Dictionary

Let’s just get this straight for once and for all: there’s nothing normale about Brunello di Montalcino.

Nor is there anything normale about Barolo or Barbaresco.

Ever since Italian wine began “trending” in the U.S. in the late 1990s, wine professionals have been faced with a linguistic conundrum: if the “single-vineyard” or “reserve” bottling of a given wine is considered to be superior in both quality and value, what do you call the “blended” or non-designate wine?

Unfortunately, many American tradespeople adopted the practice of calling the latter categories “normal” or — or even more regrettably, using an erroneous and misguided cultural (mis)appropriation from the Italian — “normale.”

There are two major issues with this convention.

Above: the single-vineyard designate Brunello di Montalcino “Vigna del Fiore” from Fattoria dei Barbi.

The first is that normal means, quite literally, conventional or ordinary, as in doesn’t stand out in a crowd.

Brunello, like its northern counterparts Barolo and Barbaresco, are not “conventional” or “ordinary” wines. In fact, they are illustrious, exceptional wines, even when not accompanied by a cru or aging designation.

The second issue is that historically, the Italians who make them consider the blended wines to be the more expressive and reflective of the appellation where they are produced.

The same holds for the “riserva” or “reserve” designation. It’s not that it’s a better wine from better fruit. A riserva wine is a wine that was conceived, through vineyard selection and vinification techniques, for longer-term aging.

Many Americans will be surprised to learn that the cru-designate trend in Italian wine is relatively recent. And in many cases, the single-vineyard designation was added to appeal to American consumers who assume that the single-vineyard expression is superior de facto. The same could be said of vintage-designate wines in Champagne where the non-vintage, vintage-blended wines are considered (by the people who grow them) the more indicative of the domaine’s style and tradition.

Calling a classic Brunello (or Barolo or Barbaresco) “normale” is demeaning not only to the wine but also the winemaker and the people who live, work, and grow grapes in the appellation of origin. And it also creates confusion for the consumer.

And that’s why I encourage my wine trade fellows to call wines blended from more than one vineyard “classic.”

Whether classic, cru-designate, or reserve, these categories are simply different expressions of the appellation and the winery’s style. When it comes to the top wines for which we use them, there’s nothing normale about them.

Full disclosure: I consult with Antica Casa Scarpa on media and marketing strategy.

Last month, I spent the better part of a week “working the market,” as we say in the wine trade, with my friend and colleague Riikka Sukula, director of operations for Antica Casa Scarpa — or Scarpa as it’s known — in Monferrato.

Market work entails visiting current or prospective clients (known as “accounts”) accompanied by a locally based distributor and/or agent for the winery’s importer. It’s sometimes called a “ride-with” or “work-with.” And it can be as fun and exhilarating as it can be disappointing and monotonous.

As Riikka (above) and I made our way from wine shop to wine shop, restaurant to restaurant, to taste and chat with wine buyers, wine directors, and sommeliers, I had a light-bulb moment as I listened to her deliver her spiel about the winery and the wines.

Yes, Scarpa is a winery, a commercial enterprise, and the purpose and objective of our ride-with was to convince people to buy the wine.

But Scarpa is so much more than just a winery that merely grows, vinifies, and sells wines: as one of Italy’s oldest continuously running estates, it’s a genuine cultural institution and resource, a part of what the Italians like to call their “cultural patrimony” or heritage. Riikka and her colleagues, some of whom were my students at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences, aren’t just making and selling an agricultural product. They are protecting and giving new life to a cultural icon and benchmark that would otherwise be tragic to lose.
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