"The Deeply F*cked Up Three-Tier System"

Some members of the wine and beverage media get it

VinePair, one the hardest working beverage media outlets in the world, dropped a podcast yesterday that focused on the difficulty of restaurants creating wine lists centered on local wines—or even a diversity of American wines. In the process of discussing the various reasons why creating such wine lists are a challenge, they hit on a fundamental reality of the American wine industry that is the primary reason all-American wine lists are difficult to construct and maintain:

“Our deeply fucked up three-tier system”

These were the words of Zach Geballe, a sommelier, wine writer, and educator based in Seattle who is a regular on the VinePair podcasts. Geballe, along with co-host of this podcast Hannah Staab who wrote an article on the subject of American wine lists, make a key observation that may be more important than any of their other points on this subject.

Geballe points out that the big, multi-state wholesalers are generally interested in the large production, widely distributed wines or small production and highly-allocated wines and are rather uninterested in the middle swath of wines. Meanwhile, the small wholesalers are being pushed out of the market and it’s these small distributors that are better equipped to represent wineries from across the country that might not reside in California, Washington, or Oregon.

This is all true. But consider what Hannah Staab observes on the podcast: While a restaurant (or retailer) in New York City can fairly easily obtain wines from New York’s various wineries because in that state small farm wineries may sell directly to New York restaurants without using a wholesaler, out-of-state wineries in places like Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, Texas, New Jersey or other states MUST use a New York wholesaler to get their wines into restaurants and retail stores there.