The last time I interviewed Cameron Hughes, CEO of the giant wine distributor under his name, he told me about how some of most illustrious cult wines of California, whose bottlings win 95-point ratings from the wine media and sell for hundreds of dollars, sell off their excess to negoçiants like him who in turn sell it everywhere from local wine shops to Costco for prices below $50.  

         Now, after several very bountiful vintages from 2012 to 2019, with a glut of California wines in the market, his deals are getting better than ever.  Over dinner in New York, the 47 year-old Hughes told me, “The state is drowning in wine. For wineries that pride themselves on small production and selling only by allocation, it’s a little embarrassing to find their warehouses bulging with thousands of gallons of wine. Still, they don’t want to see their wines selling in Costco because of the perception of lower quality.”

         He cited one well-known cult wine that was selling for $65 a gallon, now available in the market for just $20.

         “Allocating wine is just a game,” he said, drinking a Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc with a dish of foie gras. “People who buy at the high end do so for the experience of drinking a $300 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s not really about the wine itself, so the producer says tells this wine shop owner or restaurateur he can only get a case or a few bottles, when in fact, his wines are stacked up in a warehouse.”

         Hughes, who lives in San Francisco and who bears a resemblance to actor Luke Wilson, gains tremendously from playing the game, though he does get frustrated when he sees a wine get a very high rating from Wine Spectator or Wine Advocate but a much lower one for the same exact wine that he sells under a different label for a quarter of the price. He hasn’t forgotten the time a wine was rated an “Editors Choice” with 93 points, selling for $125. “We bought the surplus of the same wine under our Napa Valley Lot 51 Coomsville label and sold it for $27.” In the industry this is called a “shiner,” a wine already bottled but without a label affixed. In the U.S. four companies distribute 80% of the wine sold.

         The same practices go on in Europe, where wine laws delimit the amount of wine that may be bottled under the French denomination contrôlée, so that if a First Growth Bordeaux or Grand Cru Burgundy estate enjoys an abundant harvest, some of its finished wine must be sold off, either under a second label or to a négoçiant like Hughes, who labels it himself or negotiates the sale and export of the excess wine.         Born in  the Modesto, CA, wine country, Hughes started selling his own label—he’s never owned a vineyard—called Sinergi Brand Kitchen Sink out of the trunk of his car. Over the last fifteen years he has built up an enormous range of growers, sellers, and winery owners. He is also now in the beef business, selling highest quality USDA Prime and Japanese wagyu.

         While the huge harvests of the last decade would seem a boon to winemakers, Hughes notes that 2019 sales will be flat, and that, in fact, the American wine industry is bracing for a precarious future. “It’s not so much overproduction,” said Hughes, “but it’s more due to Americans’ drinking habits. The boomers have cut back on their wine consumption, while the Gen-Xers and Millennials are more into brown goods and beer than wine.”        
     Hughes’s assertion is backed up by “The State of the Wine Industry Report 2019” by Rob McMilland, EVOP and Founder of the Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division, which states that while the baby boomers control 70 percent of U.S. discretionary income and half the net worth in the U.S., they “are moving into retirement and declining in both their numbers and per capita consumption, [and]  Millennials aren’t yet embracing wine consumption as many had predicted. Damaged financial capacity is a major contributor, but cannabis legalization is another factor explaining their slow adoption of wine.”

         The Report also noted that the “cumulative impact of negative health messaging — absent offsetting promotion of the health benefits of moderate wine consumption — is negatively influencing consumption, particularly for the millennial consumer. . . . Due to many factors, including their limited financial capacity, a preference for premium spirits and craft beers, delayed careers, negative health messaging regarding alcohol, and the legalization of cannabis, the millennial consumer has temporarily stalled in growing their wine consumption.”

         Hughes is also concerned by global warming and drought, although he notes that “grapes use less than half the water in Central Valley – and even less in Napa and Sonoma—but provide twice the economic impact (efficiency) of almonds. Grapes don’t really need a lot of water.”

         He’s as concerned about what he calls “designer yeasts” in wine, which he says may cause warm weather wines’ alcohol levels to rise. (It should also be mentioned that some genetically modified yeasts have been developed to do the opposite, by diverting more of the grapes’ sugars to glycol rather than alcohol, but glycol also tends to make wines taste sweeter.)

         Still, Hughes is very optimistic about Americans’ desire to drink high quality wines that he can supply cheaply because of the current wine glut. It’s kind of his Kumbaya moment: On his website, he has a video resembling an inexpensive Super Bowl ad, with Hughes and his dog  bounding through vineyards and a living room,  plucking wine bottles from the air and from the hands of “the privileged, the few,” then leading a pack of very young, smiling Millennials along what appears to be San Francisco, . He brandishes a bottle of his wine and exclaims,  “This is what liberty smells like! This is what democracy tastes like!”

         It’s not exactly Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but it’s folksy, it’s catchy, it’s brimming with youthful enthusiasm and it’s persuasive,

like the old Coke declaring, “It’s the Real Thing!”

THE COLONEL JUST TURNED OVER IN HIS GRAVE

KFC has announced it’s going “beyond” fried chicken with the introduction of a vegan imitation plant-based chicken to its menu in Smyrna, GA, one Atlanta-area restaurant on Tuesday.

PRECISELY THE COMPARISON WE WOULD COME
UP WITH. . . IF WE WERE DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND