Buy Now--the Glut’s On

A friend called the other day and said he saw 1987 Fetzer Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon “Barrel Select” selling at a local shop for less than $6 a bottle. He knew I liked the wine and wondered if something was amiss, since it’s supposed to sell at $11. He guessed two reasons:

* I was nuts. The wine really was awful and the winery couldn’t sell it at $11, so it had discounted it.

* The store accidentally mis-marked it.

I told my friend, sorry, you’re wrong. The wine really is excellent, but prices are being affected by factors unknown to the general public.

Specifically, too much good wine was made in California in 1991, and consumers are not buying as much wine as they did a few years ago. That has resulted in a wine surplus, and that glut of good wine is now showing up on store shelves at greatly reduced prices.

But you’d better move quickly. There are signs it may not last.

First, some background. The 1991 California wine grape harvest was a near-record 2.13 million tons, but it came when American wine consumption was dropping for the fifth straight year. Since the peak year of consumption, 1986, when Americans consumed an all-time high average of 2.4 gallons per person annually, consumption has dropped to 1.7 gallons.

Bill Turrentine, president of Turrentine Wine Brokerage in San Anselmo, says the large crop of California wine in 1991 was more than the market could handle at the prices normally charged by established wineries.

When there is a surplus of wine, prices decline, and Turrentine markets the leftovers. Entrepreneurs buy the wine in bulk, bottle it under their own labels and sell it at low prices. In some cases, Cabernet Sauvignons with unknown labels and $5 price tags are really $9 or $12 wines that went through the bulk market.

Turrentine says that in February and March, the bulk market was awash in first-rate wines at low prices. Most of the bulk wine bought in the last few months is now bottled and hitting store shelves. This forces the established brands to discount, and for the next few weeks, at least, discounts of 15% to 20% on some reputable brands will be offered to retailers. Some of them may pass those discounts along. (However, many wine stores and most restaurants do not pass on such discounts.)

Take, for instance, 1989 Pedroncelli Zinfandel, which is supposed to sell for $9 a bottle. This splendid wine, full of spice and berry qualities, is now selling for less than $6 in some wine shops. Also, a number of 1989 Chardonnays have been discounted. That vintage has been bad-mouthed by some critics, yet many of the wines are quite good and now represent excellent values.

Other values show up when wineries “declassify” some of their own wine, using it in second-label bottling instead. A good example of this is the 1990 Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon. Liberty School is the second label of Napa Valley’s Caymus Vineyards, a top producer of Cabernet. In a year when Caymus’s own vines produce a small crop, most of the wine for the Liberty School label is purchased from the bulk market. However, in 1990, Caymus made more Cabernet than it needed, so some of it went into its Liberty School line. The ’90 Liberty School Cabernet is deep and rich, full of varietal character and with enough stuffing to age a while. At $7.50, it’s a good value.

Another great value for consumers these days is sparkling wine. Consumption of bubbly is typically reserved for special occasions, so June (weddings, anniversaries, graduations) is a peak month. There won’t be another peak demand in sparkling wine until the winter holidays, so wholesalers are beginning to offer discounts. Such splendid wines as the non-vintage Mumm Cuvee Napa, Domaine Chandon, Gloria Ferrer and the vintage-dated Piper Sonoma now may be found at $9.50 to $12 a bottle.

There are indications that this run of discounting may be reaching an end. Red wine sales surged soon after the CBS television show “60 Minutes” reported the apparent link between moderate consumption of red wine and a lower risk of heart attacks, and wineries began absorbing most of the Merlot that was on the bulk market. Cabernet and Zinfandel were next.

As of this week, Turrentine says, there is no Merlot left in the bulk market, and there is precious little of anything else of truly high quality. The best value remains in Sauvignon Blanc, he says. Consumers seeking inexpensive Chardonnays would do better to buy this variety instead.

Wine of the Week

1991 Hogue Cellars Semillon ($7) --Talk about a winery on a roll! Family-owned Hogue in the Yakima Valley of Southern Washington has become one of the most successful premium wineries in the country, with a wide line of wines at reasonable prices. Its ’91 Semillon is a stunner, loaded with spiced pear fruit and a creamy texture usually found only in more expensive wines. It won the white wine sweepstakes at the San Francisco Fair wine competition two weeks ago.

This kind of quality is no fluke. In the recent Western Washington Fair wine judging, Hogue entered 12 wines and won 11 medals, including seven golds. In the Central Washington Fair, Hogue won the Best of Show Red for its 1988 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve ($18) and the Best of Show White for its 1991 Fume Blanc ($8). The Fume Blanc was also a sweepstakes winner at the West Coast Wine Competition held a month ago in Reno, and the winery’s 1989 Merlot Reserve ($18) has won a slew of gold medals.

Hogue’s winemaker, David Forsyth, now produces 180,000 cases of wine, most of it from the family’s 350 acres of wine grapes. Remarkable success for a winery that began in 1982, making Riesling.