And Now Good Wine Aplenty

By Michael Demarest

A worldwide glut makes for bargain sipping

Among the things to be festive about this holiday season are the wines that accompany it. Not for decades have so many been priced so affordably, and the prospect is that both imported and domestic vintages will stay that way for some time to come. The good news is echoed in retailers' ads across the U.S. "The most dramatic wine sale in Burka's history!" trumpets a Washington, D.C., wine store. "French champagnes below wholesale!" announces Manhattan's Sherry-Lehmann, whose bargains include a Maxim's Blanc de Blancs '73 Brut reduced from $70 to $39.95. "This is the age of Aquarius for wine drinkers," says Carlo Kendrick, wine manager at Washington's Sutton Place Gourmet. "The economy is going up and prices are going down. It's a fool's paradise in the wine business cycle."

A few years ago, overall U.S. prices and consumption seemed on an irreversible upward curve. French wines skyrocketed in cost, and many California vintners started charging chateau prices. It appeared as if every retired aerospace engineer and psychiatrist owned a golden patch of vineyard. Between 1978 and 1982, the Napa Valley alone gave birth to 50 new wineries; 47 started up in adjoining Sonoma County. Just as the new production was reaching the stores, European wines, most notably Italian and lesser-known French vintages, came on the market in increasing volume and at sensible prices. Last year U.S. wine sales went as flat as morning-after champagne. Impact, a reliable industry newsletter, projects that per capita consumption of California wine will increase at the sluggish rate of .7% annually through 1985.

The result is an international wine glut, as much a hangover for growers, shippers and retailers as it is a bonanza for consumers. In California, thousands of tons of wine grapes were left unpicked last year. E. & J. Gallo, by far the country's largest winemaker, reportedly turned down huge quantities of grapes offered at large discounts; its vast storage tanks in California's Central Valley were filled to overflowing. Even before the 1983 crop was harvested, there was an estimated 200 million-gallon surplus of California wine, which has now dwindled considerably.

In France, several years of bountiful harvests in key areas have left a 200 million-gallon surplus. Bordeaux, in particular, has had five straight years of abundant crops since 1978. In Italy, with substantial investments by large diversifying companies, new wineries and vineyards have been proliferating. Italian wine has greatly increased in quality, but only slightly in price. Between 1976 and 1982, Italy boosted exports to the U.S. by 250%; it now accounts for more than half of all imported wines sold in the U.S. Meanwhile, in Italy as in France, domestic consumption of wine has steadily decreased. "This generation," notes Agriculture Department Wine Specialist Rex Dull, "wants le Coca-Cola and le whisky." In the U.S., prices of foreign wines are substantially lower in large part because of the strong dollar.

Both France and Italy have been feeling competition from Spain, which in the past several years has been producing excellent vintages in quantity, particularly red wines and brisk, clean sparkling wines that sell for a fraction of the price of French champagne. One of the first to attract American attention was Codorniu; the 1981 Brut Classico sells for $4.99. An outstanding example is Paul Cheneau Blanc de Blancs Brut, from Barcelona, which now costs only $3.99.

Critics note that until recently it was difficult to praise many premium wines that cost less than $5 a bottle. Today there is a profusion of good vintages in this price range. (All wine prices vary from city to city, week to week.) Some Beaujolais bottlings have been reduced by $2, to $4.99. A 1982 Domaine de Cheval Blanc, a pleasant white Bordeaux, costs under $4. La Vieille Ferme '81, a satisfying red or white from the Rhone Valley, is now $3.49. Burka's store in Washington offers a 1981 Verdillac Bordeaux Superior for $3.49 a bottle, and a free wine rack goes with each case.

Eisewhere Marques de Riscal, an elegant Bordeaux-like red from Spain's Rioja region, costs $4.99, and there is a $2 mail-in rebate. Rurfino, the largest Chianti producer, offers a $3 rebate on $4.49 bottles of wine. Some stores are offering Italian Dolce Vita white at $3.98 a magnum, plus a second magnum for one penny. The highly regarded Plozner Chardonnay '82 has been reduced from $4.29 to $3.79.

Among California wines, the noble varietals of Robert Mondavi have been discounted, from the superb Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve '78, down from more than $60, to $49.50 a magnum, to the pleasant Fume Blanc, at $6.50 (down from $8.50). The competition has also been fierce among domestic jug wines produced by such firms as Gallo, Almaden, Inglenook and Paul Masson, some of which have cut as much as $2 from the cost of their three-liter bottles. The serious wine collector can find remarkable bargains among prestigious Bordeaux and Burgundies, as well as vintages from lesser-known petits chateaux that have never exported before. In fact, the top vintages, such as a 1978 Chateau Petrus and a 1975 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, have resisted price-cutting. Even these are good buys at $82.95 and $79.95 respectively. As Sherry-Lehmann notes, "They will outlive most of us." --By Michael Demarest.

Reported by Robert Buderl/San Francisco and Patricia Delaney/Washington

With reporting by Robert Buderl/San Francisco, Patricia Delaney/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.