Anyone who follows the world of wine in the slightest most likely heard about the supposed “global wine shortage” that was soon to befall us. If you haven’t read the article (or the subsequent rehashes of it), dial back your social media clock to October and take a quick scan because it made the rounds in a big way. And, why shouldn’t it? A lack of wine is a scary thing indeed for oenophiles. It just happens to be the case that this report was to a large degree, bullshit.
If you’re like me (albeit possible without the large head that hits low hanging structures), then most likely you’ve visited a few cellars. If you’ve taken the smallest glance around while the winemaker was going over, in finite detail how the bottling machine works you will have noticed most cellars have a lot of bottle inventory. Yes, part of that is bottle aging, but another part is that there are just too many damned wines out there and they don’t sell as readily as the “no wine no more, run for the hills!” report would have you believe and this article that’s from a reputable news agency (the BBC) as opposed to an investment company (Morgan Stanley) that wanted to boost winery stock prices with a borderline fraudulent article says as much. In short, the world is actually producing slightly more wine than what we actually consume each year and production, as of 2013 is not decreasing.
If this wasn’t the case, there would be no bulk wines in Spain, Italy, or the rest of Europe and there would be no bottles seen at any wineries because every winery, no matter how good or bad would be able to export every last drop of wine out of these countries to wherever the highest paying market was. Admittedly, there would probably still be Don Simón Tinto at 0.65€ a liter as I’m quite convinced that has nary a single grape in it.
Suffice to say, our new age of social media is a dangerous one as it can spread such horrible things as there not being enough wine to drink or worse such as talking about anything that Justin Bieber or a Kardashian has done.
