How are supply-chain disruptions affecting the wine trade?

Adam Frisch has said he is having problems obtaining bottles. Someone posted about a container of old wines from Europe being stuck off the coast, waiting to come into the harbor at LA/Long Beach. A friend who ordered 2019 Burgundies pre-arrival said they’re months behind arriving.

An ITB friend told me last night that some winemakers in Europe can’t obtain corks.

I’m curious what problems winemakers, importers, distributors and retailers are encountering.

What do winemakers do if they can’t get bottles or corks? With a new harvest coming in, I assume that creates an issue with storage tanks/casks/barrels.

Especially if storage containers are also in short supply.

Our experience is that horrible shipping delays, at essentially every step of the process, made things very difficult for much of the year. Starting a few weeks ago we started getting a cascade of containers in, which has made it much easier, but the time we allow for a wine to reach us from Italy is about double what it would be normally.

Any reports of problems in Italy getting corks or bottles?

I would imagine everything is impacted: barrels, corks, foil, bottles, any new tanks and ancillary equipment.

I may have mentioned this in the other thread about supply chain, but we are air freighting product now instead of using sea freight. I am not shipping entire container load orders this way though. I have found air freight for pallets has been very closely priced with sea freight and given the delays at ports, I encourage my customers to ship via air now where in the past the excess cost was harder to justify.

I have barrels that have been waiting in port for 2 months now. Not fun and will cut it really close. Been bribing/overpaying just to get some.
Haven’t even started looking for corks yet

Do you have a Plan B if they don’t arrive before you need the capacity?

our distributors are saying that. Champagne is going out of stock.

Extended concrete aging? Stainless tank? Beg, barter, steal?
All joking aside - we found some barrels, they should be here in the next couple days. I will probably end up with 40k in extra barrels but should be able to sell them pretty easily.

Lined, spouted cardboard boxes!

Oh, wait, maybe not…

Corks are European anyway, not sure where the bottles come from, Italy is itself a large producer of winemaking equipment. Pickups are somewhat delayed but most of the problems are en route, all the way along the chain, even unloading at our warehouse.

In addition to delays and skyrocketing prices of refrigerated containers from Japan (sake), we’re experiencing reports of bottle, capsule and closure shortages as we try and put together a new whisky line offering. What we thought was locked in for bottles on a first run this fall or winter may not be available in sufficient quantity, which means changes to almost every other aspect from labels to closures has to change. It’s very frustrating.

How about aluminum cans or plastic bottles? They seem readily available, and are recyclable.

If this isn’t a short term (max 1-2 year) disruption, what sorts of changes will we see?

More aging in concrete, old barrels, or even old large casks (botti)?

Different packaging–saving the 750 mL bottles and corks for cuvees intended for aging, while using cheaper, more readily available packaging (e.g. a classier ‘bag in box’ format) for most wines?

Long term there may be major opportunities to make the industry less reliant on all of the international, high carbon footprint shipping.

Was in a shop yesterday and there happened to be a rep pouring samples for the owner. It was just the three of us in the shop and we ended up chatting about this exact topic, and they echoed what others have said - massive delays getting containers here and then through customs, or once the vessel arrives, there’s no berth for it, and then sometimes even issues with having enough stevedores to unload the vessel. There is a shortage of truck drivers, both long haul and local, and even a shortage of warehouse workers. The shop owner noted that he has a much higher incident of damaged boxes and labels on individual bottles, which distributors have blamed on warehouses using temp labor. Sounds like the shipping issue is less acute on the East Coast but transportation and warehouse logistics is a national issue.

I have no idea all this will all end but things have been disastrous for some time. There are lots of articles about this issue in the press.

Friends of mine had a container of wine shipped in February, unloaded just before Memorial Day.
All the cooperages have been suffering. Containers shipped in early June have yet to arrive. Last winter I saw something on local tv about a cork company having 16 containers of corks stuck on ships. That’s a lot of corks.

One of my cooperage competitors used to ship everything in winter and then sell from inventory. We might end up doing that.

I heard the big beer companies bought everything out so all the medium to small producers couldn’t get any.

“I heard” and “it happened” are not the same thing.

So I heard.

Not that it’s remotely relevant for bottling high-end cask strength whisky.