Given the scarcity of 2010 pinot from Oregon due to weather and birds, I’m wondering how winemakers are going to respond. Often we see producers marketing at least three tiers of wines, starting with a WV bottling, then on to one or more AVA-specific cuvees, and then various SVDs. Each tier tends to have increasing prices and decreasing availability.
This year, with so little wine to go around (relatively speaking), do you think we are going to see a considerable decrease in the proportion of grapes going to lower priced bottlings and an attempt to retain production levels of the highest end wines? Or will the wineries just scale back production of all the bottlings to reflect reduced yields in the field? Another possibility is an elimination of multiple differentiated bottlings within a given pricing tier.
Depending on the producer, quality considerations could drive what fruit gets bottled as a particular wine or scarcity and pricing could drive decisions. Or both.
Anyone have any insights yet? Many producers have already put out their WV wines and some mid-level wines are now in the market as well. I haven’t spent much time looking at the data to start to resolve this question, but it’s very interesting to me.
There appear to be some very special wines in 2010 for those who appreciate bright, relatively lithe wines with good cut. I feel like I need to make decisions quickly about what I plan to buy and I’m not sure if the WV and AVA wines are going to be in shortest supply and necessitate quick decisions or if it’s going to be the same all the way around (or even worse?) with the top tier SVD bottlings.