Where did my wine go? It’s a question we’re often called upon to answer. It’s true that we sometimes move things around a bit to keep the Wine Corner looking fresh. It’s a maneuver that can leave our clientèle scratching their heads when unable to spot on the shelves what they’re used to seeing. This is quickly enough put right. But sometimes that disappeared wine is so because we’ve decided it’s time to part ways with an old friend, or that said old friend has decided to part ways with us.
The latter case is easier to explain. Unlike beer or spirits or copier paper, the base material for winemaking isn’t in regular supply year ’round and so wine can’t easily be produced either on demand or in a continuous stream.
Most quality wine is made from the fruit of a single vintage (the exceptions are few enough to gloss over at this point), and while there will always be some wine for you and me to buy, it’s not infrequently the case that the supply of any given wine will be exhausted before the next vintage is ready to ship and distribute. Thus, breaks in continuity occur and with them comes the ongoing need to fill the holes they leave behind.
When the folks whose job it is to fill that shelf are, as we are, enthralled with small-production, sole proprietor or family-run winemaking farms, and make it their business to winkle out labels you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, the problem of continuity is compounded. A thousand cases a year production of a certain cuvée from a tiny holding on some sweet but steep Alpine slope isn’t going very far when a few obsesssives in retail shops restos and wine bars in the U.S., the EU and elsewhere, are clamoring for a share.
It’s also possible that your wine has gone away because its new vintage somehow doesn’t make our hearts go thump thump in quite the same way. Then, there are those days when we just decide that it’s past time you (and we) were seeing some fresh faces, falling hard for other wines from other places.
This may all seem a little bossy on our part, we know. But, after all, curation involves giving a nod here and a head shake there. Isn’t that what you pay us for?