Where Did My Wine Go?

It’s a question we’re often called upon to answer. It’s true enough that we sometimes move things around a bit to keep the Wine Corner looking fresh, a practice that can leave our clientèle scratching their heads when unable to quickly spot something they’re looking for. But this is a situation that’s quickly put right.

More often, your gone-away wine is either a matter of our deciding it’s time to part ways with an old friend, or that said old friend has to part ways with us, temporarily.

The latter case is the easier to explain. Unlike beer, vodka or copier paper, the base material for winemaking is not in regular supply year ’round, which means wine can’t be produced in a continuous stream.

Wine is normally 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 us and you to buy, it is generally not the case that the supply of any given wine is such that it will not 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.

This may not be true of wine brands made on an industrial scale, but when the folks whose job it is to fill that shelf are, as we, enthralled with small-production, sole proprietor or family-operated wine farms, and make it their business to winkle out labels you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, the problem of continuity is actually compounded. A few thousand bottles a year production of a certain cuvée from a guy making wine on a tiny holding on some sweet, steep Alpine slope isn’t going very far considering the number of retailers and restos who may be clamoring for a share.

Disappeared wine may also be chalked up to decisions made further up the sales chain, as when an importer or distributor we depend on parts ways with a producer — a frustrating outcome for us. Or, it may be that the new vintage of an old flame somehow doesn’t make our heart thump as fast as a previously; in which case we may decide to take a beat. Then, there are those moments 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, by definition, curation requires giving a yay here and a nay there. Isn’t that what you pay us for?