Gift Bruliam Wines for the Holidays
If you’re planning corporate or holiday gift giving this season, please consider gifting Bruliam Wines. It’s easy to customize orders and include your personalized notecards and corporate material with each package.
Wine makes the perfect gift
why gift bruliam wines?
Gift Bruliam Wines because this is real (delicious) wine vinified by a real human from real grapes grown by really dedicated farmers. I craft delicious wines imbued with terroir, purpose, intention, and deep connections to each site. (And I get nice scores, too). While this may seem intuitive to you, read on to learn why “fake wine” is stealing press spotlight from limited-production, honest wines like mine.
ready to gift?
fake “wine”
Lately, news stories about adulterated and “fake” wine have inundated my post-harvest inbox. The first story concerns the importation of cheap Canadian grain alcohol, masquerading as “wine.” Don’t panic. You won’t accidentally swill this impostor in any bottle labeled “California.” (More on that topic later!). Instead, Canadian “wine” lands in flavored, ready-to-drink “wine” cocktails and flavored spirits. In short, this scheme is a complicated tax loophole that involves the collision of a 2005 US TTB law with Canada’s “Excise Tax” definition of wine. As a result, Canada exports cheap grain alcohol as bulk Canadian “wine.” By classifying the grain alcohol base as “wine,” spirit producers pay a significantly lower tax rate.
In addition, American spirits and “ready to drink” producers win a complicated tax loophole. As noted in the article, “most of this ‘bulk Canadian wine’ is sent to Indiana, Ohio or Kentucky in tankers where it’s blended into spirits products to take advantage of the 5010-tax credit.” Oh, and P.S., some of these ready-to-drink “wine” cocktails can be sold in convenience stores, since they are classified as “wine.”
(Note to self: stop gifting canned wine cocktails from Quik Stop. Your friends are onto you).
This gift is better.
Now, there is nothing wrong, per se, with this scheme. Flavored spirit producers are going to great lengths to exploit a legal tax loophole. And with alcohol sales depressed, why not maximize the bottom line? For me, the moral of this story is to know what you’re drinking.
We know that goldfish crackers are not made from fish. But do consumers understand that their “wine” cocktail doesn’t contain wine? Do drinkers of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey understand that the base grain alcohol is from Canada, not Kentucky? Read labels carefully. Know what you’re buying and what you’re drinking.
it happens here too
This click-bait-y title “IMPORTED FOREIGN BULK WINE: THE DIRTY SECRET NO ONE IN CALIFORNIA WINE IS TALKING ABOUT” spotlights the reverse of the Canadian “wine” gambit, although this story is not new. Blending “bulk” wine into existing lots is a tried-and-true method to increase volume and increase margins at minimal cost. For example, one can purchase “X” tons of grape and vinify them, and then, post-harvest/pre-bottling, combine with cheaper bulk wine to create a new blend, allowing producers to exponentially magnify volume at a significantly lower price point. However, the label will reflect this. Indeed, the law allows for up to 25% addition (by volume) to domestic wines. Again: read the label. Wines amplified with imported bulk wine must be labeled “American,” since wine labeled “California” may only contain California grapes, by law. For me, as a terroiriste, crafting single vineyard designates, the label law is especially stringent. A California single vineyard designate is comprised of >95% of fruit from that site, by law.
Labels provide great information about what’s inside the bottle.
Blending with either domestic bulk wine or imported bulk wine to amplify value, extend margins, and boost winery profits is legal, but the wines must be labeled appropriately. The frustrating bugaboo for domestic winegrowers is that even with tariffs, imported bulk wine remains cheaper than domestic bulk wine. Complicating this is a familiar sticky wicket - yet another tax loophole. As Natalie Collins, President of California Association of Winegrape Growers notes, “Adding to the problem, the Federal duty drawback system, in its current form, further incentivizes bulk imports by allowing companies to claim refunds on import duties and excise taxes; giving imported wine a competitive advantage in the US market.”
david & goliath ?
I’m just a small fry, crafting a few hundred cases each of my single vineyard favorites. I don’t play the bulk market, although on occasion, I’ve sold a barrel or two to bulk merchants if its contents aren’t up to snuff for my own program. However, the bulk market remains a bellwether for the wine industry, so even we wee wineries follow bulk industry news with piqued ears.
Funny enough, I recently poured at an international event where domestic producers were tabled in alphabetical order. I landed next to Bronco Wine Company, the 10th largest wine producer in the United States! So here I am, the teeniest producer in the room alongside a behemoth. My conversations went like this:
“I craft single vineyard expressions of terroir. Yes, exactly, I make 5 different pinots. Yup, all pinot noir. Only pinot noir. How are they different? Oh my gosh, they are SO so so so so different. They come from different vineyards, and pinot tastes like where it’s grown. Soberanes should taste different from Torrey Hill. These vineyards are four hours apart. That’s like… well, Healdsburg to Mumbai, in ‘pinot noir miles.’”
Bronco jim’s pitch:
My affable neighbor Jim pitched like this:
“Well, what do you like? What style do you need? Our team can reverse engineer any wine and make an identical one for you. Yes, your label. Your brand. You like oaky buttery chardonnay? You like fruit forward giant cabs? We can do that. Just tell me what you want. We blend and blend across all our bulk lots, and manufacture it, just for you.”
the denouement
“I’m Just a Girl in the World…”
I suppose the moral of this story is that there exists a wine for all of us, from value driven “American” wines (for the newly wine curious) to the most focused, granular expressions of site (crafted by wine geeks like me for wine geeks like you!). So, if you’re considering holiday gifting this year, please consider Bruliam Wines. Bruliam Wines are made from real grapes, from real vineyards, by a real girl with a pump, a hose, and a racking valve. Nothing engineered, nothing concocted. Just honest wine. And in this age of AI generated imagery, bots, and “uncanny valley” sleights of hand, perhaps a glass of honest wine is just the antidote we need.
This image was generated by AI (but human hands generated this wine!).