Negociants welcome here…

I’ve completely changed my thinking around wine negociants (the French term for a merchant who assembles the produce of smaller growers and winemakers, then sells the resulting product under its own name instead of the original grower producer). They’ve been around for centuries buying everything from grapes to fruit juice to finished wine. I had a somewhat elitist view that a winery should grow and harvest its own grapes, manage the winemaking process, and complete bottling and distribution. Wines that met those criteria had a regal provenance in my view, and were somehow better. Shady sellers who merely opportunistically blended together someone else’s scraps somehow made an inferior product.

The first changes in my thinking arose as I enjoyed wonderful wines made with grapes grown elsewhere. Bill Joy’s law applied to winemaking. Ravenswood San Giacomo Zinfandel, Ahlgren Livermore Valley Zinfandel, and Zahtila Beckstoffer Vineyards Zinfandel are a few examples. Farmers grow grapes here to sell to winemakers there. How could I complain about such wonderful wines? I love the Ravenswood line-up of Zinfandel from Amador, Lodi, Sonoma and Napa. This is the perfect way to sample and compare characteristics of these distinct growing areas. Must I return those because Ravenswood Winery is physically located in Sonoma? Then, I started to sample a number of marvelous handcrafted wines from crushpads located around California, and it was time to change my way of thinking.

Historically, negociants dominated the market because they had access to buyers through their distribution channels, it was too expensive for small farmers to purchase manufacturing and bottling equipment, and because large buyers had pricing advantages over small producers. Most wine drinkers are familiar with European negociants such as Bouchard, Pere et Fils, Louis Jadot and Georges Duboeuf, but there are many US producers who fall into this category that also deserve praise. A few of my favorite good value wines are below:

Red Guitar Navarra Old Vine
Ten Mile Red Blend
Pere et Fils Chateauneuf du Pape
Mad Housewife Cabernet Sauvignon

As I’ve said before, what matters is what goes in the consumers’ glass. Not who grew it, vinted it, or bottled it.

Best, Joe Plonk

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