Wine enthusiasts like to talk about terroir — the way hyperlocal factors, from the minerality of the soil to the topography of the hills, express themselves in the flavor of the grape.
But the business of making and bottling wine is anything but hyperlocal. Vintners in Napa and Sonoma are reliant on a carefully calibrated mix of materials from around the world, including oak barrels from France, porous corks from Portugal, and glass bottles from China and Mexico. While there are alternatives to all these, high-end producers cater to sophisticated buyers who don’t accept cut corners.
This means even the most celebrated California wineries are facing an unprecedented challenge from President Donald Trump’s will-they-or-won’t-they tariff policy while trying to remain competitive on price and keep quality consistent.
We spoke with insiders to better understand how this tumult in global trade affects what goes into the cost of a bottle of cabernet, chenin blanc, or bubbly.
French oak, American problems
If a tree falls in a French oak forest, someone is going to notice. That’s because the livelihood of French coopers, or barrel makers, is dependent on these forests, protected by the French government since the 17th century.
To the layman, the use of American or Hungarian, instead of French, barrels might not seem like a big deal, but it will noticeably alter a flavor carefully calibrated by winemakers. Different trees yield variations in the size of wood grain, which allows more or less oxygen to enter the barrel during fermentation.
Tonnellerie Remond, a 70-year-old barrel company in the French village of Ladoix-Serrigny, is among those weighing the effects of harsh tariffs on exports to America, a hefty portion of the revenue stream.
“There’s been no legal clarification,” said Todd Stanfield, who runs North American operations for Tonnellerie Remond. “It’s still a mess.”
Stanfield’s team temporarily halted shipments while waiting to see if a 20% tariff against all imports from the European Union to the United States would take effect. On Wednesday, Trump announced he had paused the tax for 90 days. Stanfield said he asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week if the 10% tariffs previously implemented by Trump are still on the books. Staffers there didn’t know.
“We went from stopping and waiting to going as fast as we can,” said Stanfield. “We have 90 days to get everything for the harvest.”
Here’s how the math works out. Each barrel costs $1,200 without tariffs, and each container Tonnellerie Remond ships to the U.S. contains 150 barrels, so a 20% tariff adds a cost of $36,000. Across the company’s typical 40 containers shipped to the U.S. each year, that’s an increase of $1.44 million. Even a 10% tariff would be a significant burden.
While Trump administration officials have couched the tariff regime as a tool for spurring domestic production, Stanfield notes that it would take about 150 years for anywhere in the U.S. to cultivate oak trees that can match those of France.
“We’re talking about making a plan for your great-great-grandchildren,” Stanfield said. “There are certain things that can be replicated to compete with someone’s market. A French oak forest is not one of them.”
How Portugal plugs into the wine economy
Despite having a population a quarter the size of California’s, Portugal produces half of the world’s cork. Spread throughout the Alentejo and Algarve regions in the south are expansive forests where cork farmers are among the highest-paid agricultural workers in the country.
“It’s given a lot of people sustenance — not only their family, but generations past,” said Gustavo Beltran, vice president of operations at Portuguese cork maker M.A. Silva.
The U.S. side of Beltran’s business is focused on making sure winemakers get the product they need, depending on their price range and clientele.
“Most corks that you pull out of a bottle will have some sort of porosity, almost like craters,” said Beltran. “The more visual imperfections on that cork, the lower the selling price.”
Beltran said cork trees, which exist throughout the world at a specific longitude, require special management. Similar to French oak, it would take decades to foster something in California that can compete with the oak trees of Portugal, as well as those of Spain and Sardinia, the other premier growing regions.
To counter tariffs during Trump’s first administration, M.A. Silva adopted a policy of price transparency with customers, letting them know how it was calculating and justifying prices based on the increase to its own operating costs. In 2018, for example, tariffs contributed to a 21.5% increase in M.A. Silva’s sales prices, calculated based on the fact that material costs are 85% of the company’s total cost of production, Beltran said.
Beltran said the price of his wine-bottle corks varies widely, from 7 cents to $3. In 2018, a 21.5% increase in price brought the price of some corks up by as much as 64 cents. Now, the company is in tariff purgatory, stuck between a supposedly canceled 20% tariff and a 10% tariff that may or may not be in existence.
Transparency in the global supply chain
While China has traditionally provided the world’s cheapest glass bottles, that is likely to change with the hefty taxes Trump has imposed on the country’s exports. Some bottle distributors and manufacturers believe this could be a good thing, since these products have not always lived up to the expectations of discerning winemakers.
“Some of the Chinese glasses are cheaper, but sometimes the quality isn’t really there,” said Patrick Venegas, who works for a family-owned bottle distributor in Ontario, Canada.
Jennifer Halleck, owner of Halleck Winery in western Sonoma County, shared a 2022 invoice from TricorBraun, an international glass manufacturer and distributor, that includes a line item for “Additional Government Imposed Tariffs” at a rate of 18.23%. Those tariffs were carried over from the first Trump administration.
Halleck purchased 294 12-bottle cases for $10.25 each. That means that for a $3,013.50 bottle purchase, an additional $549.78 was tacked on for tariffs.
Halleck expects the added line to show up on future receipts, although she is not entirely sure if it will be enforced on products that began their ocean crossing before the higher tariffs went into effect.
“Ultimately, I’m the one who’s going to pay the tax,” said Halleck. “The importer will pay it, and then they’ll turn around and charge me for that amount.”
Courtney Wagoner, a winemaker for Martinelli Winery in western Sonoma County, says wineries generally try to spend less than $20 per case on parts of the product that aren’t the wine itself.
Wagoner used to import a specific kind of glass bottle from Mexico before switching to U.S.-made glass. Although other U.S. winemakers may look to domestic companies for supplies they would have previously gotten from overseas, many suppliers don’t have the inventory to keep up with demand, said Michael Haney, executive director of the trade group Sonoma County Vintners.
“They’re in a state of limbo, which is terrible,” said Haney. “We need some definitive actions to be able to plan and budget and move forward, instead of things changing by the hour.”
Haney noted that while Trump’s tweets and media reports may offer information to the public, they aren’t useful to people in the business, who must get official word on tariffs from the U.S. government.
“What happens after 90 days?” asked Haney. “I’m a businessperson. I’m trying to plan for the year.”