3 Tiers of the Wine Supply Chain

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Even though global wine production dropped by 4% in 2021, drinking wine is on the rise. Premium wine sales grew 21%, which is the most since 2007.

Prohibition forever altered the wine supply chain, and here we’ll examine how grapes growing on a vine in a picturesque wine region become wine for purchase at your local wine bar. We’ll start with what you need to make wine, then tell you about some of the machinery used in the winemaking process, uncover various roles within the supply chain, and finish with a savvy way in which wine waste is being upcycled.

Even if you’re not a wine connoisseur, you likely know that there are more than the common red and green grapes that grace cheese plates. You may have even been seduced by recent trendy crops like the mysterious Moon Drop grapes that popped up in 2004 or the deliciously sweet Cotton Candy grapes that first hit the scene in 2011.

When it comes to grapes for wine, there are some varieties that are better than others. There are about 24 prevalent wine grapes. This number includes red wine grapes and white wine grapes, with each grape providing its distinct acidity, aroma, body, and flavor.

The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) developed this list based on planted hectares.

It takes more than just grapes to make wine, though. There are three basic components to wine:

Grapes juice usually serves as fermentable sugar, but there are other fruit wines. These wines include apples (cider), raspberry, cherry, pears, blueberry, plums, and apricot, among others. There is even jalapeno wine and avocado wine (and yes, these are both technically fruit).

Then there are beverages that are referred to as non-grape wines. These include rice wine, better known as sake, and honey wine, more commonly referred to as mead. However, these are misnomers because, from a technical standpoint, wine is only made from fruit. Therefore, fermented rice and fermented honey deserve classifications of their own.

For many of us, our knowledge of the process of making wine stems from watching Lucille Ball stomping grapes in a giant vat in I Love Lucy — but that's just one of the many winemaking steps.

When are grapes picked for wine? The wine grape harvest season depends on the region. In Europe and North America, grapes are picked from August through October. In South Africa, South America, Australia, and New Zealand, grapes are picked from February through April.

Sparkling and white wine grapes are picked first to get the lower levels of sugar. Then, red wine grapes are picked. Lastly, grapes for ice wines are picked, since these sweet wines are made from grapes that have frozen on the vine. These are grapes that have been left on the vine a few months past the standard harvest season so that they reach a higher sugar content.

The ripeness of the various grape varieties and the wine profile produced are influenced not just by sugar content but also by tannins and acid. Tannins occur naturally and are what provide the wine with its astringency and mouthfeel. There are different types of acids in wine, but overall they are what give wine its tartness.

How are grapes picked for wine? Traditionally, grapes are hand-harvested. This helps prevent their skins from getting damaged, which leads to oxidation. However, today, many large vineyards have turned to mechanical harvesters because they are less expensive and more efficient.

All I Love Lucy jokes aside, don't be too worried that your expensive glass of merlot comes courtesy of someone's bare feet. Stomping on grapes was the traditional method for extracting the juice for the wine in the Ancient World. Today, it's typically reserved for attracting visitors to vineyards — visitors get to experience grape stomping, and the results are used for compost or sold to those who understand just what they’re getting.

Today, machines are used to crush grapes. A destemmer, as its name implies, removes the woody stems and presses the juice out of the grapes.

In addition to the crushing, white grapes are pressed in another machine. After this pure juice settles at the bottom of a tank, it's then "racked" or filtered into a different tank to remove the presence of sediment before fermentation begins.

Grape juice turns into wine thanks to fermentation. Yeast is added to the vats to assist the sugar in the grapes in turning into alcohol. This yeast also results in the production of carbon dioxide. Therefore, winemakers must manage the dissolved carbon dioxide levels in the wine. If the level is too low in a white wine, it will become flat. However, if it's too high in a red wine, it will become too tannic.

In contrast to white wine, red wine grapes are fermented with their skins still on after the crushing process. Only when the fermentation is finished are the grapes racked. Leaving the skins on during the fermentation process is what gives red wine its ruby color, velvety mouthfeel, and distinct flavor.

As the name implies, aging a wine is not imbibing it immediately upon the completion of fermentation and clarification. Rather, it's giving the wine time to mature. Barrel time is between 6 months and 30 months. White wine takes less time to age than red wine.

You might’ve heard the expression "age is more than just a number." This is likewise true with wine. Aging a wine also has to do with the type of barrel it's aged in as well as barrel size. Types of winemaking barrels can include stainless steel, various types of oak, new or previously used barrels, and "toasted" or charred barrels or those with heads that aren't toasted. Aging can also occur in the bottle.

The science of winemaking includes bottling. It may not seem like it, but the bottle your wine comes in isn't random nor is the type of cork.

While homemade wine doesn't require any high-tech machinery, small wineries may use a bench-top manual filler. Larger wineries may use bottling machine technology such as automatic filling machines. There is also equipment for adding wine labels.

Offshoots of the wine supply chain, therefore, include the glass bottle supply chain, the cork supply chain, the paper label and glue supply chains, as well as the supply chain for the various machines used in the winemaking and bottling processes.

White wine and rose are stored in green or clear bottles. Red wine can also be stored in green bottles, or it can be stored in a brown bottle. The wine bottle color helps to filter out the UV rays that speed up the oxidation process. This is also why bottled wine is stored in wine cellars. For the best quality wine, it's best to keep wine out of direct sunlight.

There are also various wine bottle shapes to consider when bottling wine. Bordeaux is the world's most popular wine bottle type. Other common types of wine bottles are Burgundy, Sparkling, Alsace, Port, and Ice or Dessert. The bottles vary by shoulder height, glass thickness, and deepness of the punt (the indentation at the bottle of the bottle). For example, sparkling wine is kept in a bottle with thick glass and a deep punt because of the pressure from the bubbles.

There is also boxed wine.

There are more types of wine corks than you probably would realize.

The most traditional is the natural cork. About 70% of wines have natural corks and most fine wines use this type of cork. One of its benefits is that it's biodegradable.

Synthetic cork is a misnomer as it's not made from cork at all. Rather, it's made from plastic. While not great for the planet, it doesn't taint wine the way cork can.

Other types of cork include champagne cork, grainy cork, helix cork, and capped cork, among others. In addition to cork, there is of course the trusty screw cap. While you won't see these on fine wines, screw caps are actually great for wines that don't need long periods to age.

Wine is made practically everywhere, from the edge of the Gobi Desert in China to the volcanic ashes of Santorini in Greece. But about 80% of the world's wine comes from just 10 countries.

This list is from World Population Review.

This list comes from USA Wine Ratings.

We can't talk about wine without mentioning the Volstead Act. Prohibition wasn't simply a temporary blip in alcohol manufacturing, it changed the way the supply chain functions.

Prior to Prohibition, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of beverages with an alcohol content greater than 1.28% looked different than it does today. Producers oftentimes owned their own retail outlets and served their local communities.

Today, alcohol, including wine, is highly regulated in the U.S. After the repeal of Prohibition, the wine and spirits industry fractured into a three-tier system.

Tier 1: Producers — The first tier includes grape growers, wineries, manufacturers, suppliers, and importers.

Tier 2: Distributors — The second tier could be considered the middle man. This is the wholesaler. They purchase wine from the producers and then sell and deliver it to retailers.

Tier 3: Retailers — The third tier refers to not just stores but also restaurants.

Within the three-tiered system, there are numerous roles that keep the supply chain in motion. These roles may include:

A standard bottle of wine is the result of approximately 2.6 pounds of grapes. But about 20% of that is discarded because in the winemaking process, stems, stalks, seeds, and skin are removed because just the juice from the grape is needed to make wine. Every year, about 12 million tons of grape waste is produced.

Preventing waste in the wine industry, however, has led to a wonderful outcome: pomace brandy. This includes, for example, Italian grappa, Greek tsipouro and tsikoudia, and Turkish raki.

Image Credit: FERNANDO MACIAS ROMO/Shutterstock.com