November 25, 2007
Beer Conspiracy Theory
Recently a newsitem came out informing us of a looming HOP shortage worldwide. Initself not very interesting but of course there is always a down sideto news these days. Rising beer prices!
So what does this reallymean? The average beer consumer can expect to pay more for less. Well,maybe that’s a little simplistic.
According to the news article,there was a glut of HOPS for sale on the market, which prompted anumber of producers to stop growing hops. And with bad weather inEurope, a drought in Australia and average crops everywhere else, hopsare now at a premium. The biggest impact is expected to hit the smallerspecialty beer producers as large companies buy their hops on futures.
Personally,this is freakishly similar to the Tequila scare a few years ago. Youremember, the Agave cactus was dying so tequila was in jeopardy. Priceson Tequila skyrocketed and then suddenly the news stopped. It appearsthe Agave cacti all got better and we had all the Tequila we wanted,but the prices never returned to pre-scare levels. Hmmph!
As toHOPS today, this sounds very similar, doesn’t it? And it is even moreinteresting when you discover that the small brewers will be thehardest hit. It’s interesting because the big brewers have seen theirmarket share decline considerably over the past several years to thesesame small brewers. So with this shortage, the small companies priceswill have to rise while the big companies prices will remain fixed orincrease only marginally. How lucky for the big companies.
Sowhat does this all mean? Beer prices are expected to rise by at least10% by the end of the year but others are predicting as much as 30%depending on the breweries dependence on HOPS in their beers. Anotherscary prediction is the replacement of HOPS with some other ingredient.Chemical maybe…
So how will you, the consumer, respond to thisproblem? I know for myself that a wait and see approach seems prudentfor now and I suspect that despite raising prices I will continue topurchase my beer based on purity and quality. I may just be buying less.
Bill M.
November 18, 2007
Let’s Talk Wine!
Welcome to our Blog. The retail wine industry in BC is going through some exciting times and hopefully through this Blog, we can provide some insight into these changes and the effects on you the average wine buyer.
There are already several sources of information on the wine industry in BC, but most are concerned only with the urban aspects of the business while here we sit in a rural setting with very different needs and expectations.
Our rural setting has limited our selection and offerings in the past, Nanaimo seems to be a constant source of frustration as both government and private stores have become simple clones of one another. But we believe that the average rural wine buyer is becoming very savvy to the market and has greater expectations of variety and quality. We’ll talk more about this in future Blogs as well as other interesting items such as:
BC Wine Pricing
Private vs Government stores
Wine ratings
Etc, etc, etc…
For now, stay tuned to this website and this Blog for informative, interesting topics on the wine industry in BC and of course, the world. Check out the bottom of this page for links to other items of interest, such as the current beer HOP shortage, fact or conspiracy! More on this later as well.
Cheers,
Bill M.
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