Cheap wine

Wine here is cheap.
By that I don't mean it's bad. I just mean it doesn't cost very much. You can buy wine in the grocery store, the open-seven-days-a-week kiosk, and the drug store (where, ironically, you can buy everything except medicine). While Germany is more famous for beer than for wine, we are still in Europe, where half of all the world's wine is consumed. I am no expert, but it's pretty good.

So why are wines so much cheaper here? I have a few theories for you:

Demand - The world's top ten wine-drinking countries are all in Europe. The French drink 8 liters a year per capita, and the Germans just over 3 liters, but the U.S. has far fewer wine-os at 1.3 liters per year. Is the wine cheap because wine drinking is more common, or is wine drinking more common because the wine is cheap?

Travel costs - Forget German wines for a minute, because I think they are gross and don't buy them. But most other wines you can get here are made not too far away. There is a bottle of Italian wine on my shelf. I think it cost 2.99. It comes from Veneto, which is about 1,000km (600 miles) from here. That's the same distance and Minneapolis to Wichita.

I am partial to the Spanish reds, though. I have a 3.99 Rioja right now that comes from Navarra in Spain. That's a bit farther at 1700km, which is more like traveling from Minneapolis to somewhere between Denver and Salt Lake City. Your Napa Valley wine would have to travel twice that far to make it to your Twin Cities dinner table.

*On a side note, an old Swiss man I met in the customs line at Frankfurt airport told me that wine is produced in every state in the U.S. He owns a vineyard in Oregon, so he should know. I consulted the all-knowing internet and found that this is true. He also told me that people in India don't have heart attacks because they eat turmeric. That may or may not be true - the internet is inconclusive. Of course, I was in the early stages of jet lag at that point and it's possible that what I remember him saying is not entirely accurate. He was probably talking about turtle marriages (get it? tur marriage = turmeric? I am glad I'm not there to hear you not laughing at my dumb joke).*

Subsidies - The European Union provides 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in subsidies to its wine producers every year. That helps keep prices artificially low because producers have support from the government and don't pass all their costs on to consumers.

The mortgage - I found another reason in this  article. It's one I hadn't thought of before. A lot of vineyards in Spain and Italy and France, and even Portugal, Greece and Romania, have been in the same family for centuries. In the U.S., vineyards have been in the same family for... decades. They are still paying the mortgage.

Since many consumer items are more expensive in Germany than in the U.S., I feel like I should take advantage of this deal on wine. It's time to dig in my pockets for change, head to the drug store, and pick up a bottle or two. And even if it's not the highest quality vintage, it's probably better than the wine they make in Wichita.