As much as we like the folksy "family" winery image.....

A lot of us like the folsky image of a family winery, nestled into some idyllic corner of a vineyard, and there are a ton of them out there. But, in a recent news item on Wines and Vines, while the number of wineries in North America has passed 7,000, don't think for a minute that the production is relatively evenly divided up between them. 93% of the wine production is handled by 6% of the wineries. That would mean at least 93% of the wine (by volume) on the average store shelf comes from a relatively few wine producers.
I'm not saying that's a good thing or bad thing - it's just the reality that wine is big business, and most of the players are big companies. Even if they are family run, they are still big companies. Also, keep in mind that the name of the producer on the bottle could be a registered trade name of a larger company. Case in point. A number of years ago, when I worked for a large chain drug store, I would often be on the "floor" hand selling and helping people decide on choices of wine during the holidays. One store I was at, in Modesto, proved that most people don't know that a big company is behind that wine. A nice, older woman wanted some wine for having with a holiday gathering of family. After going over what food was going to be served and what kind of wine she normally has, we narrowed down to 2 relatively safe varietals - Chardonnay and Merlot, and started looking at ones in a price range she had. She looked at a Gallo brand wine, and said "oh, I would never have Gallo", then looked at a Turning Leaf bottle and continued "but that Turning Leaf wine would be nice." I asked her if she knew where it was made, which she didn't, so I had her look at the bottler statement on the back label. Seeing that it was Modesto, she queried "oh, I didn't know there was another winery in Modesto!" When I told her there wasn't, the light went on that it was just another product from Gallo, to which she couldn't believe she was buying Gallo. Now, I have had some nice Turning Leaf wines, but if you know that it's from a large producer, it is usually easier to accept that you may be feeding a corporate machine - and, if you enjoy it, then that's not necessarily a bad thing - it just is what it is.
If you ever want to know who the main producer is of any wine, you can actually look it up - you can go to www.ttb.gov (who are the guys that handle wine related regulations on the Federal level), click on 'labels', then click on Public COLA registry; from there, you can enter the name of the bottler, and see, from the registered approved labels, who the main company who made that wine is. Of course, this works best for centrally located wineries, producing under several labels. Over that past several years, large wine companies have been buying out wineries, and with different locations, you may not know if that winery is part of a larger corporation (a notable example would Robert Mondavi Winery, which is now owned by Constellation, the world's largest wine producer; the label approval would still show Mondavi, as long as it was bottled at the Mondavi facility).
Like I said earlier, wine by large companies is not a good or bad thing - it just is. But if you are looking for a small family producer, it probably won't be available by the pallet at Costco!
Let me know your thought
Until next time
David