It’s been almost surreal the past few months watching as we, the biggest hulk on the block, punch our enemies, our friends, and of course ourselves, repeatedly in the face with the consideration and subtlety of a drunken elephant wielding a jackhammer.
What the tariffs will really mean for the U.S. and the world economy no one knows. What is clear is that absolutely no one needs my analysis. But I did want to speak to what the tariffs will mean for our pricing.
Vom Boden’s key advantage is our tiny scale, and the authentic human relationships that we have developed with our growers, our friends and heroes, over more than a decade in business. Once again, these relationships will save us – a sense of mutual purpose and trust, will save us.
As they did the last time the U.S. demanded tariffs, nearly all of our growers have agreed to help, to share the burden with us. For this I can only say thank you, again.
Nearly all our growers will discount their wines (when they can). For our part, we will sharpen our margins (when we can) and together we should be able to keep the wines coming through at nearly the same prices – which I think were already just absurdly good values, for the quality, for the human labor, for the deep history.
Some items, in some cases, may need to go up fifty cents to a dollar a bottle. In many cases, this has as much (or more) to do with the weakness of the dollar as it does with the tariffs. In some cases this is more the result of the normal price increases that can come with a new vintage.
Obviously this is all unfolding in real time and after spending a frantic weekend doing an analysis for a few hundred SKUs with 20% tariffs, I had the joy of doing the same exact thing only a few days later with the newly announced 10% tariffs.
So it’d be wise to note everything is still in flux. If the tariffs go up (again), we may have to increase prices a bit. If the tariffs go away, we will not ask our growers to discount and we will take back our margin. In the few instances where we had to increase our prices because of the tariffs, we promise to return to our pre-tariff pricing if the tariffs are taken away (assuming the dollar doesn’t collapse further).
We just wanted to be as proactive and as transparent as possible.
We expect some tricky times ahead, but we will keep our heads down and our hearts high. We have faith that the authenticity of wine, the authenticity of the culture and the community it creates will actually begin to feel even more important as we head into this new world.
That said, we’ll need your help to keep going.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email info@vomboden.com, where a human, completely unassisted by AI, will answer your questions.