Wine’s been in the news a bit lately — tariffs, mainly. I’ve already written about that, but recently there was a full feature in the NY Times detailing essentially what everyone knew would happen: The inevitable disastrous effect the forthcoming (supposedly) tariffs would have on European wineries.

Let’s look into this a bit here plus a recent article about Chinese lo-fi/natural wines that appeared in the Australian media.

According to the Times’ Rome reporter, Emma Bubola, Tuscan wineries have evolved to the point where one of the wineries interviewed sends 40 percent of their inventory to importers in the U.S. This is not uncommon in Tuscany. Overall, according to the Times article, one-quarter of Italian wine gets exported to the U.S.

How did this happen? Was it always this way? Yes and no.