Ready for a $20 glass of house wine?

If you say you’d never pay that much, that’s exactly the fear that Richmond restaurateurs have as they wait to see whether the threat of 200% tariffs on European wine is real.

“I assume there will be a breaking point (on what people will pay),” says Michael Avery, beverage director of the Housepitality Restaurant Group, which owns Can Can, Boathouse, Island Shrimp Co., Dinner in the Field and Casa del Barco.  “I don’t know what that breaking point is, but our biggest worry is I don’t see anybody being willing to pay $20 for a house glass.”

“Scared is not the right word,” says Donnie Glass, chef, sommelier and proprietor of Grisette, Jardin and Beaucoup. “I don’t know that uneasy is, either. I am frustrated and ready to pivot.”

Booth Hardy, owner of Barrel Thief Wine & Provisions, which sells many wines from Europe, says not every restaurant will be able to pivot. “Most small businesses are operating week to week,” says Hardy. “I think if it pushed even up to 20%, you’d see glasses of wine go up and people would just stop drinking wine at restaurants. It would be pretty disastrous for the wine business and culture.”

President Trump has threatened tariffs—a tax levied on goods from another country—of 200% starting April 14 (the latest date, it could change again) on wines and Champagne from Europe.

Effects on importers

These tariffs would have a huge impact on importers like Cason Love of Terres Blanche Wine.

“I’m really trying to take it as it comes. If it’s anything over 25%, it would be very difficult for me to continue in the business,” says Love. “I guess I would have to go back to ground zero and find cheaper wines, importing from countries where there are no tariffs. My whole background for 15 years has been in French wines. I’d have to learn a whole new set of rules and ideas and, at 41, it’s hard to change,” he says.

Love adds, “I’m quite nervous. I sell wine in about 20 different states. I consolidate a bunch of orders to ship at the same time, because it’s cheaper to ship that way. With any type of tariff, it’s due as soon as the wine hits [U.S.] Customs [and Border Protection]. I have $100,000 to $300,000 worth of wine arriving at the same time, so any tariff is devastating from a cash flow perspective.”

And, he says, he worries for the farmers producing his wines.

“Not one I work with produces more than 200,000 bottles, and several produce less than 10,000. For some of these people, I account for up to 40% of their sales,” says Love. “It’s scary for them, too, because I represent a large portion of their livelihood.”

Effects on wine shops

“We don’t have a ton of domestic wines. Most are European, some South African, Australian and others,” says Lance Lemon, owner of Penny’s Wine Shop.

“It would be a major change and we’d have to look to raise prices accordingly. There’s not a lot of give. We already kind of balance on a fine margin and, as popular as we are, we teeter-totter from being open one day, to potentially something drastic happening, and we close,” says Lemon. “That’s what keeps me up at night. In this economy, food prices are already going up. It would be unfortunate to add on another thing.”

Hardy says he’s already looking at alternatives to consider if tariffs are levied and that his “wheels are turning.”

“I’m trying to consider what would replace my $15 French sauvignon blanc,” he says. “I guess you kind of have to feel it out. It reminds me of Prohibition, where you just may have to take what you can get.”

Effects on restaurants

Glass says tariffs would just exacerbate the pinch diners are feeling already because of inflation. He says he’s lucky because his wine program already highlights lesser-known wines and, if he has to change his wine menu because prices become outrageous, he believes his customers will come anyway.

“I’ve spent a large portion of my career studying wine,” he says. “I’m an eternal optimist and I’m ready to change if I need to. There’s an element in all three of our restaurants for diners that you buy the ticket to take the ride, you don’t buy the ticket to get your favorite thing. What we’re serving is about our passion and we just want to share it with you.”

“It’s on our radar for sure,” Avery says. “We try to keep a good mix of different grapes from different regions. Obviously, Can Can is very French-forward. If prices go up, we’ll either have to adjust or have to raise prices and look at other options, maybe French-influenced wine-making or French wine grape varietals. And, then, at Casa del Barco, well, tequila only comes from one place, so we’d be stuck. We are in very close communication with our distributor partners.”

“I don’t think they understand how this will affect restaurants,” says Troy Hancock, sommelier at The Roosevelt. “It’s a little scary. If spirits are affected, they’ll take a direct hit because of cocktails, and for restaurants that do serve [European wines], that $50 bottle of Chablis is going to be $120 now.”

For smaller restaurants, a shift may not be so easy.

“We just hit 11 years and we now happily can call ourselves a community hub, but, as with most small businesses, the margins are very thin,” says Gillian Field, co-owner of Union Market. “We can’t get a price break because we can’t buy pallets of products. There’s only so much we can charge and people are not going to pay $30 for a sandwich and chips. The wine tariffs are really upsetting because the majority of our wine is not from the U.S. and all these tariffs erode the viability of [our business].”

Troy Hancock, sommelier at The Roosevelt, says he serves domestic wines, but still thinks the tariffs will affect his prices and adds he’s concerned about the restaurant industry as a whole.

“I don’t think they understand how this will affect restaurants,” he says. “It’s a little scary. If spirits are affected, they’ll take a direct hit because of cocktails, and for restaurants that do serve [European wines], that $50 bottle of Chablis is going to be $120 now. Of course it’s going to affect their sales.”

Effects on sustainability and domestic wine

One unintended victim of tariffs could be winemakers who use biodynamic, organic and sustainable methods.

“Sustainable has become a really big movement and it’s much more front-of-mind for consumers,” Field says. “But natural wines, because of the cost and care associated with producing them—they’re often harvested by hand—tend to be a bit more expensive as it is. At what point is it just not doable anymore?”

Love agrees, saying, “I could not order [sustainable wines]if people could not afford to buy those wines. I want to do sustainable, but it’s my livelihood and I have two small children and I still have to think about money. I would have to totally change what I’m doing.”

Still, some might argue that the tariffs would force people to “buy American,” and isn’t that a good thing?

“What makes me nervous for the wine culture and industry as a whole is that the cheapest wines come from Europe,” Hardy says. “Vinho Verde and Cotes du Rhone and Prosecco are usually fairly inexpensive wines and kind of hard to replace. It’s ironic, but those are cheaper than our wines.”

Field adds, “There’s an awareness that in California, Oregon, Washington State, the regular person is being priced out of buying domestic wines.”

Price aside, tradition calls for European wine.

“Nothing’s more American than drinking European wine,” says Love. “There was quite a lot of European wine at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”