Bulk – the quiet wine economy

Stand long enough by the side of any major highway that traverses one of California's major wine regions and you'll see them: bright, shiny tanker trucks filled with wine. As visible as these trucks are on the roads, their loads represent a part of the wine world that everyone seems content to keep mostly invisible to the consumer.

Consisting of transactions between producers for as little as a few dozen gallons to volumes that would require a convoy of these tankers for delivery, the bulk wine market has become central to the economics of American wine, to the point that...