What Do the Tariffs Mean for Lucky Sardine?

Courtesy of Wine Spectator

Wine-lovers, I can tell you with a straight, but sad face: If there had been 200% tariffs put on our lovely Portuguese Lucky Sardine wine, then you never would have had the chance to taste our wine. A tariff of that size would have meant that I would have had to pay over $100,000 to cover the tariff. 

To afford to buy more wine after that was sold, I would need to come up with another $100,000. This is why importers have to pass the tariff cost onto the consumer. There is simply no way to survive if you sell your product at a price that doesn’t cover all the expenses. In this case, any tariff is a cost, and a 200% tariff means one thing: There is no way I can raise the price of my Lucky Sardine high enough to cover the expenses. 

A 20% tariff also hurts, but even if the full cost of the tariff is put into the price of the bottle of wine, it won’t be prohibitive. Currently, we are looking at a 10% tariff. This is an added cost that we can eat half of — so in effect, consumers will have to pay an extra 5%, which will roughly come out to an additional seven cents per bottle. 

If things go well in our launch, and you guys take to the wine as I hope and think, then we will eat the 10% tariff. We are a small and wine-obsessed company. As much as we would like to make some money doing this, we also love wine and the culture that revolves around it. Each time we stumble upon a new wine, I think to myself, “Peeps back home will love this wine!”

Okay. That’s the update here from Portugal on the tariff situation. There were some sleepless nights, but for at least the next 90 days, we can get some wine delivered to the U.S. and into a shop near you.