CALIFORNIA, USA — Editor's Note: The video in the player above is about how supply chain shortages are impacting the Tampa Bay area.
Between a pandemic-related surge in drinking and supply chain shortages, wineries say they're having issues getting in enough bottles to package their product.
And if that news makes you want to grab a glass of wine — well, don't.
Phil Long, who owns Longevity Wines in California, told Insider that the shortage of wine bottles is forcing winemakers to keep their wines in wooden barrels longer. A decision he says makes the drink taste "like a sawmill."
"Too much oak throws the wine out of balance," Long told Insider. "When oak becomes the dominant element in wine, it overshadows characteristic fruit flavors and tastes overwhelmingly woodsy."
And he's not the only one feeling the squeeze.
NewsNation Now spoke to the vice president of supply chain management at Jackson Family Winery, who also pointed to a labor issue for putting the wine business in a tough spot.
Even wineries in Argentina are seeing a shortage of wine bottles. Mariana Onofri, of Onofri Wines, told Bloomberg her company is short by 6,000 bottles this year.
“We’ve never lived through a shortage like this,” Onofri told the outlet. "At a minimum, my operations are affected for at least six more months, because I won’t be able to finish bottling.”
The broken supply chain is impacting more than just the wine business. Recently you might have paid a visit to the store only to find that items are more expensive or out of stock.
10 Tampa Bay spoke to an economist at Florida Gulf Coast University who says the reason for the shortage is kind of a perfect storm.
"When you think about the supply chain, realize it is just that, a chain. There’s one link, that connects to another link, that connects to another. Now we have multiple issues affecting multiple links in that chain. It drives up costs in one of those links and those costs are passed along where there are higher costs," Victor Claar said.
CBS News reported it could take until the end of 2022 to get things back to normal.