By Dan Fastenberg and Emma Rumney
NEW YORK/LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) – New York wine retailer Chris Leon has a novel strategy to avoid the steep tariffs that have been slapped on imported wines from France and Italy under U.S. President Donald Trump: raiding American wine cellars for bottles already in the country.
Leon, who runs the trendy wine shop Leon & Son in Brooklyn, has turned to hunting down fine European vintages stashed in American basements, snapping them up and selling them through online auctions.
“There’s a lot of wine here already, a lot of really good wine,” Leon said, adding that the auction idea offered a solution to tariffs.
His story is just one example of how business people and entrepreneurs are having to shake things up in response to Trump’s tariff salvos against trade partners, which have led to higher import levies for products from medicines to booze.
Leon came up with the idea in response to worries about the impact of tariffs on his business, which makes 90% of its revenue from imported wines. Tariffs have been slapped on everything from French champagne to Italian barolo and Spanish rioja as part of Trump’s sweeping effort to reshape global trade launched in April last year.
Wines slated for the first auction include Italian labels no longer in production held in a personal collection for years, as well as bottles from a New York restaurant’s cellar linked to old menu pairings they no longer offer.
‘COME IN AND SHAKE THINGS UP’
European wines faced a 15% levy on arrival in the U.S. under an EU-U.S. trade deal implemented in August. In February a suite of Trump’s tariffs, including on Europe, were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, but they were quickly replaced with new levies, including at least 10% for European goods.
Trump argues that the U.S. runs deep deficits with many trade partners and that his moves are an attempt to rebalance that.
U.S. wine businesses warned last year that they would take a hit, however. Leon & Son is among thousands of wine firms in the firing line who have been forced to get creative.
Some other U.S. wine businesses are switching to domestic alternatives or cheaper imported brands as tariff-related price hikes gather pace in 2026, Reuters reported this week.
Vanessa Price, a wine director, restaurateur and author of Big Macs & Burgundy, said newer auction platforms like the one planned by Leon offer a fresh take on the traditional model at large houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which have long offered fine wines via auction.
“There is still plenty of room… to come in and shake things up,” Price said. “Because it’s still such a mysterious world for so many people.”
(Reporting by Dan Fastenberg in New York and Emma Rumney in London; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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