I figured that given a large group of both MBA classes made a mid-week trip to Las Vegas this week, I would take some time to think about how the wine industry is working and operating in Las Vegas. Although we were only in Vegas a short period of time this week, and did not have a lot of time to explore, every time I’m in Las Vegas I’m stunned by the sheer volume of high-end dining options (or at least the very least: celebrity-chef centric restaurants with huge price tags). Given this relative glut of high-end dining, it turns out there are more Master Sommeliers in Las Vegas than in San Francisco [1], and at least for a time (as of 2012), there were twice as many Master Sommeliers in Las Vegas than in NYC [2] (both will serve as fun trivia facts in the future).
While I don not primarily think of Las Vegas as a fine-dining city (likely given my age range, even though I know many others view Las Vegas in that light), I do wonder how much attention the major worldwide winemakers think of Las Vegas a primary market (focusing time, energy and sales attention there, over other places in the US). Given that Las Vegas is relatively small and extremely concentrated, it serves as a logical place for the wine industry to focus a great deal of attention. But, there seems to me something dissonant about Burgundian wine makers, coming out of small villages in the South of France, shipping their wines to the glitzy (over-priced) restaurants of the Las Vegas Strip for consumption before a big night out on the town. I wonder how those winemakers feel about whom, how and where their wines is being consumed, versus just that the wine was purchased to begin with. Especially given that the three-tier system in the US often precludes winemakers from determining exactly where their wines end up, I would imagine some wine makers feel the same dissonance I do about the prominence of wine on the Las Vegas strip.
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