Sadly for many in the wine industry, the worldwide weakness in the economy is having a calamitous impact. Consequently, smart consumers are cashing in. Or should that be caching?

The news this past week was that prices for most expensive, and even moderately priced, red Bordeaux wines from the vaunted 2008 vintage, which aren't even released yet and won't be for at least a year, have dropped.

Because the 2008 wines have been rated as very good, the only reason for the announced lowering of their eventual prices is that few people are buying wine in quite the same way they were a decade ago when the economy was sailing along, fueled by the dot-com boom.

Because the wines won't be on the market for a while, how does this affect buyers? Directly, actually. Since the 2006 and most 2007 red wines from Bordeaux are already on the market, at prices set long ago and for wines that aren't quite as good as the 2008 wines are reputed to be, merchants around the globe are hustling to lower their prices.

The question merchants are asking themselves is: Who will buy a bottle of a 2007 at, say, $30, when the same producer's 2008 will be the same price? The answer they've come up with: no one.

So prices for the 2006 and 2007 red wines are tumbling.

Then there is the conversation I had with a Napa Valley winemaker who makes a cabernet that sells for $90 a bottle. His next vintage is due out in a few weeks, so I asked him what he would charge for it.

"Well, uh, look, we were all set to move it to, what, $120?" he said, hemming and hawing. "But now, even at $90, can I sell it? So I guess I don't know what we're going to charge."

At the lower end of the scale, with the Charles Shaw wines that sell at Trader Joe's stores for $1.99 a bottle in most markets, sales are off the chart.

Fred T. Franzia, president of Bronco Wine Co., which makes the Charles Shaw wines, said sales were up in the double digits over last year, when sales were also brisk. He said a rough guess is that sales for 2009 will be "way up." Continued...