John Coco thinks of the bottles already traveling across the Atlantic Ocean.

When President Donald Trump first began talking about tariffs in December and January, Roanoke Valley Wine Company began stocking up and shipping out. “We tried to get wine on the water as quickly as possible,” said Coco, who manages sales in Maryland for the company, which distributes wine to around 140 restaurants and stores in Baltimore.

But last Thursday, Trump escalated his rhetoric, taking to Truth Social to threaten a whopping 200% tariff on European wine, champagne and spirits. The president said it will go into effect if the European Union makes good on a promise to tax American whiskey at 50% — itself a form of retaliation against Trump’s tax on steel. “A 200% tariff is devastation,” Coco said. “It’s another planet of damage.”

Now, Coco, an Owings Mills resident, stays up at night wondering if those thousands of bottles on the ocean will make it to store shelves and restaurants. Should the tariffs go into place, Coco’s Virginia-based employer will be on the hook to pay the bill.

Such a steep tariff on European wine could virtually end its importation into the United States, as the product would suddenly be out of reach for the majority of customers.

Needing to pay a 200% tariff on a container of wine “would probably put me out of business,” said Russ Lorber, owner of Baltimore-based importer Wide Roots, which specializes in Italian wines. A typical shipment for him might cost around $50,000; paying an unexpected $100,000 on top of that would be impossible. He is delaying placing additional orders of wine until he knows for sure whether the taxes will go into effect. “I’m really left with no very good options,” he said. “There’s a fair amount of damage that’s already been done.”

The tax comes on top of inflation that has elevated wine prices and an already dismal projected wine sales outlook for the year, said Andrew Sayers, a wine sales manager and worker-owner at The Wine Source. Prices never really came down again after the previous Trump administration imposed 25% tariffs on some European bottles in 2019, Sayers said. Additional tariffs would spell “disaster” for his Hampden business. “Champagne prices were already outstripping inflation,” he said in an email. Were they to go up drastically, “it could well be a death knell for all but the most popular or prestigious bottlings.”

“If there’s a 200% tariff imposed on Champagne, we’re not going to be able to sell it,” said Jesse Sandlin, chef and owner of Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles, where the sparkling French wine is a core menu item. “I‘m hoping it doesn’t actually come to fruition, to be honest with you.”

But should the tariffs happen, Sandlin and other restaurateurs and retailers may look to boost their selection of domestically produced wines. That excludes Champagne, though, which only comes from France — contrary to Trump’s Truth Social post that posited the move would be “great for wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S."

Yet American winemakers aren’t necessarily celebrating the tax proposal, either, said Melissa Aellen of Linganore Vineyards in Mount Airy. Almost all her industry peers rely heavily on equipment and raw materials imported from Europe. Aellen worries those products could face retaliatory tariffs if Trump’s trade war continues to escalate.

The vineyard’s presses and screw caps? Made in Germany. Their destemmers? Italian. Their corks? From farms in Portugal. “The list goes on,” she said. “If we need something, we have to email some guy in Italy to get him to send it to us.”

James Prichard, director of sales and marketing for Boordy Vineyards, said the 80-year-old Baltimore County winery welcomes the tariffs, with a few caveats. On one hand, a large increase in the price of European bottles could make U.S. wines like Boordy’s look comparatively affordable. “Anything that will potentially increase our sales has got to be good for us,” Prichard said.

But like Aellen, Prichard worries the tax could impact some of the raw materials Boordy uses to makes its wines. And at a time when drinking rates are already on the decline, a huge increase in prices in one area has a way of impacting other facets of the economy. As local government agencies and other groups depending on federal funds are seeing massive layoffs, “that means that people are going to have less cash to spend anyway,” Prichard said.

Tony Foreman’s Baltimore eateries are known for warm service and their extensive — mostly European — wine lists.

He’s already seeing an impact at his restaurants from customers tightening their wallets. “I know from people’s faces what’s going on in the room,” he said. “People are nervous.”