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Many California growers can’t find buyers as the industry produces more wine grapes than the market wants. Wine consumption is declining globally as people drink less.
It’s harvest time in California wine country, but many growers are struggling to sell their grapes as changing drinking habits have caused demand to plunge. The decline is forcing some growers to tear out vineyards that their families have grown for generations.
Wine sales have decreased by more than 20% over a five-year period, causing prices paid for grapes to drop and prompting California growers to take roughly a quarter of the state’s vineyards out of production. Many growers are having to decide whether to harvest at a loss, leave grapes on the vine or replace vineyards with crops more in demand such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios and olives.
Third-generation grower Bill Berryhill said it means another year of losing money and wasting hundreds of tons of healthy grapes.
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This is so stupid, wine doesn’t go bad. Just make more vintages and sell them when demand returns. Write it off as a long-term investment.
Uprooting decades-old grapevines because of momentary fluctuations in the market is fucking stupid.
or replace vineyards with crops more in demand such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios and olives.
Why the Hell would you rip out your vine that takes years to become productive and replace it with a tree that also takes years to become productive, just to respond to barely half a decade worth of trend?
I like Bota Breeze for lower alcohol and cost efficient, something easy to enjoy with healthy home cooked food! Less or no alcohol is good trend to see for our health.
It’s pretty tough in Australia for wineries too however, you still can find good wine fairly cheap. That’s good because it’s pretty tough for everyone at the moment with inflation being driven by Trump closing the Straight of Hormuz.
Aaaaah how sad…
.
Anyway, how about the weather huh?
In California? Probably pretty good… for now.
A lot of the regions in California have become stupid expensive, like Napa and Sonoma. Anything decent out of Napa is in the $30-$50 range. The average bottle price is somewhere around $75.
And the entry-level stuff from Europe is better than the entry-level stuff from California. If I had to choose between a $15 Cabernet from California and a $15 Bordeaux, I’m choosing the Bordeaux. You’ll also get a better price/quality ratio out of South America. Chile and Argentina make some good wines.
I really like wine and for the life of me I can’t find a single California wine that is worth the price point when compared to Europe. Not to mention there’s so much overmarketed slop wine that does every dirty trick in the book to make it taste disgustingly sweet or over-oaked. I very rarely have had a bad European wine for $50 and I can say that about half of the California wines in that range were worse than 25$ European counterparts. Maybe some of the $500+ bottles really are great in comparison to some of the Grand Crus out of Burgundy, but I haven’t found anything in a reasonable price range that was worth it. And like you said, other regions in the world punch enormously above their price range that I basically don’t buy anything from the Napa area of California as a matter of course. There are a few less popular regions in Cali that make great wine, but they are still too expensive for what they are.
Canada’s also not buying as much California wine due to Trump’s trade war and general insulting manner.
Maybe grow some food that isn’t for cows?
Cows be getting blathered on chardonnay
Make Rakija, not war.
Well, the usual "free market"bullshit would dictate that the price drops until it finds enough demand again. But thanks to whatever bull shit system we currently have the price stays the same and they just write off everything that doesn’t sell and they throw it away.
We’re in the MBA Free Market now, where prices never go down ever.
And it’s hilarious because they basically destroy their own market completely by doing that. People’s habits will change if you are gouging them, especially in a recession.
Yep. People aren’t going to go back to their old brands when they find new ones. These people literally are incapable of thinking in long-term strategy and it’s destroying their business outlooks.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Steinbeck 1939
Then why is everything still $40/bottle? This is some bs “nobody wants to work anymore” logic. I stopped drinking California wine because the prices kept going up but my wages haven’t.
As a producer, you have to cover your costs and still try to make a profit.
In California they have maaaaaaaaaaaaaaassive tax breaks (i.e. negative land taxes) and subsidized/free water. The labor is all oppressed undocumented workers below minimum wage. How are European producers able to hit $5/bottle at the same quality level?
It’s just greed and “brand reputation management” that keeps prices high in California.
You’re paying for barrels and the extra heavy bottle that make it “feel” high quality.
It’s like rent, they can’t drop the price because the price is only ever supposed to go up. They would rather pour it down the drain or sell it to trader joes without a label than sell it for a lower price.
Even the “sell it to Kirkland” California wine is still 20 bucks.
Shouldn’t have voted for an orange clown then. Oh well.
French wine is also in decline.
I am not sure the two things are very related in this case. This mostly has to do with Gen Y and A drinking drastically less and boomers and GenX not making up the difference. If anything tariffs on European wine might be helping these wineries.
If only there was a way to make wine more appealing to a cash strapped consumer. What do you do with a product that won’t sell at its current prices? Hmmmm… this is hard.
Not sure how much it helps, cause now we also avoid American wine in Europe. Probably even more so in Canada.
Yeah my own wine phase lasted about 2 or 3 months of occasional drinking. Each bottle was hit or miss and I wasn’t interested in a new hobby/obsession to keep track of which ones were good. Plus I didn’t like how opening the bottle meant I had to drink it all or waste it within a certain amount of time (whereas beer comes in single drink packages unless you get a keg and spirits don’t really go bad). And the amount of sugar needed to make a wine taste good was enough that occasionally I’d get a headache before a buzz.
Wine isn’t a good option for someone who likes an occasional drink alone (and doesn’t really mean occasionally binge drinks alone).
You are the perfect use-case for a Coravin. Can’t recommend them enough for people who only like to drink a little but still like nice wines. Buy fewer bottles of wine by making them last longer.
I used to accidentally buy some California wine every now and then when not paying attention and grabbing a selection, it was never that good.
Since trump 2.0 now i check everything to make sure it’s not American. This isn’t really surprising news
California produces some of the best wines in the world. California also produces some of the worst wines in the world.
Both things can be true. California is a big place.
The best wines are wines that almost no one can afford.
It used to be good like 20 years ago I think
At the very least we can assume it was good around the time that one Orson Welles commercial was made since I’m pretty sure he is getting increasingly pissed in-between takes based off the bloopers. Ahhh the French.
Same! Since about the beginning of the year I always get European wines and Irish whiskey.
I recently bought a Cali red on sale, to cook. It’s not fit for it.
Over-oaked wine is bad for cooking, which is exactly what a lot of bad Cali labels do.
I prefer mead, Soju, or sake in that ABV range
Soju is incredible.
