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.

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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    7 hours ago

    Ok, but the US has been doing that since the 1950s.

    I’m getting downvoted by children who don’t know how Deifenbaker shut down Canadian military aviation because he was told to by Eisenhower, and then how Mulroney sold off all public assets cheap.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Perhaps, but in their wisdom Trump and his people draw attention to it daily, and they’ve successfully angered Canadians and undermined their own markets by doing so.