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.
Shouldn’t have voted for an orange clown then. Oh well.
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.
Yeah, that looks like it addresses the longevity issue, at least.
French wine is also in decline.