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.
Your first post is the equivalent of saying Germany doesn’t know how to make a sports car because you’ve driven a bunch of VWs. Your follow-up post about Willamette is why my post was not snobby. You like a particular style of wine, which is great! Napa cabs are not your style, which is also great! Sonoma pinots are also not your style, based on the profile of Willamette being your style. Have you had a single block pinot from the Santa Rita Hills AVA of Santa Barbara? Those will taste a LOT like the pinots from Willamette. If you like cheap S American wine, you might like some of the smaller wineries in Paso Robles (though many of those tend to do really heavy GSMs that are more Spanish style and not French or S American style).
Your second post talking about Willamette and Champagne is a much more reasonable take and points to what you like and your tastes without implying CA only makes one style of wine.