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.
Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
Uh sure, it was the tariffs, and not the widespread Canadian boycott of American alcohol.
Wasn’t the boycott because of the tariffs?
That was one factor. It is more about the general hostility and aggression the US has shown toward Canada.
But you guys started it! What? You guys didn’t do anything wrong? What? Your nation is a stalwart ally, possibly holding the other half of our bff necklace? Well what about that war a long time ago? What? We tried to invade you and you even supported our stupid wars later on?
Well shit, I’ve got nothing.
Also because the US Government is trying to destroy our country by any means. They still threaten to annex Canada, call our Prime Minister “Governor”, claim Canada isn’t a real country, interfere with our politics and elections, support Alberta and Quebec separatists, and do their best to crush our economy. Then they whine that we’re being mean to them. It doesn’t make us very inclined to send our money to the USA, especially when we can just buy Canadian wine instead.
You’re not special, they’re also trying to destroy the US by any means
(/j obviously, but they are trying to smash and grab literally anything not nailed down)
The US is doing a far better job of destroying itself than any of its enemies could dream of. The US used to be the one smashing and grabbing everything in the world. Now they’ve somehow decided they’re getting ripped off by doing that. It’s pure delusion.
Canada just wants to move on. We don’t care about the US at all. Trump is acting like the ex who dumped us and then gets mad seeing us dating other people.
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.
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.
The boycott was because of a threat to annex Canada, repeatedly by the US Ambassador Hoeskra, who is an even bigger asshole than Trump, if that were even possible.
No. It’s because of the annexation threats.
It was because of the bullying
I picked up a bag of grapes in the store on the weekend. Product of the USA, nope. We avoid USA products as much as possible. Sorry to the good Americans.
Nah, you’re fine. Most American farmers voted for Trump anyway.
And how many American farmers do u know? Not a one around me would dare vote against their own interests LOL.
To be fair, I only know about 3, but statistically speaking, rural areas in America tend to lean heavilly Republican.
I know a few, they don’t even belive in climate change. (More specifically, that we’re responsible and can do something about it.)
No need to apologize. The whole American farming industry needs a redo anyway.
wine grapes are different varieties than eating grapes. Just like cider apples.
But USA does not need Canada! It’s just money! US doesn’t care about money!
Well, I think it was our tariffs that contributed to the Canadian tariffs and also contributed to anti-US sentiment, so it’s sort of truthy. heh
Warms your heart to see
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
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.
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.
but Mondavi succeeded in making all wines taste the same.
The best wines are wines that almost no one can afford.
Maybe. I’ve had a lot of really good wine from California at reasonable prices, though. Also from WA, OR, and even a few from ID.
Looking through this thread, I get the feeling that most of the people commenting just don’t like wine. And that’s fine. Not everybody has to like everything.
I’ve had quite affordable, very good wines from the Columbia Valley. I have alcohol that’s fit to drink, but I just don’t much, anymore. I give it to guests and neighbors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bet it helps a lot alienation an entire market to the north.
Grapes are almost $9 a pound. These motherfuckers are out of their mind. A bag of grapes is $15 fucking dollars
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.
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.
Look I agree Rombauer Chardonnay and everything like it is over oaked. There’s not a ton of truly sweet wine but plenty of mid to poor red blends.
Sauv Blanc from Lake County (just north of Napa) can be pretty darn good. A lot of Napa houses blend with Lake County grapes because the land is so much cheaper. They also produce some great Zinfandel, the California varietal that has fallen out of popularity.
My favorite is the central coast Pinot Noir. It’s hotter and more peppery than a classic Burgandy but I love that shit.
Damn, I’m french and good wine here is in the 20-30€ a bottle for some saint Joseph or Croze hermitage. Life is good here
Canada’s also not buying as much California wine due to Trump’s trade war and general insulting manner.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Steinbeck 1939
My wife is doing her part to keep that demand up.
Seems like a good time to start making a fuck tun (~million butt loads) of brandy and dump excess inventory into that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_(unit)
1 Million Wine Butts = 126,000,000 US gallons / 105,000,000 Imperial gallons
Extra fun math problem. 1 liter of Brandy often requires 2 to 3 liters of wine. How much wine is needed to make 1 fuck tun of brandy?
Given 1 fuck tun ≈ 1,000,000 wine butts.
1,000,000 wine butts = 126,000,000 US gallons = about 477,000,000 liters of brandy.
If 1 liter of brandy requires 2-3 liters of wine, then:
477,000,000 × 2 = 954,000,000 liters of wine 477,000,000 × 3 = 1,431,000,000 liters of wine
So, to make 1 fuck tun of brandy, you need roughly 954 million to 1.43 billion liters of wine.
That is about 382-572 Olympic swimming pools of wine. Or, more scientifically, about one fucking billion liters of wine.
2 to 3 fuck tuns[sic]
Wait until “it” happens and wine sales will go through the roof!
You Jinxed us! Don’t you know any time anyone ever mentions “it”, nothing ever happens??
I prefer mead, Soju, or sake in that ABV range
Tej!
You are allowed to grow cannabis and hemp instead. it grows right out of the dirt! It’s crazy
Also, please be advised that you can grow a large variety of fruits and vegetables. CHECK IT OUT
Third-generation grower Bill Berryhill said it means another year of losing money and wasting hundreds of tons of healthy grapes.
Learn to code, Bill.
… oh wait
I actually don’t think weed would grow well there. Wine grapes are usually grown in hotter drier regions. Weeds better grown more on the far northern parts of California in Humboldt where it’s more of a PNW climate.
Wine grapes are usually grown in hotter drier regions.
Allow me to introduce you to the world’s leading cannabis exporter, Morocco
I actually like wine, and weed fucks with my heart rate.
Seems pretty obvious to me to convert it to food. World needs calories.
The world does not have a shortage of calories. The world has a shortage of getting food to the people who need it, but so so so much food is thrown away. Wine grapes would be incredibly low on the list to try and save. What would help far more is stepping in to help cut down on food waste and increase processes to get food from where it is to the people that do need it.
And fix wealth inequality.
Might have been more true in the past but with wars and droughts and crazy weather, well you can see the effect on food prices.
Food prices are not rising out of scarcity of food.
Every single famine or other food shortage that happens these days is a policy choice. We don’t have to sacrifice to Ceres anymore to ensure a good harvest.
We’ve had mechanized agriculture and on-demand global trade for over a century now.
Even with climate change, food is expensive right now because of things like the War in Ukraine (produces about 20% of the world’s grain and 30% of the world’s sunflower oil) making it difficult to distribute the food that people are still growing in Ukraine.
See my links in other comments.
Or rewilded solar farms. That requires not trying to make enough money to drown the sun from the sky though
Agriculture land in california is pretty damn productive. Solar can go in deserts.
Mixed solar-crop fields have been reported to do pretty well. Though I haven’t seen for grape+solar.
grape+solar.
aka raisin land :)
(simple stupid pun/joke)
It depends heavily on the crop, and on the climate. I believe it works well for lettuce, for example, because lettuce needs shade, but other crops (I think ones with more sugar in them, hence need more sunlight) are adversely affected
Nutrition and flavor is complex. One study I’ve seen stated that sheep grazing on solar grass fields ate almost 1/3 less grass but gained equivalent weight to sheep eating non-solar grass because the overall nutrition was higher.
If high sugar was purely sunlight and CO2 crops would be getting sweeter with human-made greenhouse gasses and thinning ozone.
Crops are getting sweeter but I think it’s more due to selective breeding
Only because I did the math a while back - dedicating around 10% of the land we grow corn on for ethanol - converting that to solar - would give us enough energy to supply 100% of US can transporation energy needs (i.e. if everyone converted to electric cars). We’d have 90% of that corn-grown-for-ethanol land freed up to do whatever, and not impact any land used to grow food we (or animals) eat.
That said, using desert for solar also makes tons of sense.
Not that I know much about it, but you don’t grow corn in the most productive areas. You grow that in hardier areas. California is the best for fruit and vegetables.
Another reason not to use our best ag land for solar. :)
Solar and crops can co exist, some crops thrive in indirect light and use less water.
Very little corn grown in the US is actually edible. It’s mostly used for oils and sugars.
The irony is, a lot of agricultural land in California is quasi desert (central valley). They irrigate.
It can’t. The us doesn’t have barren deserts, and running power out to them isn’t cost efficient. The disruption to wildlife is pretty severe too.
Just put solar on existing structures in the cities. There’s plenty of sun to go around and existing power infrastructure.
If they’re lucky, growers can sell their uncontracted grapes at a loss to buyers making concentrated syrup.
Part of the problem being ridiculous contracts that prevent the grapes from being sold or given away even if the person who contracted them decides they don’t want the grapes
Not that knowledgable but I think wine grapes don’t make good food. What I meant is that you convert the land to grow something else.
