Well, this IS dreary.

How the heck am I supposed to get through the election if Mondavi goes under? You all know what that 1.5L means to me during a debate.

CA wine industry up against increasing cost of doing business in CA - just like other businesses. Energy, Insurance, Water, Transportation, Taxation - just getting your product harvested/to market has more then doubled. Days of wine & roses is over for middle class CA.

— Jane Wisdom (@JaneWisdom34856) May 8, 2024

...Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.

This year could be the breaking point, with many industry figures predicting “a good-sized house cleaning,”

All kidding aside, the crunch is coming not in the industry behemoths but in the smaller boutique wineries. We were early collectors of the Duckhorn, Grgich, Rombauer, and Kendall-Jackson (when they still painted the Jack London bottle) style cabs. They were monstrously good. So were the Temecula and Lodi offerings when Napa went stratospheric in price. 

I have to admit that we haven't helped in recent years as most times when we're out, we're drinking Super Tuscans, Amarone, selections from Veneto, or the FVG region in Italy. The sort of dry, lovely, full-bodied reds that CA is also known for. Working our way through the Italians just appeals to us now, and darned if there aren't so many different ones to try. It's a bonus that your wallet hasn't taken a bruising (with the exception of a good Amarone) if it's a tad underwhelming, though they rarely are.

So, we plead guilty to abandonment, in a manner of speaking.

According to an article (no doubt paywalled knowing them) in the San Francisco Chronicle, any number of factors are coming into play.

...An extinction-level event has not come to pass — yet. But regardless of the winery survival rate, it’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed. After decades of unfettered growth beginning in the 1990s, wine consumption started to flatten around 2018. Now, following what appeared to be a spike during the pandemic, it’s in dramatic decline. 

...No single factor is responsible for California wine’s present predicament. Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t drinking as much alcohol as older generations. Hard seltzer and canned cocktails have stolen market share. The current medical consensus suggests that alcohol is unequivocally bad for human health. (Beer and spirits sales are struggling, too.) 

A new set of problems emerged with the pandemic, though wineries didn’t realize it at the time. 

In 2020, with everyone stuck at home, wine sales skyrocketed. “We all thought, ‘This is fantastic, we’ve found the holy grail of selling wine, and this is just going to continue,’ ” O’Neill said. Many wineries increased production. But the demand dried up when people realized they’d bought too much and weren’t depleting it quickly enough, a phenomenon now known in the industry as “pantry loading.”

Um...we have personally experienced "pantry loading," but there has been no difficulty depleting any of our stock, believe me. There never is - we are consummate professionals at depletion. I have no idea who these other amateurs are.

Depletion issues or not, it turns out the vino-quaffing world for CA vineyards post-COVID insanity looks a whole lot different than the one going in.

The elephant in the room is #Bidenomics - the hideous state of the economy thanks to inflationary policies. For many people, the extra funds available to indulge in life's nicer things are no longer available, having been eaten by the cost of living and the plunging value of the dollar.

Don’t forget the real value of dollars has plunged too..oopsie indeed pic.twitter.com/duActwo6pO

— Andrew Kilgore (@Akilgore57) May 16, 2024

There's the cost of CA wines compared to what's coming out of Europe. CA produces a lot less volume than its European counterparts, for one thing, and as you can imagine, the overhead in Socialist Central is enormous. 

People aren't going out to restaurants as frequently, so those sales are down. When imported wines are consistently so good across the board and now competitively priced in the midst of a challenging economic cycle? Diners often choose them when they do splurge on an evening out.

Adding to the pressure is competition. There was nothing cooler in the boom years than opening your own winery. Think about it. Every celebrity has a vineyard - even unctuous, oleaginous Gov. Randall Flagg-Lite himself, Gavin Newsom, has a winery. It's probably right near Nancy and Paul Pelosi's.

Get my drift? Wineries are a dime a dozen, and it's probably time a few were culled from the field. I imagine the "zero growth in sales" vineyards will fail first.

...The industry finds itself in a quadruple whammy: too many wineries, too many vineyards, too many grapes, and way too much wine on the market. Add to that, Gen Zers and millennials ages 21 to 43 simply do not drink as much as older generations do. Some of them don't drink at all. 

When they do drink, they go for many other choices including hard seltzers, hard ciders, canned cocktails and other spirits and brews. 

"In the wine industry right this second, there are about two-thirds that are doing less than zero growth in sales. And, then there are about a third that are doing a little bit better," said McMillan.

All that serves to work against the CA brands.

Reportedly, they're drinking less overall, too, although with this president, unless it's an economic thing, I don't see how.

We should all be on a raging bender.

According to overall national alcohol sales, we are.

Think this is more limited to California wine. The alcohol industry in general is very much not near an all time low. pic.twitter.com/xpbbtoMMGk

— @kev5673 (@kev5673) May 10, 2024

Just not with CA wines or Bud Lights.

Industry analysts are hoping the 10% dip is an "inventory adjustment," and that the faithful return once they've cleaned out their wine fridges.

The question will be who's left standing when they come back...if they do.

Bows and flows of angel hair.
Ice cream castles in the air.
Feathered canyons everywhere.
He's ruined your lives that way... https://t.co/cdk9uKPVC5

— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) May 15, 2024

The state isn't changing for the better any time soon.

And, sadly, you can drink to that.