During The Grand Reopening after the Pandemic lockdown, it was glorious! People couldn't wait to get out of the house and spend that travel and recreation money they had saved up. They came to the wine country and threw money around. The "here, take my money!" days are over. This had to be expected.
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| A wine tasting menu from Napa Valley Choices from $45 to $80 image from Yelp |
Discretionary spending is down. When you consider the inflationary price increases on lodging, food, wine, and wine tasting, spending is down even more than the numbers suggest. What is down the most? Airfare, hotels, and alcohol have been hit hard. That doesn't look good for getting people to the wine country, does it?
Heck, people are even spending less on education. If you can't afford to learn something to get a better job, you sure as heck won't be buying a case of Pinot Noir.
Post-pandemic, a common theme from winery workers was, we are really busy and we are selling lots of wine and signing up new wine club members! The last couple summers have been, we are seeing fewer people, but they're buying more. A Napa Valley winery worker I talked with a few days ago said, the tasting room is really slow, but at least those coming are buying.
In some ways, from a winery point-of-view, that might be good. That is, fewer visitors, but they are spending more. Except that makes people nervous because what happens if these people stop coming? Could that happen? Yes, I vividly remember the start of The Great Recession about 16 years ago. Visitation just fell off the cliff. I'd look out the window of my downtown Healdsburg tasting room and there's nobody on the streets! And then the layoffs came, including mine. Nobody wants to see that again.
Of course, now it's different. Almost everybody is working, but everything is more expensive. There are lots of wine tastings in Napa that cost $100, just to get a small sample of a few wines! There are also plenty that are less than that, but the days of freebies or even $20 tastings is gone. In Sonoma, there seem to be plenty of $45-up tastings. Yes, costs to wineries have gone up, and you expect that to be reflected in wine bottle purchases.
If you are looking for the price of California wine to go down, well, the cost of grapes is still going up and that's the major factor in the price of wine. None of this justifies the significantly higher costs to taste IMO.
Lodging costs have also gone way up. It's difficult to find anything under $300/night in Napa during the busier months. A week stay in Napa will set a couple back about four grand. Sonoma County lodging seems to be mostly in the $200-$300 range, depending on where you are staying, as the towns of Sonoma and Healdsburg tend to be higher.
So why are there fewer visitors in the wineries? It might just be the cost of lodging and tasting fees. The lodging problem can be fixed by the minor inconvenience of having to drive farther to the wineries. That is, stay outside of Napa Valley. Can't say I've ever heard a winery employee say that maybe their fees are too high. There's a problem.
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| A typical Sonoma tasting menu $35 (from 2023) image from Yelp |
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