Views of a local who has been in the hospitality side of the wine biz full- or part-time for about three decades. Maybe more importantly, an avid consumer of the local wines for over 40 years. Mostly general comments on the California wine business because that's what I know.
It may not be news to you that wine bottle prices and wine tasting fees have gone up substantially since the end of the Pandemic lockdown. Why? Supply and demand. People wanted to get out and do things, whether it was wine tasting in Napa or buying a new car. Consumers were throwing their credit cards around and saying, "Here, take my money!"
It wasn't just the wine, as lodging and restaurant prices jumped. All of a sudden, a trip to wine country was going to cost real money.
Per the U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA), the 2024 California wine grape crush was the smallest in 25 years. Total crush size was 2.844 million tons, a 23% decline for 2023's 3.7 million tons. Average grape prices fell 5%, but the previous year was the highest ever, so not really a meaningful decline.
These numbers are state-wide. Three-fourths of California's wine grapes come from the Central Valley. Napa and Sonoma Counties are each about 4% of the state's total.
Watering back wine is the practice of diluting the grape juice before fermenting it into wine. The purpose is to decrease the alcohol content of the finished wine. At least that was the idea when the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau that controls wine in the U.S. first allowed the practice in 2002.
Things may have gone awry.
Sonoma County came to prominence as a premium wine producer in the last three decades of the 20th century. Following are some of the wineries that put Sonoma on the wine map. A few of these are historical properties, others came along with the 1970s and 1980s boom time for premium wines. You could say these wineries defined what Sonoma County wine is now.
The Treasury Department sets labeling laws for alcoholic products. These are usually set and occasionally modified by feedback from interested parties, aka lobbyists. One that needs a change is for wines labeled as American, as in American Merlot.
Rosé wine is a big deal in the U.S. It wasn't always this way. Rosé sales for wine over $7 went from a measly 150,000 cases in 2010 to 2.3 million ten years later!
A look at rosé in the U.S.