Wine Industry: "The Sky is Falling"

Not quite. 

This has been seen before, and the wine industry recovered, usually to get even bigger than before. That doesn't mean it'll be a quick downturn. Will it be a year, will it be a decade (jeez, I hope not)?

 
Wine Trends 

Boom-and-bust cycles, largely brought on by the industry itself, have happened before. Wine sales go up, maybe merlot sales skyrocket, so "everybody" plants merlot until it's overplanted. Someone decides syrah is the next big thing, lots of people plant syrah, but the demand never materialized. It's literally years between an idea and a bottle of wine on the store shelf. By then, everything has changed again.

You know what else has happened before? Vineyards get pulled out, then a few years later there's a shortage, so people start planting again. And the cycle repeats. 

Neo-Prohibition 

The anti-alcohol movement rears its head every two or three decades. It's not as though alcohol had no enemies under the early 20th century, then after the Prohibition failed social experiment everyone has been fine with having booze available again. We go through anti-alcohol cycles. It didn't help when the World Health Organization said that any amount of alcohol is bad. Is this really true? Is it going to be like Big Tobacco's downfall, but for alcohol? I doubt it. 

The last big anti-alcohol campaign was spun off from Reagan's "Just say no to drugs" mantra of the 1980s. There was the anti-drunk driving campaign and the national drinking age law. Certainly neither was bad. It was part of what seemed to be "the anti-everything fun" crusade. You were supposed to be making money on Wall Street, not snorting cocaine or having unprotected sex (the AIDS epidemic).

Alternatives & Buyers

A couple of decades ago, no one saw sweet hard seltzer in a can competing with a bottle of chardonnay. Hard cider was very popular in 18th and 19th century America, then it went away with the Temperance Movement, and didn't return until the 21st century. 

OMG, the Boomers are aging out, and Gen Z isn't drinking wine! Well, the older folks have always been aging out and the youngest have never had the money to buy premium wine. Yes, the Boomers are a big bulge in the population that drove a lot of trends from the Beatles and blue jeans to chardonnay and cabernet. There are now more Millennials than Boomers, and there will be more Gen Xers than Boomers in a couple of years. It will, as they say, work itself out.

Restructuring

The industry will change as it has in the past. American wine was jug wine for a long time. In the 1960s, the most planted grape in Napa was Petite Sirah. The 1970s was the rise of premium chardonnay and cabernet. Zinfandel came and left and came back. Super-premium wines and pink wines existing side by side. "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" per Dr Peter Venkman. :)

Yes, wineries may come and go, as many small businesses do. The best thing you can do it to support the ones you love.

"In the long run we'll all be dead," wise words from the economist John Maynard Keynes.

Okay, enough quotes, time to get back to work. It's almost harvest season again! 

The always quotable Dr Peter Venkman
Another one for these trying times,
"We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!"