Napa Valley Post-Cabernet

 Is there a post-cabernet future for Napa? Some think so. 

Elvis in Napa, 1960, while making
Wild in the Country. Napa stood in
for the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia

 

The Talk 

There has been talk of climate change and Napa Valley getting too hot for premium cabernet sauvignon. If so, then what grapes can you plant? Tempranillo is a good hot weather wine grape. It just doesn't sell that well. You see some changes now with the cooler Coombsville area of south Napa getting popular with cab grapes.

Now with all the talk about the grape glut I've seen articles about maybe Napa needs something besides wine grapes.

Going back to about 1960 beef cattle and prunes, along with other fruits and nuts were the top ag products. Wine grapes and dairy followed that. Imagine those orchards and ranches throughout the valley. 

The Reality 

Napa Valley is the most expensive agricultural land in the country mostly because of the value of their cabernet sauvignon. So the problem with tearing out cab vineyards is what are you going to replace it with? Any other ag product won't be worth anywhere near the value of wine grapes. Napa is stuck with grapes unless something catastrophic happens where there's no choice.

Sonoma County might have an easier time going back to more dairy and apples where pinot noir is now king.

The other thing I see in articles or on social media is they just need to go back to making good $20 wines. That idea is destroyed by the economics largely tied to the price of grapes. Well, can't Napa  just take $100 a ton for grapes instead of $10,000? Nobody owns a business or works to lose money. Can the prices come down to a more reasonable level for grapes and wines? Yes. Will they? Who knows? 

The Future 

What do I think will happen? None of this. There will be some balancing of vineyard acreage. Plots that don't produce top fruit or aren't economical to farm will be some of the first to go. Wineries that can't make a go of it on fewer sales will go. Sadly, this is likely to be small family-owned businesses as they are the most vulnerable. 

Napa currently has about 45,000 acres of wine grapes with 20,000 of those planted to cabernet sauvignon. The county has about 450 physical wineries. You are likely to see that number drop. It's also likely that other wine growing areas will see bigger drops in acreage of grapes and number of wineries. 

Contrast to The Valley 

The Central Valley is home to three-fourths of the state's wine grapes, mostly going into inexpensive bottles, jugs, and boxes. The valley is an agricultural powerhouse and their grapes are much cheaper to grow as land is relatively cheap. This should mean it will be much easier to convert vineyards to some other crop. The most valuable crops in the Central Valley are dairy, beef, and nut crops.

To Kalon Vineyard in Napa Valley. Home of the $60k+ / ton
cabernet grapes. Napa avg price for cab is $10k / ton; 
Sonoma avg is under $3k; state avg is just over $2k