Posted on 02/16/2020 4:58:36 PM PST by BenLurkin
Vineyards in Northern California began planting thousands of acres of new vines in 2016, and with more efficient harvesting methods, it has led to more bountiful harvests of grapes.
Having more grapes to make wine sounds good, but if there’s not enough demand to support increased production, the surplus grapes go to waste.
Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, told CNN that it’s possible for surplus grapes to make it to the secondary market, where they’re used for brandy or as grape concentrate. But that market doesn’t typically provide sustainable returns for growers.
“The main cause of oversupply today is the culmination of a few years of slowing wine shipment growth, with an ample 2018 wine grape crop as an exclamation point,” Bitter said. “Until 2015, wine shipments had grown, almost predictively, for two decades. The slowdown in growth has caught the industry by surprise.
“Since it takes up to five years to bring wine to market from the initial planning stages of planting a vineyard, it makes hitting future demand very complicated. In this case, we overshot demand.”
To bring the market back into balance, California growers will need to cut down on producing acres of vines.
“With flattening consumer demand for wine, unless vineyard acres are removed, balance will be difficult to find,” McMillan told CNN. “Balance will first be found in Napa, followed by other premium regions in California. It will take at least 2-3 years for grape pricing to stabilize.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Cook with the wines you like to drink. If you like the taste, you will like the taste in your food
Deep reds for beef, lighter whites for fish and chicken sauces
They should resurrect these guys.
I was trying to do dandelion once. We had enough dandelions, but you have to only take the petals & it got tiresome doing the collecting. Your FIL might’ve gotten part of the green stuff in there. The weirdest one we’ve done is banana, using dried banana chips & raisins. In the primary fermenter it smelled like sour milk. I almost tossed it, but decided to keep going. It gradually lost that smell & turned out to be an okay mild white wine. Didn’t taste much like bananas, though.
Aldis has Winking Owl for $3.29 btl. A bargain.
Hopefully this will turn Nasty’s vineyard belly-up.
Strange. I read not long ago that GLO-BULL warming was destroying the grapes.
I can live with lower wine prices.
Wasn’t it just last year when there was not going to be any more wine from there because the fired destroyed all the vineyards?
We lurch from one set of news to another.
Sensationalism is all that is able to feed the 24/7 news cycle.
Too much news.
I love wine. And the cardboard boxes are great for magazine storage.
Growers were counting on expanding China sales.
But the ChiComs have been planting their own wine grapes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see China imports in lower end brands soon.
One year, my SIL gave me a wine-making kit for Christmas. I followed the instructions precisely and scientifically, bottled it up, and drank it.
That stuff was like a dry Port - or harder. Gave me the only real ‘hangover’ that I’ve ever had.
I gave up on making it, and buy my wine - though I’d always rather have a Guinness :-)
I suspect This will impact the lower end of the market (under $30) and the mid range ($30 to $50). The high end wines and super high ends (above $100) will not be affected as much, as their grapes are both limited and often under long term contracts.
Funny, thanks!
Then quit making rotgut.
I suspect that the wine spill of Rodney Strong wine into the Russian River a couple of weeks ago will have some small impact, 97,000 gallons worth!
A local super market has 40% off about every 4 weeks -——
That’s when I buy!
Which means I can stock up! Now... I just need this same scenario for bourbon.
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