How long will vines produce? Indefinitely?
When I went to school in Fresno, I mentioned to a friend in some random conversation something about the oil/gas refinery SE of town. He looked at me quizzically for a second and then said, “that’s the Gallo winery…”. Ha.
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This was my experience as well. It’s good to know that you’re consciously moving on to a third bottle of wine.
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Batgirl and I received a Warthog sharpener for a wedding gift and it is the best non-industrial sharpener I’ve ever used.
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$7.97 at the H-E-B in Seguin this morning.
My response was half tongue in cheek, which I assume/hope you understood.
Setting aside the qualitative arguement (I had a much longer post written about the industrial farming and winemaking practices that make Alamos Malbec a fairly mediocre wine), what I will say in response is that I’m glad you’re drinking wine, even cheap bottles. The American wine industry needs a hell of a lot more of it right now because it’s in serious trouble. Consumption and sales are down precipitously over the last year plus (like every alcohol category aside from craft bourbon and Tequila).
There are any number of reasons for that - folks are drinking less than they were during the pandemic either for health reasons or because their cellars are full; the baby boomers are aging out and no other demographic has replaced them or their buying habits; increased anti-alcohol messaging and a failure on the part of at least the wine industry to properly counter that messaging and also market itself to new demographics (e.g. Gen X and Millennials); inflation has wrecked nearly everyone’s budgets.
What’s compounding this problem is that while all of this is happening, the American wine market is being flooded by cheap imported wine. That wine is coming from countries who heavily subsidize their wine industries. That subsidization is the single biggest driver of why those are so cheap when they arrive on our shelves. The domestic wine industry simply has no equivalent for that boondoggle.
That probably means very little to you and most other people. It’s probably considered a problem for a niche market and not that big of a deal. I can tell you, though, it’s having a very real and negative impact on the industry I work in. Fruit contracts are being broken on a massive scale. From what I’ve read, Gallo has already dropped something like 20-30% of its fruit sources for 2024, while Chateau St. Michelle, which buys nearly 60% of Washington state’s wine grapes, recently cancelled 40% of its contracts.
In more practical terms, I don’t know anyone who isn’t scaling back production in a meaningful way. It’s not simply small producers like Kara and I who are doing that. I know a large winery down in Lodi who likely won’t make any wine this year because of how much inventory they’re sitting on. For growers, especially outside of premium wine regions like Napa and Sonoma, that means facing the prospect of, at best, paying crews this Harvest to drop fruit or simply leave it to rot on the vine. At worst, it means ripping out the vineyard entirely and leaving it fallow until it’s economically feasible to plant wine grapes again. Sadly, that will include a large of number of old vine vineyards in places like Lodi and the Sierra Foothills that are (imo) irreplaceable parts of California’s winemaking heritage.
It’s bad and folks who’ve been in the industry far longer than myself have told me this is worse than the recession of 2008 and they struggle to think of time when the market was this dire.
So, again, setting aside the quality of the wine, when I’m saying please stop buying Alamos Malbec, I’m also asking you and everyone else to buy domestic wine. It really is how the industry will get out of this.
End of my rant.
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Not indefinitely, but vineyards when properly farmed can continue producing quality fruit for well over a 100 years. Of the vineyards I work with for my wine label:
- Evangelho (1888)
- Spenker (1900)
- Sandy Lane (pre-1900)
- Oakley Road (1922)
- Del Barba (late 1920’s)
- Mule Plane (late 1920’s)
Grape vines are an amazing thing.
ETA - There’s an old Roman saying: “Plant vegetables for yourself, vineyards for your children, and olives for your grandchildren.”
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I’m not pulling my weight because…
-I greatly prefer red wine to white.
-Red wine now gives me serious problems with insomnia.
-I rarely day drink.
Sorry, guys.
We all believe in you, my friend.
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I, too have trouble with red wine and insomnia, which is a shame because I love a good beefy cab. Though if you judge the industry by how much wine my GF buys, you’d think there’s a boon.
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Ditto my wife
Mike, I had no clue there was any industry crisis. I’ll buy more from the US.
A while ago you posted an email address where we could message to get on your offering list. I tried, but apparently failed. Would you repost? Or better yet, is there a website?
All else being equal I’d rather folks drink American wine than cheap foreign liquor, but if the younger generations are drinking less alcohol, I think a lot of us struggle to see that as anything but cause for celebration.
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I’ll do my part. I buy a few bottles here and there from a couple of local (TX) wineries, and buy a good bit from around the West Coast. My only real international purchases are Argentine, mostly for nostalgia purposes.
Same here. Texas and California mostly but i do like the occasional Malbec. I buy Aussie wines when I’m feeling nostalgic, which isn’t often.
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The US beer industry has been getting hammered for a couple of years, craft brewery/brewpub type places are closing left and right. It strikes me as the inevitable springback from overexpansion during peak craft beer popularity (I personally blame IPA’s)
I knew about the broader spirits industry too, but I wasn’t aware of, or hadn’t really thought about, the domestic wine industry.
I’m waiting for the insane bourbon craze to end. If I had known what this was going to turn into I would have been one of those asshole “collectors” starting about 20 years ago.
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When and where were you in Australia?
I’ve got a cousin in NZ and have been constantly threatening to go down there and run around the vast, general area for a month or so.
You didn’t ask me but some friends got married on 08/08/08 so even though I’m not great with years it’s pretty easy for me to recall the details surrounding one of my visits.
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Thanks, Neil!! Really appreciate that. Here’s the sign up page on our website:
We’re in the middle of our Spring Release, so really good timing.
I don’t think the state of the wine industry has made too much news because wine is still widely considered a luxury product. And I appreciate folks buying domestic wine. It really does make a difference.
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Melbourne, 85-86.
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