With wine consumption dropping, California grape growers looking for answers

It's not news that the glut of wine caused by decreasing demand over the past few years is prompting grape growers on the West Coast to start pulling out vines.

But it's the size of the suggested vineyard pullouts that is truly sobering.

Jeff Bitter, president of the Allied Grape Growers, has been saying since 2018 that the wine grape industry in California needs to remove as much as 50,000 acres of vines. Per Farm Progress, he has suggested spreading that out, by around 15,000 acres from both the Lodi/Delta and San Joaquin Valley regions, another 15,000 from coastal vineyards outside of Napa and Sonoma counties and 5,000 acres from Napa and Sonoma.

That, he has said, would restore balance with current consumption.

"The challenge for us now is to balance supply and demand and find that equilibrium in the marketplace," he said. "As we see consumption dropping, we have to find our balance on the supply side," said Bitter.

According to a report published Monday on the abc7 site out of San Francisco , it's possible that as much as 500,000 tons of grapes could go unharvested this year.

"It's gotten to the point many wine grape growers are trying to evaluate whether it is economically feasible to continue growing grapes with the market the way it is, the prices the way they are. We're seeing a lot of vineyards that are going unharvested this year because of lack of market," Bitter said.

Anecdotally, more of that juice is finding its way east, to wineries that aren't bothering with a vineyard but simply purchasing it from the West Coast and bottling it, including in Pennsylvania. But that's barely putting a dent in the amount of available juice.

So what happened? Bitter said the glut of inventory is the result of the industry's response to strong demand during the pandemic that ended quickly at the same time that consumer spending habits changed.

Meanwhile, all the surveys show Americans are drinking less, a trend that shows no signs of slowing as the baby boomers who carried the industry for several decades are aging.

"There's some headwinds right now with regards to alcohol consumption in general, Bitter said. "We've seen lower alcohol consumption across all categories. Not just wine, but beer and spirits."