For California wineries, 2024 was the year sale declines became obvious to wine makers. The state lost 222 commercial wineries last year, declining to 41% of American wineries. Let’s put that in perspective. With about ten key wine production zones, on average that’s a loss of 22 wineries per region. The U.S. lost 1.5% of its wineries, dropping to 11,450 licenses.
| ‘If sales continue to decline from here there will be more sobbing and bankrupt wine makers.’ |
So it’s no surprise two of CBWs top stories of the year are about winery & distributor bankruptcies, unharvested wine grape, 50,000 acres of grape vine removal (and the call for another 50k acre removal) and discounts on your favorite bottles of wine.
Here are our top five 2024 stories.
3-California Closes Paso’s Hemingway Winery for Selling Wine Without Liquor License the Past 3 Years
4-A Central Coast Love/Hate Story With Justin Winery
5-Bottle of Wine Cork Vs. Screw Cap – The Weakness of Sealing Wine With Cork
We’ll continue to follow the sales decrease story in 2025 because declines in alcohol sales linger. As you can imagine, this directly affects the cash flow of your favorite small winery and determines whether or not they’ll stay viable for your visits.
However, on the good side, we’re seeing lots of discounted winery tastings and the price of wine (think BOGOs and 50% case discounts.) But don’t wait to long to take advantage of the droping prices. The 2024 wine grape crush was down to 2.84 million tons, a 20 year low reaching back to 2004 as per the California Agricultural Statistics Service.
This means wine grape production is declining and within 2-3 years wine production should align with consumption. The glut of wine will dissipate as a smaller harvest becomes bottled wine, eliminating downward pressure on inventory needing liquidation. Of course this all works if wine consumption remains steady at today’s lower levels. If sales continue to decline from here there will be more sobbing and bankrupt wine makers.
But for the foreseeable future, one winery owner tells us, “It’s a good time to be a wine lover.” There are great deals to be had on mass market and estate wines.
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
Categories