White Wines: Sauvignon Blanc and Prosecco Are The Hot Tickets In California Wineries

White Wines Drive Market Change

What are the hottest California Wines selling today? What wines are the growth engine for Sonoma to Paso Robles to Santa Barbara wineries?

It’s not red wine. It’s white wine. Sauvignon Blanc & Prosecco to be exact.

‘Behold the divergent consumption patterns between 88m Gen Y souls versus the remaining 65m Boomers.’

But, you’ll say, Cabernet Sauvignon has been king of wine for years. Yes, but that was before it’s biggest consumer, the Boomer Generation, lost 15 million potential wine buyers to mortality. Then, lop off another chunk of this cohort losing wine sales to GLP-1, health concerns and slowing lifestyles.

Wineries are closing down throughout the state. McManis Family Vineyards is selling all their inventory, vineyards and production facilities (3m cases yearly, 3,500 acres of property, including a winery facility and 10 vineyards spread out from Clarksburg to Modesto.) Donati Family Winery in Paso Robles is closing down this fall. Sonoma’s historic Gundlach Bundschu Winery has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Wente Family Estates announced a deal with Bronco Wine Company forming an “integrated sales organization” representing the family-owned brand at a national level, In other words, piggy backing their sales and distribution with another large wine maker. It cuts cost for both.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports even more closures: Edmunds St. John, Carlisle, Brendel, Tarpon, Sbragia along with Napa’s Newton Vineyards. Others, like Brian Arden & Arista have sold off facilities while hoping to keep the brands alive in a different form. Napa’s Signorello Estate declared bankruptcy in September while Legend Napa Valley, a custom crush winery, closed abruptly in October amid fall harvest.

It’s the wild west out there for California wineries and consolidation is coming unless they attract new customers. Fortunately, there is a bright spot up ahead and the numbers below show a growth path for hammered wine makers and growers.

Sale information arrived recently from NielsenIQ documenting wine sales in the four weeks ending September 26th. You’ll see five top wine purveyors who have grown their market. All monthly reports since then show this growth of white wines and decline of red wines.

Top 5 Brands by Dollar Growth

• No. 1 LaMarca (+17.9% dollars, +28.2K cases)
• No. 2 Josh (+9.1% dollars, +39.3K cases)
• No. 3 Whitehaven (+24.2% dollars, +9.3K cases)
• No. 4 Kim Crawford (+9.2% dollars, +8.2K cases)
• No. 5 Matua (+14.4% dollars, +7.0K cases)

These makers are heavily vested in white wines like Sauvignon Blanc & Prosecco with a smattering of red wines. That’s 1million+ bottles of increased wine sales.

Marketing resource company SipSource, reports the same white wine growth saying, “Wine has emerging bright spots…….Champagne (+14.7%), Prosecco (+10.2%) and Sauvignon Blanc (+3.2%) are growing,” in sales.

We haven’t seen this in four years. It’s been gloom and doom as red wines, the power zone of past wine consumption, have accumulated in storage warehouses and barrel rooms unconsumed. When the 1/2 price red wine case sales started we all jumped for joy. Other alcohol beverages suffer the same downturn. Bourbon makers are suffering with bloated inventory and slow sales as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Why this change? Demographics. Boomers now account for only 65m souls in the U.S., down from 80m. That 65m is roughly equal in size to Gen X.

But Gen Y with 88m souls is a very large cohort. Their large population is altering consumption and political trends and they’re is slow to replace Boomer’s type of consumption. According to our favorite Demographer Ken Gronbach, “Gen Y Millennials are slow at everything. Slow to date, marry, mate and start a household. Detroit will feel this soon,” he says. He adds, “Millennials are 21 to 41 years old with the peak on the young end. There are 88 million of them so wine will pick up soon and not look back.”

They’re beginning their wine journey with the softer white wines, just as Boomers cut their teeth on White Zin & Mateus. Remember them?

Behold the divergent consumption patterns between 88m Gen Y souls versus the remaining 65m Boomers. You’ll see more and more white wines in tasting rooms as you surf your favorite wine country. But keep an eye out for the 1/2 priced case sales of blended reds and Cabernet.

It’s a changing of the guard so to speak. Boomers aren’t in charge any more.

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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.