2024 may well be one of the most challenging years in recent history for the American wine industry. Let’s change that. Multiple Alarm Bells At the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, several prominent experts in various fields sounded the alarms during the enormously popular “State of the Industry” session attended by several thousand industry members. Wine Economist Mike Veseth compared the present with the distant past when similar clouds were on the horizon. Wine market analyst Danny Brager cited several troubling trends in consumer demographics, beverage preferences, anti-alcohol pressures, and apparent wine industry apathy. Steve Fredricks of Turrentine Brokerage repeatedly urged California wine grape growers to immediately tear out 30,000 acres of vineyards—roughly the total in New York State for grape juice, wine, and table grapes–to alleviate the current and chronic excess supply situation. Let’s Get to Work! We possess

Afternoon Brief, January 22nd

Bomb Blows Up French Wine War: A dispute between French producers and importers of Spanish wine is getting darker, with violence returning to the south of France...