The last year or two, we have had a significant increase in the number of comments from good supporters that incline that cellar space is at a premium
I think during the pandemic, people really supported wineries and that level of buying may need to be balanced by a few years of more moderate purchasing.
And without any real evidence, I worry about value offered. Guys like Adam and Larry offer a lot of value (IMO) in their wines. But a lot of the hype/media/marketing is focused on wines that wind up being very expensive. Many grocery store wines are good but not interesting, they don’t really capture people’s enthusiasm. There’s also a lot of hit or miss stuff out there now, and at price points above $25 that’s a challenge. Why not just by a bottle of $50 bourbon that you know will taste as it should vs a $50 wine that may be good or may be DOA.
I really dislike any dogma in life in general - and especially in winemaking. There are numerous wine bars and restaurants that I simply will never be able to sell any of my wines into because of their ‘dogmatic rules’.
Patrick is reaching an interesting audience, including plenty of somms. Let’s see if things change or if these same somms are ‘one hand applauding’ while continuing their dogmatic gatekeeping . . .
You can’t really blame them for their gatekeeping. There are too many trying to get in these days. buyers create walls because otherwise they would be overwhelmed. The walls tend to be arbitrary and that makes them unfair to some.
Ultimately, we all picked a vocation that is perceived as “cool” and is one of the rare jobs that lets you get to see real magic up close. (If anyone wants to tell me that a bin of grapes that “decomposes” into the Heritage No. 19 isn’t magic, I am happy to point out that just because we know how it works doesn’t make it not magic). That comes with the challenge of a market that is crowded.
Do any of y’all pay any attention whatsoever to the economic plight of the Millennials & the Zoomers?
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt?
The better part of a MILLION DOLLARS just to live in a safe neighborhood?
Average price of new cars something like $50,000, and new trucks something like $75,000?
There are a whole lotta Boomers & Xers who seem to be utterly clueless as to the financial hopelessness of tens of millions of Millennials & Zoomers.
Centuries from now, the descendants of the Millennials & Zoomers will still be trying to finish up the final payments on their family homesteads.
I was reading an article today to the effect that they’re even rebelling against Dave Ramsey - they’re so deep in debt that even Ramsey can’t offer them enough encouragement to keep going.
I can’t speak authoritatively to any of this; all I can do is speak for myself. As someone creeping up on 70 years old and planning for retirement next year, the last thing I need (well, one of the last) is to spend money on new releases that I won’t be around to drink. My kids “like” wine, but are not as enthusiastic about is as am I. I buy from only one winery and then only a few bottles a year.
I doubt I am alone in this and that many who caught the “wine bug” in the 1990s and 2000s are of the same age as me and facing the same life/financial decisions. On the other hand, many younger people that I know (our kids’ ages) are more inclined to fancy cocktails, with wine occasionally.
It’s too bad good wine is too expensive by the glass at restaurants. Craft beer is marketed 24/7 at restaurants as most people can afford a $8 beer. Too bad a $8 wine at a restaurant is basically yellow tail.
This is not political. When people say the economy is doing well I have to scratch my head. The American consumer is in trouble. Inflation may be coming down, but that’s like say six months ago I put on weight, now I’m just not getting as fat as fast. Food, energy and rent are killing the average Joe. People are cutting back and cutting corners. Folks that were buying a $25 bottle of wine are looking for $10 wine now.
It’s the transition from a population where wine is a go to beverage to a population where beer, cocktails and (ugh) hard seltzer are the top choices. The main wine drinkers are aging out and may never be replaced.
Also, as mentioned above, cellaring if becoming less prevalent. That shifts the dynamic back to mass wine that are more readily available to pick up onesey , twosey.
The premise is correct. Buckle in folks, market rationalization is coming.
2020-2023 were my four biggest purchasing years, and I have been at it since 1994 or so. Those 4 years also saw a big swing to domestic producers, and DTC purchases. Now I am headed into the drink down the cellar phase. I’ll miss the chase, but the victory celebrations will be fun.
I went too big during Covid, having offsite storage in a separate state is dangerous! Now we’re towards the end of building a house, so carrying 2 mortgages, which means I really need to cut back on purchases.
I think what’s tricky with California is that I have to pay for wine today that I won’t get until next Fall. If I could wait until the summer to purchase, I would likely not being skipping as many offers because I’d only be paying one mortgage by then (hopefully).
Wine is not like beer, cost-wise. You get one chance per year to make it. You can brew as many days of the year as you want to.
Growing barley requires little hand work, there’s no shoot positioning, no leaf pulling, no pruning cuts, and you machine harvest (machine harvested grapes are unlikely to produce the wine equivalent of a good craft beer). While barley is also susceptible to pests and disease, it’s a lot sturdier than fresh grapes.
In my time in restaurants though, btg wines were very good and generally ran $7-12. Craft beer was $3.50/pint. So craft beer has more than doubled and wines from $14-20/glass can actually be good, but probably very hard to find.
It’s a real issue (for wine) though that there is a sea of very good craft beer choices and just about any wine that is of similar quality gets moved to a price point where btg isn’t an option. Most people spend their disposable income on things they love. And you don’t fall in love with manufactured btg wines or $100 bottles.
As an industry, we will have to face up to the fact that we really do have to have wines for people to begin with. That’s harder for us as labels, corks, barrels, etc. are all going up, and vineyard labor is higher costs(rightfully) than ever.
Good luck with the new house! And hopefully, the wineries you’re talking about will be more flexible as things slow down or they will still have inventory and you can get the wines you want after you fown to one mortgage. It’s worth checking back with them then. We often still have a few cases sitting around after offers and just move on to other things because I know someone will ask for them later and we can just ship them then.
We started our soarkling project because we love sparkling wines, but the fact that they can be consumed within 6-12 months is a bonus aspect for us, as opposed to the Pinot Noirs which are glacial in their pace…
It’s one of those “you know you’re a Berserker” deals when you also have an aversion to buying a whole case, but for the exact opposite reason — you already own thousands of bottles and your storage is badly overfull.
I feel this hits on multiple threads. Speaks to softening of market, poor value on wine lists etc. The inflation in wine pricing has been compounded by (i) US three tier system and restaurants still adamant on marking it up 2-300%, exaggerating underlying inflation and (ii) more competition than ever before.
Marcus, I think you make a lot of really good points here. I will say that growing malting barley is a little harder than you state, and, after our tribulations of not having enough space to meet anything close to demand, the idea just making more isn’t entirely true. I will always acknowledge that making wine is a more expensive and risky proposition than making beer. As for the sea of “very good” craft beer, we may have different standards, as I think there’s a sea of poorly made craft beer out there.
I see two “elephants” in the room that probably need to be exposed. The first is that the number of distributors in many markets has shrunk dramatically in the last couple of decades, and the ones that are left generally don’t give a shit about artisan producers. This is probably why direct to consumer has become much more of thing in the last decade, and why distributors are fighting back in the only heavy-handed way they know how - legislate away consumer choice.
The second “elephant” is that everyone thinks they can make wine. You talk about how many craft brewers there are, yet Oregon has four or five winemakers for every brewer in the State. Unfortunately, “wine making” is considered a spiffy lifestyle for people with more money than sense. I think this really muddies the water for those that have put their blood, sweat, and tears into wine making for decades.
