I’m casting a vote with Valid Bigger Concerns at this point.
A year ago, we went to Paso to celebrate my wife’s birthday. First time we’ve been to Paso in at least 7 or 8 years. All the best places are now appointment only (annoying!). The wines, generally speaking, are offensively expensive for how good they are (per my palate preferences). Tasting fees have gone through the roof, and often for a few pours that are so small they’re practically worthless. The whole vibe and experience in Paso has changed drastically since we first visited back around 2006, or so. I suspect the same dynamic is chugging-along elsewhere, too.
I used to love going to wine country to hop from winery to winery to taste. It was laid back. You could just walk-in. Tastings were not terribly expensive. I bought a lot of wine. Nowadays, it’s far more expensive to visit, visits require a much greater level of coordination/planning, and you get less (not more) despite paying more. The vibe is more corporate and snooty. So, ultimately, I’m lukewarm, at best, when it comes to going wine tasting in wine country. I can’t possibly be alone …
I’m not sure how useful any chart is that begins in 2021. Markets for everything were so far out of whack in 2020/2021 that it is hard to draw any meaningful conclusion without a pre-Covid baseline. While the chart seems to want to focus on 2022/2023 change from prior year, those 2021/2022 prior year results were still heavily influenced by the Covid reopening and consumer rush back to travel/experiences after the lockdowns. While it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there has been a fundamental pullback (for all the reasons that have been discussed) this chart doesn’t give me any sense of whether it is real (relative to pre-Covid) or meaningful on a longer term basis.
In regards to Napa, I would think the business would have to go down some simply as a function of the skyrocketing cost.
We did a group trip for a friend’s birthday last summer. Hotel room costs averaged around $750/couple night. Since it was a larger group (and someone’s else’s birthday), I didn’t have control over the wineries we visited (with the exception of a side trip to Rivers Marie that Will was nice enough to arrange). Tastings everywhere we went averaged $100-$150 a person (with someone from the hospitality team hosting), not everywhere waived with purchase, and those they did required a purchase somewhere in the $450-$600 range. On top of that, we had to rent an SUV and schedule someone to drive it. At some point a friend remarked that it would have been a lot cheaper and more fun to simply buy wine in its drinking window and stay somewhere closer to LA for the weekend.
Not a lot to add here - other than I’m not sure this is a trend that will be reversed any time soon. I cannot talk to visitation rates in Napa or Sonoma but I know that both Paso and SBC have seen downward trends in visitation this year in a fairly big way. Tasting fees are up; many wineries require reservations which turns some folks off; hotels are more expensive; restaurants keep upping their prices.
As the report notes, ‘millenials’ make up a majority of the potential wine drinking public, and it can be argued that they are not as much into wine as they are cocktails and beer (a recent Gallup poll mentions this trend in general).
Not sure how to predict what will happen in the future - just need to double down on trying to attract as many people to drink wine, attract as many people to visit wine country, and make sure that we engage them at whatever level they want to be.
Interested to hear from other winemakers and wineries, especially in NorCal (or North Coast).
This is what I feared. I know Napa has long since gone full throttle that direction, but I had hoped Paso was still somewhere that folks like you and me could find friendly visits (even if surrounded by a growing amount of Napa-type places). I’m guessing if those friendly places were still around, you probably would have found some of them.
In some sense, Wine Berserkers, plus the network of groups and tastings we do here around OC, have in some indirect way displaced trips to wine country in my life. That’s where I learn about wines and producers, find new things I want to buy, and scratch my general itch about wine discovery. And Paso and Napa can just be luxury tourism for the Bottle Rock Festival crowd, to whom the price-driven exclusivity is probably an attraction not a drawback.
However, the fact that it’s down another 130 this May after a 220 drop the previous May is not good news. And only a 400 increase in 2021 over 2020 when visits were effectively zero is also fairly low.
This is consistent with what I’ve heard across the board from friends here in Napa at a wide range of wineries.
I know this board likes to play armchair wine industry manager, but tourism is also down in Vegas and other places in the US (clearly not everywhere). What I’m hearing is that folks who would otherwise come here or Vegas are choosing overseas instead.
I don’t have a tasting room per se (per the math Pietro Kay’s out— doesn’t seem to make sense) but I do get to use the Björnson Winery/Eola Amity Hills/Willamette Valley (where I make my wines) TR by appointment. BJ is telling me that their visitation/sales are holding steady. Mine are up, in large part to WB’ers and the perhaps rarer opportunity to taste with the winemaker : )
Sales are down this year, no point to beat around the bush. The pain is just beginning, I think (by state of economy).
This year, I’ve mainly bought from Bedrock and Sandlands myself - both very reasonably priced - QPR is high and I’m affected like anyone else. I’ve eschewed the releases from Ceritas, Arnot-Roberts, Rivers, Failla to a large degree. Great wineries, great wines, just a bridge too far this year. Especially when many chose to hike prices. I keep waiting for Enfield’s offer - he’s always straddled a good balance in that QPR realm.
But, I also need to broaden my horizons. Love the wines from Model Farm, Vincent, Suzor, Acri and many more I’ve learned about on this forum, etc. Need to get out of my comfort zone.
I have no window into the business or the local economy, but GDP is hovering at 2.5% or so, inflation is down to a little over 3% (down from nearly 9% last year this time), unemployment is at 3.5%, leisure travel is exploding . . . it’s hard to see how “the state of the economy” generally is a cause for this kind of pessimism.
Not trying to argue politics or economy with you or anyone (please, let’s all leave that off this board), but I’m just noting that American perceptions about the economy right now are highly negative, and the perception is a big driver in behavior.
I’m guessing that even though the rate of inflation has finally come down in recent months, all the huge rise in pricing the last few years is still locked in and consumers are still struggling with it.
