From the Journal of Wine Economics, “Too Much of a Good Thing? Causes and Consequences of Increases in Sugar Content of California Wine Grapes”:
Or, from Felix Salmon’s blog, the Cliff’s Notes version: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/02/08/charts-of-the-day-wine-heat-edition/
Bob, very interesting stuff, including The 0.25% creep up for reds over 18 years. The average 0.72% disparity, between the lower declared and higher actual alcohol values, is not as high as I expected. It looks like a pretty broad group of wines was included in the evaluation, probably skewed towards a lower average price point than the average Cali wine posted about here. It would be interesting to see if the increase was more pronounced for higher end wines.
RT
I wish that someone would look at these results and factor in the demise of AxR1 as a rootstock. AxR was the most widely planted rootstock for a period in CA history and gave you higher yields than many other rootstocks. So, when you read the report and see that Zinfandel sugars barely went up and they mention that it is because of White Zinfandel, while that is certainly a big factor, it is also true that older Zinfandel vines (of which there are a lot compared to other varietals) were not planted on AxR. Cabernet in Napa was largely planted on AxR during the boom years and that was pulled out…and Cabernet had one of the highest rises in sugar content.
Adam Lee
Siduri Wines
The day I starting thinking about brix this way, is the day I go back into finance.