It can always be a lot of different things as to why a brewery goes pop if they are IPA-focused. What were their margins to begin with? Did they overstretch their finances and use more expensive cans before they could afford it? Did they mis-read the market? Did the market just change around them? What is their rent like? And so forth.
And that’s just off the top of my head. Part of it is that the explosive growth in reality was unsustainable and this was always bound to happen. Craft Beer is in a vastly stronger place now than it was in 2010 and is here to stay. Now is when the real work begins for those that came about during the boom.
I would strongly agree with this point. Breweries are more widely available in a lot of communities compared to wineries. I live on the edge of subrubia, venturing more rural, and within a 25 minute drive I can hit 10 breweries. Within that same distance, I can get to 2 wineries, and a meadery, which I feel like is actually more than one would think. I’m not close to wine country, the Western Slope of CO is trying, but not really able to compete. However, those tasting rooms aren’t as inviting as those breweries. The majority of the breweries in the area are dog and family friendly, and either have great food on site, or they have a good rotation of food trucks to keep those hungry drinkers around. The breweries have the social aspect down.
Yes Craft Breweries have expanded and collapsed Stone, Green Flash and Ballast Point to name a few. (San Diegan here so we’ve got more than a few Craft Breweries and have watched many over reach and contract or go out of business). A big part of that is stiff competition for a small segment of the beer market.
Overall it appears that beer consumption is on the decline. while wine is slowly increasing and the real growth has been in spirits (at least through 2018 so a bit out of date.)
Furthermore, while multi-cultural consumers (African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Others) accounted for 37% of those of legal drinking age, they accounted for 39% of the beer volume and 41% of the spirits volume consumer, but only for 33% of wine volume consumed.
On #1 and #3, most Napa and Sonoma wineries do this. Deeply. Particularly on #3, you’ll see plenty of griping on this board that there’s too much focus on the “experience” and hospitality when visiting wineries.
On #2, Gary Vanyerchuk really did an amazing job with this. I agree that many wineries really haven’t taken that lead.
Sorry that is your experience. But for your more general assertions to be true, we’d need to explain the huge interest in wine in east Asia from, say, 1970 onward.
People of Asian ancestry in the US seems to have taken to wine. And you can peruse this message board and see plenty of people from Singapore, Korea, all over, taking part.
Neither does it really matter where people come from, in this instance. “people who post regularly on WB” include lots of people missed by the ‘gatekeepers’.
I think this is true and I cannot resist an opportunity to cast aspersions on the “natural wine” movement. The entire natural wine story was built to appeal to today’s younger drinking-age consumers. “Farm to table,” “natural,” “organic,” all the buzz words. The problem is that many of the wines are just sour and unpleasant. Gimmicks.
Don’t get me wrong here, I do not advocate manipulated, mass market wine making. I whole-heartedly believe organic/biodynamic farming is better for the environment and produces better wine. I believe making wine with indigenous yeasts is awesome and that we shouldn’t put much, if anything, into the wine aside from sulphur. Had to chaptalize, water back, or add some acid due to the vintage? It happens, but please don’t make a habit of it. You’re using color additives, oaks staves, or following a “recipe” to produce the same exact wine year after year that you can sell for $10? No thanks.
The problem really, with natural wine, is that the “good” natural wine is just expensive wine made well where the producers don’t even necessarily put their farming and wine making practices front and center because the wine speaks for itself, whereas the “bad” natural wines kind of suck and the only way they can sell them is through a story…
Yes, all of it, though IPAs are the worse, and Cantillon is the best. Even the smell of it makes me gag. I haven’t missed it. I hate soda even more - loathsome, vile swill that I consider more of a poison than alcohol.
I guess we’re mostly aligned. You’ll get no argument from me about IPAs. Terrible. Just awful stuff for the most part. But I love a good Belgian or German Beer (or beer styled as such). Cantillon is great, but there are others I love as well.