Could California Wine Country Become a Thing of the Past?

When we think California wine country, or at least when I do, I think of the areas that have become really famous with the average American wine drinker. I'm not talking about some of the newer up and coming areas. I'm not talking about places like Santa Rita Hills where cult wines might fetch hundreds or evern thousands of dollars. I'm talking Napa Valley, and to a lesser extent, Sonoma. 

A number of factors are coming together at once and I fear that the wine industry there that has seen meteoric growth could be heading for a downfall. 

Why? When you combine price, climate, natural disaster, and the rise of other areas with the internet and the ability of consumers to easily get wine from those other areas, California wine country could become its own worst enemy.

Now, I don't actually know something in particular here that nobody else knows. I'm just a blogger who writes without doing any real research. That said, this seeming calamity makes sense to me.

Let's look at the factors one by one. Price. 10 years ago, when I saw an article about Napa's value wines, these were the wines that any old consumer could by for less than $30. A decent number were under $20, but for $30, there were a lot of extremely enjoyable bottles. Just yesterday, I saw where another wine blogger, far better known and well connected in the industry, but less regular in his writing, found that there were more than 100 new wineries in Napa in the last 5 [sic] years. Wanting to write about them, he asked for samples from each. What he found was that not a single sample bottle of Cabernet was available at retail for less than $50, the median price was right about $100, and the mean about $113.  

That's just flat out nuts. Figuring normal pours of 5 ounces, that's more than $20 per pour in your own home. And, even at a well-priced establishment outside of your home, that's likely well in excess of $50 for a glass. These might be excellent wines, but that's a lot of money for 15 to 60 (depending on how quickly you drink your wines) minutes of sensory pleasure. Most other regions are now far less expensive. And, most of us cannot taste that much difference.

Next, whether you believe in climate change or not, the climate has certainly been different in California wine country in recent years than previously. It's been noticeably warmer with more brutally hot days and noticeably dryer even when compared to the always extremely dry summers there. 

As regular readers will know, extreme heat and lack of any precipiatation stresses the grapes even more than normal. We get wines with higher and higher alcohol content and much more pronounced flavors. Some critics and some drinkers love it, but others say enough is enough. When we pay those astronomical prices, are we paying for grace and style or are we paying for absolutely overwhelming, over-the-top wines? Sooner or later, some critics are going to start to pan these wines and this will have a dilatory effect.

Natural disasters have been prominent in the area recently. With earthquakes and the wildfires of 2018 that were bad and of 2020 that were far worse, a number of wineries declassified recent vintages or produced none at all. Some are gone. In fact, some American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) are gone or nearly gone.

This is not sutainable. The trend that I see is that these busineses, and yes they are businesses, are raising prices to compensate for the losses they took in those natural disaster years.

At the same time, winemaking is getting much better in lesser known areas both in the US and abroad. While they don't taste like Cabernet from any of the legendary parts of Napa Valley, they are enjoyable in their own rights and harken back to the syles where finesse was more desirable than power. They're subtle while still complex. And, they're inexpensive. Lately, we've been getting some wines from east central Europe that are magnificent and food friendly, but typically less than $30 per bottle and often less than $15 per bottle. And, they are great accompaniments for food.

Be careful California wine country before you become the region that is its own worst enemy.