“Can U.S. Wine Win Back Its Mojo?” That’s the title of the lastest Rabobank Liquid Assets podcast, which I recorded along with Rabobank’s Global Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and Analyst Bourcard Nesin in Sacramento during the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium meetings earlier this month.
The mojo question was at the front of our minds because earlier that day the speakers at the State of the Industry session had painted a complicated picture of American wine’s prospects. There are still opportunties in the U.S. market (the rumors of wine’s death are exaggerated, I said in my presentaiton, paraphrasing Mark Twain), but there are undeniable problems, too.
The best guess is that 200,000 tons of wine grapes were left on the vines in California in 2019 for lack of buyers. Perhaps 30,000 acres of wine grapes need to be taken out of production to balance demand and supply. So it is no surprise that our discussion centered on ways to boost demand and therefore lesson the supply-side pain.
The podcast is fast-paced and raises interesting points about the potential for wine exports (my contribution to the discussion), the need for increased attention to e-commerce sales (Bourcard’s point) and Stephen’s analysis of the challenges of building brands for a changing market environment.
Interested? Follow this link to “Can U.S. Wine Win Back Its Mojo?”
Similar supply-demand problems have had all wine regions, I guess, at least once in the past. Europe’s traditional way to deal with them was the funded grabbing-up schemes. How is it usually regulated in the US, Mr. Veseth?
Market adjustment rather than government intervention is the norm in the U.S. when grape surpluses appear.
Makes sense! Thank you!
Plenty of tons left on the vines here in Washington also. It’s a cycle as in in all ag.
Paul Vandenberg
Paradisos del Sol
Thanks, Paul. My sense is that the problem is Washington is proportionately bigger than California.