Thanks for the kind words. You both are a wealth of knowledge as well.
The wine industry has always had problems with the weather, but yes, it has been facing an increase in certain or different issues than it has in the past. It’s also an industry that is unique in how much information we have for past years and is obsessed with how conditions each year affect quality. I mean, for what other crop do we have not only detailed harvest and quality records going back to the 18th century, but also actual samples of those harvests to run chemical analyses on? I just did a comparative tasting for work where we tasted our wines from the last 12 years side by side along with one from the 70’s made from the same vineyards. Without looking at historical weather records, I could tell you with reasonable certainty which years we had a dry spring, a cool summer, or a wet fall. I can’t think of any other fruit crop where this would be possible without relying entirely on memory, which is quite unreliable, especially when it comes to weather. To quote Steinbeck’s East of Eden:
I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
California has always had a climate that fluctuates between too dry and too wet. “Average” rainfall years are actually quite uncommon. Building in resiliency is something the industry has decided is essential, regardless of how one feels about the future climate. All the measures we take, whether it’s increasing water use efficiency, installing heat mitigation measures, changing varieties, etc. are equally applicable to the California of the present and to any future vision of California’s climate.
It’s an interesting time to be in the industry for sure. On one hand we have people complaining about how “young people don’t drink wine” (White Americans over 65 are the only demographic where wine consumption has increased in the last few years. Gen Z people over drinking age have the lowest alcohol consumption rate of any generation at that age. If you don’t see the coming issues for the alcoholic beverage industry with that, well, you must be incredibly optimistic.). On the other hand, you have winemakers that refuse to change how they make their product to adapt to shifting preferences. Large producers, interestingly, are probably more innovative and adaptive to the market, since they have the resources to conduct consumer preference studies and adjust their products accordingly. Plus, they are beholden to their stakeholders and profits and less likely to be the vanity project of some rich person who doesn’t need to be concerned about the profitability (or lack thereof) of the winery.
Unless you’re shopping at farmers markets or ag stands, the fruit you get in most supermarkets here aren’t any different than what gets shipped to the rest of the country. It’s quite disappointing.
