- Reaction score
- 1,703
For 25 years, the wine industry boomed. Then it started to unravel
Megan Bell felt certain that her winery was going bankrupt.
When she released a new batch of wines in August, only three of her 19 distributors agreed to buy any. She was running $65,000 over budget on opening a tasting room in Santa Cruz. And she owed $80,000 to grape growers.
Sales in the second half of the year were the worst Bell had seen since starting her small business, Margins, eight years ago. “2023 was a disaster,” she said. And she knows she wasn’t the only winemaker feeling it: “If anybody’s not telling you that, they’re lying.”
The entire $55 billion California wine industry is, like the wine industry worldwide, experiencing an unprecedented downturn right now. No sector is immune — not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines. Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.
Megan Bell felt certain that her winery was going bankrupt.
When she released a new batch of wines in August, only three of her 19 distributors agreed to buy any. She was running $65,000 over budget on opening a tasting room in Santa Cruz. And she owed $80,000 to grape growers.
Sales in the second half of the year were the worst Bell had seen since starting her small business, Margins, eight years ago. “2023 was a disaster,” she said. And she knows she wasn’t the only winemaker feeling it: “If anybody’s not telling you that, they’re lying.”
The entire $55 billion California wine industry is, like the wine industry worldwide, experiencing an unprecedented downturn right now. No sector is immune — not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines. Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.
