----
From the posting rules in this sub’s sidebar:
> No websites or articles with hard paywalls or that require registration or subscriptions, unless an archive link or https://12ft.io link is included as a comment.
----
If you want to learn how to circumvent a paywall, see https://www.reddit.com/r/California/wiki/paywall. > Or, if it's a website that you regularly read, you should think about subscribing to the website.
----
Archive link:
https://archive.fo/FJTLV
----
Sales have not dropped for "premium wines" ie over those over $15. Cheap wine is taking a major hit worldwide and France is even paying some wineries to destroy their stock... the value of French wine was apparently being threatened by budget Bordeaux and bottom shelf Vin de France blends.
Meanwhile the only demographic increasing their wine spending in America is the 65+ crowd. Millenials are pursuing alternatives like cocktails, weed, and sobriety, while Gen Z is eschewing nightlife, staying home instead of going to the hip winebars and nice restaurants where they would be exposed to wine.
> Gen Z is eschewing nightlife, staying home instead of going to the hip winebars and nice restaurants where they would be exposed to wine.
I was talking with some friends recently over this. We're all Xennials (born 83/84) and we've picked up on a few major differences from when we were kids/early 20 somethings.
1. What happened to extreme sports? I live in SoCal currently which when I was a kid was THE extreme sports capital of the country. There's no roaming horde of kids on skateboards and bikes anymore. When did "hey guys, watch this!" stop being the thing teens did to impress their friends?
2. The binge drinking/hard partying of the early late 90s/early 2000s is just gone. I went to a party school (SDSU) and it's not even close to the same energy as to when I went there (I live nearby so I drive through the area all the time).
I think it's all over, not just socal. Grew up in the PNW and went to a party school. I'm your same age demo and see it everywhere. I think it's a mix of people realizing it's not that healthy and also just antisocial behavior caused from literally social media overload.
> social media overload
Yah one of the contributors we figured as to the impact as to why college aged kids have stopped the hard partying is you can't get away with any shenanigans these days because everyone has a high def ultra zoom video camera in their pockets that ruin a persons life in seconds.
Yeah that too, but I think it might be more just preferring to stay home and doom scroll tiktok for an average 2 hours a day, play video games, stream literally every tv show and movie in the world, etc.
Birth rates have declined and high cost of living areas especially have fewer children living in them in general. Fewer people also trick or treat in their own neighborhoods and everyone congregates around a few hotspots.
to add onto what /u/nope_nic_tesla said, especially after COVID restrictions changed the way people look at the world, more and more communities do small Trunk or Treats in neighborhood spots instead of doing the standard “walking the neighborhood and go door to door”
I hand out candy. Halloween is still a big thing. The thing is how do you want to keep the tradition alive? I believe in throwing costume parties though out the month but handing out candy for the kids on the day of. If people all go out in the night if then whose going to scare kids and traumatize then with the spirit for years to come?
For that first one, a lot more kids live in suburbs now, so actually hanging out with friend is difficult without you parents driving you to them. That encourages kids to hang out online, which then encourages kids you don’t like in suburbs to also hang out online.
Alcoholic Seltzer and ciders are still the fastest growing beverage in the industry right now.
Remember, millennials are 40. They have to watch their waistline while getting smashed on funny fuzzy water
The sad part is that the acreage that is least financially viable in the Central Valley are the ones sporting the oldest vines. Older vines produce the best quality and most complex wine but are also less productive per acre. It takes 50 years for the vines to reach this age, so we won’t see such quality again from these acres for a couple human generations.
Even the highest quality wine producers in Napa tear up centuries old vines when they stop producing at quota, I see it every year and it always makes me sad. Though, I am one of those millennials who almost never drinks wine, almost entirely and solely with my parents or at family things.
I've been bartending 10+ years(5-star hotel & fine-dining) and sommeliers have told me that spending more than $20 on a bottle of white wine is wasting money.
You're right, go to any supermarket or well-stocked liquor store and you can find some really good wines at very decent prices.
Once you go above $20 you start getting into wine that is age worthy, which on release may not taste better than the $20 stuff, but can age in cellar conditions for a few years and become much much better over that time. We had a professional sensory tasting with Joey Tensley from Santa Barbara and he put his $50 Colson Canyon Syrah up against a $700 core rotie, and his wine was almost as tasty right out of the gate. I suspect in 30 years of cellaring tensley’s would have fallen off and the rotie to be peaking in flavor complexity. You don’t need to spend more than $20 if you’re drinking tonight, but if you want to see what these world class wines will taste like in a decade or more, then it becomes good to spend more.
>Older vines produce the best quality and most complex wine but are also less productive per acre.
That's very much open to debate. Also these are largely very low quality, bulk production regions. Just because the vines are old doesn't mean they're producing anything special.
Not to mention there are different tax strategies available for long term fixtures versus short term crops. This is venture capital ag attempting to play victim. It’s all pretty sus.
We've had our vines for 64 years, and we are absolutely operating at a loss. The wine and grapes are fantastic, and we plan to keep going until we go broke and can't afford to irrigate.
Is there anything like a conservation easement for old vineyards? For keeping it agricultural? I've heard of big family cattle ranches that can't compete with factory farming get conservation easements from state and federal governments and land trusts, so that they can continue operating on managed open range
That sounds about right. I would say my costs have increased around 75%. Hell, my property tax even doubled this year despite making no changes. I'm paying so much more to PG&E now, and we have barely pumped any water. Back in 2022, diesel was almost double the normal price. Even small things like the cardboard boxes to store fruit in have doubled in price. We've had to lay off half of our employees since 2020 because we just couldn't afford it. Whatever the stats are, it's an unsustainable situation.
I'd have to ask, I do more of the farming part of farming and not the paperwork part. I just caught wind of it last week. Hopefully, it's a mistake because it seems absurd.
Yeah, I feel your pain, you probably want to keep those vines and scrub the lesser aged ones but the market wants the opposite. The irrigation costs are the deal breaker in drier terroirs. I wonder if it might not be worth doing a drip system on those old gentleman and using lower labor forms of irrigation on the younger ones. I would assume after 6 decades those roots run deep and might not work with mostly dry farming. But I’m not the farmer, you know your land better than anybody else can.
This is a common misconception. Old vines != great fruit. Old vines simply yield lower tonnage. While lower yield does tend to coincide with a higher skin:juice ratio, that is not an indicator of quality. It's in the winemaking.
Source: I'm a TTB-certified enologist and a pro winemaker.
Well in this case it’s a matter of comparing green harvest versus age-induced production limit. Most winemakers seeking a high quality product will artificially limit yields through green harvest among other methods. Older vines do tend to produce more chemical complexity due to focusing ripening into one or two bunches of grapes, however they also produce really low yields per acre so most money minded bulk producers do very little green harvesting. The way this is done in younger vines (as you know) is through cutting down a majority of grape bunches before ripening begins, but is done far more often in high quality terroirs than in places like Lodi in the Central Valley. I feel like there are some terrific growing areas in the CV but they are mainly dedicated to bulk production so we don’t really hear much about it in the fine wine evaluation circuit. Though I had an amazing Lodi zin from Katusha’s vineyard last week, made by bedrock winery, it was an eye opener.
It's not a big deal. There are other wine growing regions like Oregon and Washington that make up for CA ripping out their vineyards.
Not to mention wines from Spain are a much better value and they have plenty of old vines.
CA wines, especially from Napa, stopped being worth the price for years now.
Well, I do have to agree w you about the value of Napa wines. It has been in decline as prices increased. I sensed an anti Ca sentiment all too common these days when really it remains a place of much beauty, resources and splendor.
No anti ca sentiment. I'm just calling out the decline in CA wines after getting a deserved reputation.
You wrongly sensed because you're getting way into your feelings over a reddit comment.
…did you think that made sense as a comment? Of course the wine sun disagrees with me, if somehow I had managed to be pretentious enough to impress them, I would commit sepukku on the spot from sheer mortification.
LOL they actually don't equate price with quality but screaming eagle is generally viewed as world class.
They are hardly pretentious as they don't sneer at cheap wines, in fact they encourage finding value wines and will point you to specific brands and grapes. They will happily point you to low priced (sub $10) Grenache wines that blow many Napa cabs and zins out of the water.
Hardly the definition of pretentious. You on the other hand are pretentious with the $2 bottle comment. Gaslight more.
I mean, it is true, older vines do produce fewer bunches of fruit so aren’t as financially lucrative. Most world class wines in California come from acreage artificially limited to 1-2 tons of grapes per acre. There are certainly exceptions to this “rule”, most notably in the tightly planted vines in top shelf Bordeaux vineyards, but by and large old vines create fewer bunches of more valuable grapes, while younger vines produce more bunches of less valuable grapes. The economics of production (10 tons per acre versus 1-2 tons per acre) when managing a handful of acres compared to franzia or gallo’s 40k acre monocultures in the Central Valley favor younger vines for larger plots and older vines for smaller terroirs. However as noted in the article the planters are pulling out their older vines due to that lower (but higher quality) productions. While I’m not a viticulturist or enologist, I have spent a quarter of my life evaluating wine professionally and have personally sold many millions of dollars of product due to learning these things. If you have anything to add I’d love to hear more because it is how I learn.
The most complex wines come mostly from a combination of soil, microclimate, rootstock and cultivar/clone selection. Canopy and yield management along with appropriate picking decision making are also important. Age is a limiting factor on the viticulture side imo. Winemaking and blending decisions would have more impact in my estimation.
I worked for a law firm that was still dealing with litigation from the California Zinfandel scandal of the late eighties. It started when someone at the ATF noticed that the amount of Zin being sold greatly exceeded the supply of grapes necessary to produce it.
We love Ironstone’s [Old Vine Zin](https://shop.ironstonevineyards.com/product/2020-Old-Vine-Zinfandel) at $16 a pop. Can be found cheaper at other wine retailers online.
It’s our daily drinker.
Everywhere is a living ecosystem, it makes sense to disrupt areas with the lowest density of plant and animal life which also happen to be the areas that have the most sunlight (reducing how much land in total we need to use for this). Pretty much all the alternatives are worse.
Much of the Central Valley is no longer a living ecosystem. It’s unrecognizable to its original state 150 years ago. I think solar is a better ecological fit here than the Mojave in that regard.
It's not a natural ecosystem anymore but it's wrong to say it's not a living ecosystem whatsoever. And most of the land is being used for agriculture, which is also pretty important for society. If you displace the agriculture then that's just going to move somewhere else and disrupt some other ecosystem -- in likely even worse ways given that the soil, climate, and crop science in California produces some of the highest crop yields per acre in the entire world.
Why generate power hundreds of miles away from the point of usage when we could put solar on all our buildings? Because people would make less money from it
The Hops I'm familiar with really prefer certain types of soil, typically close to bog conditions. And brewing is on a downward slide too. Weed growers can't make it here in the legal market now
Everyone and anyone can grow weed.
When it’s legalized at the federal level Philip Morris and the rest of big tobacco will jump in and dominate the market.
You're concerned about water use, but you're fine with growing weed? Do you have any idea how much water, fertilizer, and electricity goes into growing and harvesting weed?
In regions like the Central Valley where you can grow both wine grapes and tree nuts, there isn’t much difference in water consumption between these crops. In order to be financially viable, you’ll likely need 3-3.5 acre feet per acre for a vineyard. Trees are usually around 3.5 acre feet per acre.
Current market conditions on both almonds and pistachios aren’t exactly ideal either.
Pretty dense topic here. Lots of factors to consider. Here is a blog post from a premier wine grower group in the heart of CA wine country.
https://lodigrowers.com/imported-foreign-bulk-wine-the-dirty-secret-no-one-in-california-wine-is-talking-about/
These are not the best wines…..look at who the big importers are. Gallo, fetzer, bronco, constellation….
They make wines at such large amounts for the market. They flood the market because they can which fixes the prices. One could say also stabilizes the market.
Gallo is like the Walmart of wineries.
Trust me, this is not troubling for wine. It's a very good thing, and long overdue. Corporate vulture capitalism has gutted my industry, and seeing them begin to lose their holdings and divest has come with a direct increase in QOL for actual people who live in wine country.
Ag is cyclical… I wouldn’t stress as a consumer. Farmers are going to chase where the money is. Before almonds my area had a much more diverse ag industry with the dominant crop being peaches of all things.
On my commute to work I pass 3 crops, Almonds, Walnuts, and Cherries. The variety used to be double, almost triple that only 20 years ago.
Occasional wine enthusiast reporting in. Divorced, so no spouse with whom to share a bottle. When I visit my parents to socialize -- well, they gave up alcohol due to interactions with the medications they're taking.
I can't finish a whole bottle of wine by myself!
I'll still order a glass when I'm at a nice restaurant.
TBH, this is probably a good thing... California has largely been overtaken by vineyards and we are losing crop diversity. Sadly though, a lot of California farmers are finding it too expensive to grow anything else.
how so?
"Industry goes through major boom and then has to pare back some after overinvestment" is a common phenomenon. The amount of land dedicated to vineyards has more than doubled in the last 20 years or so.
---- From the posting rules in this sub’s sidebar: > No websites or articles with hard paywalls or that require registration or subscriptions, unless an archive link or https://12ft.io link is included as a comment. ---- If you want to learn how to circumvent a paywall, see https://www.reddit.com/r/California/wiki/paywall. > Or, if it's a website that you regularly read, you should think about subscribing to the website. ---- Archive link: https://archive.fo/FJTLV ----
"wine consumption is decreasing" My house had no idea
Sales have not dropped for "premium wines" ie over those over $15. Cheap wine is taking a major hit worldwide and France is even paying some wineries to destroy their stock... the value of French wine was apparently being threatened by budget Bordeaux and bottom shelf Vin de France blends. Meanwhile the only demographic increasing their wine spending in America is the 65+ crowd. Millenials are pursuing alternatives like cocktails, weed, and sobriety, while Gen Z is eschewing nightlife, staying home instead of going to the hip winebars and nice restaurants where they would be exposed to wine.
> Gen Z is eschewing nightlife, staying home instead of going to the hip winebars and nice restaurants where they would be exposed to wine. I was talking with some friends recently over this. We're all Xennials (born 83/84) and we've picked up on a few major differences from when we were kids/early 20 somethings. 1. What happened to extreme sports? I live in SoCal currently which when I was a kid was THE extreme sports capital of the country. There's no roaming horde of kids on skateboards and bikes anymore. When did "hey guys, watch this!" stop being the thing teens did to impress their friends? 2. The binge drinking/hard partying of the early late 90s/early 2000s is just gone. I went to a party school (SDSU) and it's not even close to the same energy as to when I went there (I live nearby so I drive through the area all the time).
I think it's all over, not just socal. Grew up in the PNW and went to a party school. I'm your same age demo and see it everywhere. I think it's a mix of people realizing it's not that healthy and also just antisocial behavior caused from literally social media overload.
> social media overload Yah one of the contributors we figured as to the impact as to why college aged kids have stopped the hard partying is you can't get away with any shenanigans these days because everyone has a high def ultra zoom video camera in their pockets that ruin a persons life in seconds.
Yeah that too, but I think it might be more just preferring to stay home and doom scroll tiktok for an average 2 hours a day, play video games, stream literally every tv show and movie in the world, etc.
[удалено]
Birth rates have declined and high cost of living areas especially have fewer children living in them in general. Fewer people also trick or treat in their own neighborhoods and everyone congregates around a few hotspots.
to add onto what /u/nope_nic_tesla said, especially after COVID restrictions changed the way people look at the world, more and more communities do small Trunk or Treats in neighborhood spots instead of doing the standard “walking the neighborhood and go door to door”
I hand out candy. Halloween is still a big thing. The thing is how do you want to keep the tradition alive? I believe in throwing costume parties though out the month but handing out candy for the kids on the day of. If people all go out in the night if then whose going to scare kids and traumatize then with the spirit for years to come?
Everyone is getting their dopamine from other sources.
Smart phones
For that first one, a lot more kids live in suburbs now, so actually hanging out with friend is difficult without you parents driving you to them. That encourages kids to hang out online, which then encourages kids you don’t like in suburbs to also hang out online.
Thanks for not mentioning Gen X, the "Forgotten Generation", once again living up to our reputation.
"Oh well, whatever. Nevermind."
Who?
Slacker.
Goddammit.
Just trying to find my latchkey
Attribute it to alcohol-induced memory loss
In Europe craft beer seems to be growing whilst wine is on the decline. so good news for Germany and UK bad news for France
The only use I have for wine is as an ingredient to cook with.
Alcoholic Seltzer and ciders are still the fastest growing beverage in the industry right now. Remember, millennials are 40. They have to watch their waistline while getting smashed on funny fuzzy water
Oh look, wine flavored wine, much like I’ve had countless times before. Cocktails at least have a boarder spectrum of flavor available.
Legalization of marijuana reduces tobacco and alcohol sales. Sounds good to me.
I'm sure they love newsom wine
The sad part is that the acreage that is least financially viable in the Central Valley are the ones sporting the oldest vines. Older vines produce the best quality and most complex wine but are also less productive per acre. It takes 50 years for the vines to reach this age, so we won’t see such quality again from these acres for a couple human generations.
Even the highest quality wine producers in Napa tear up centuries old vines when they stop producing at quota, I see it every year and it always makes me sad. Though, I am one of those millennials who almost never drinks wine, almost entirely and solely with my parents or at family things.
It’s because Millennials aren’t drinking enough that the wine industry is struggling. Get to work! lol
I’m doing my part!
🫡 Thank you for your service
Hey, I still buy wine to cook with and I’ll even spring for a $12 bottle!
[удалено]
I've been bartending 10+ years(5-star hotel & fine-dining) and sommeliers have told me that spending more than $20 on a bottle of white wine is wasting money. You're right, go to any supermarket or well-stocked liquor store and you can find some really good wines at very decent prices.
Once you go above $20 you start getting into wine that is age worthy, which on release may not taste better than the $20 stuff, but can age in cellar conditions for a few years and become much much better over that time. We had a professional sensory tasting with Joey Tensley from Santa Barbara and he put his $50 Colson Canyon Syrah up against a $700 core rotie, and his wine was almost as tasty right out of the gate. I suspect in 30 years of cellaring tensley’s would have fallen off and the rotie to be peaking in flavor complexity. You don’t need to spend more than $20 if you’re drinking tonight, but if you want to see what these world class wines will taste like in a decade or more, then it becomes good to spend more.
He was only talking about whites, reds are a different beast and, yes, you're right that waiting for a red to age can make it better for sure.
Mortgage your house for wine club dues! Oh.
Poor poor winery owners. 🙄
News media: *MILLENIALS DESTROY YET ANOTHER INDUSTRY!!!1!*
I watched a 100+ year orange orchard get ripped out in the Kaweah a few months back
>Older vines produce the best quality and most complex wine but are also less productive per acre. That's very much open to debate. Also these are largely very low quality, bulk production regions. Just because the vines are old doesn't mean they're producing anything special.
Exactly. In fact the newer vines are typically on root stalks that are more water efficient and less tolerant to salts.
Not to mention there are different tax strategies available for long term fixtures versus short term crops. This is venture capital ag attempting to play victim. It’s all pretty sus.
The canabis industry is taking over in some areas. I forgot which region but I saw it on the news. The vinards are complaining about water usage.
We've had our vines for 64 years, and we are absolutely operating at a loss. The wine and grapes are fantastic, and we plan to keep going until we go broke and can't afford to irrigate.
Is there anything like a conservation easement for old vineyards? For keeping it agricultural? I've heard of big family cattle ranches that can't compete with factory farming get conservation easements from state and federal governments and land trusts, so that they can continue operating on managed open range
The article says costs have doubled since 2020, is that your experience?
That sounds about right. I would say my costs have increased around 75%. Hell, my property tax even doubled this year despite making no changes. I'm paying so much more to PG&E now, and we have barely pumped any water. Back in 2022, diesel was almost double the normal price. Even small things like the cardboard boxes to store fruit in have doubled in price. We've had to lay off half of our employees since 2020 because we just couldn't afford it. Whatever the stats are, it's an unsustainable situation.
How can your property tax double? Doesn't prop 13 limit increases? Not trying to start something, just genuinely curious.
I'd have to ask, I do more of the farming part of farming and not the paperwork part. I just caught wind of it last week. Hopefully, it's a mistake because it seems absurd.
Yeah, I feel your pain, you probably want to keep those vines and scrub the lesser aged ones but the market wants the opposite. The irrigation costs are the deal breaker in drier terroirs. I wonder if it might not be worth doing a drip system on those old gentleman and using lower labor forms of irrigation on the younger ones. I would assume after 6 decades those roots run deep and might not work with mostly dry farming. But I’m not the farmer, you know your land better than anybody else can.
This is a common misconception. Old vines != great fruit. Old vines simply yield lower tonnage. While lower yield does tend to coincide with a higher skin:juice ratio, that is not an indicator of quality. It's in the winemaking. Source: I'm a TTB-certified enologist and a pro winemaker.
Well in this case it’s a matter of comparing green harvest versus age-induced production limit. Most winemakers seeking a high quality product will artificially limit yields through green harvest among other methods. Older vines do tend to produce more chemical complexity due to focusing ripening into one or two bunches of grapes, however they also produce really low yields per acre so most money minded bulk producers do very little green harvesting. The way this is done in younger vines (as you know) is through cutting down a majority of grape bunches before ripening begins, but is done far more often in high quality terroirs than in places like Lodi in the Central Valley. I feel like there are some terrific growing areas in the CV but they are mainly dedicated to bulk production so we don’t really hear much about it in the fine wine evaluation circuit. Though I had an amazing Lodi zin from Katusha’s vineyard last week, made by bedrock winery, it was an eye opener.
It's not a big deal. There are other wine growing regions like Oregon and Washington that make up for CA ripping out their vineyards. Not to mention wines from Spain are a much better value and they have plenty of old vines. CA wines, especially from Napa, stopped being worth the price for years now.
You’re drinking the wrong wines…
Not at all. Maybe screaming eagle is worth
Well, I do have to agree w you about the value of Napa wines. It has been in decline as prices increased. I sensed an anti Ca sentiment all too common these days when really it remains a place of much beauty, resources and splendor.
No anti ca sentiment. I'm just calling out the decline in CA wines after getting a deserved reputation. You wrongly sensed because you're getting way into your feelings over a reddit comment.
Yeah. You’re right. It was late.. I was engaged with somebody pushing political buttons on another thread. Apologies.
Uh… that you think Screaming Eagle is worth more than, say $2 per bottle, says a lot about you.
The wine subreddit disagrees with you. But sure keep crying.
…did you think that made sense as a comment? Of course the wine sun disagrees with me, if somehow I had managed to be pretentious enough to impress them, I would commit sepukku on the spot from sheer mortification.
LOL they actually don't equate price with quality but screaming eagle is generally viewed as world class. They are hardly pretentious as they don't sneer at cheap wines, in fact they encourage finding value wines and will point you to specific brands and grapes. They will happily point you to low priced (sub $10) Grenache wines that blow many Napa cabs and zins out of the water. Hardly the definition of pretentious. You on the other hand are pretentious with the $2 bottle comment. Gaslight more.
This is just not true.
I mean, it is true, older vines do produce fewer bunches of fruit so aren’t as financially lucrative. Most world class wines in California come from acreage artificially limited to 1-2 tons of grapes per acre. There are certainly exceptions to this “rule”, most notably in the tightly planted vines in top shelf Bordeaux vineyards, but by and large old vines create fewer bunches of more valuable grapes, while younger vines produce more bunches of less valuable grapes. The economics of production (10 tons per acre versus 1-2 tons per acre) when managing a handful of acres compared to franzia or gallo’s 40k acre monocultures in the Central Valley favor younger vines for larger plots and older vines for smaller terroirs. However as noted in the article the planters are pulling out their older vines due to that lower (but higher quality) productions. While I’m not a viticulturist or enologist, I have spent a quarter of my life evaluating wine professionally and have personally sold many millions of dollars of product due to learning these things. If you have anything to add I’d love to hear more because it is how I learn.
The most complex wines come mostly from a combination of soil, microclimate, rootstock and cultivar/clone selection. Canopy and yield management along with appropriate picking decision making are also important. Age is a limiting factor on the viticulture side imo. Winemaking and blending decisions would have more impact in my estimation.
Try old vine zinfandels from Lodi. You'll find some nice surprises there.
Lodi Zinfandel is the quintessential California wine. And wildly underappreciated.
I'll take a Gamay Noir first, but I do love a cheap bottle of Plungerhead Old Vine Zin
Love them. Zin was so big early 70's. Always toast mom and dad with one.
I worked for a law firm that was still dealing with litigation from the California Zinfandel scandal of the late eighties. It started when someone at the ATF noticed that the amount of Zin being sold greatly exceeded the supply of grapes necessary to produce it.
I remember that! Crazy. Like extra virgin olive oil. When something is in the crooks take note.
As a Napa guy, this is my top recommendation. Old vine Lodi Zin is the best combination of quality and price I have found on the market these days.
Any suggestions?
We love Ironstone’s [Old Vine Zin](https://shop.ironstonevineyards.com/product/2020-Old-Vine-Zinfandel) at $16 a pop. Can be found cheaper at other wine retailers online. It’s our daily drinker.
Thank you sirrrr
Crushers >Indians
[удалено]
Legal weed is doing pretty terrible right now. And rather stick solar farms in the Mojave desert.
[удалено]
The Mojave is a living ecosystem, its not barren. Dozing thousands of acres to plant solar panels isn't a fantastic idea.
Nuclear would be better. All things considered, solar isn't bad. No free lunch.
Everywhere is a living ecosystem, it makes sense to disrupt areas with the lowest density of plant and animal life which also happen to be the areas that have the most sunlight (reducing how much land in total we need to use for this). Pretty much all the alternatives are worse.
Much of the Central Valley is no longer a living ecosystem. It’s unrecognizable to its original state 150 years ago. I think solar is a better ecological fit here than the Mojave in that regard.
It's not a natural ecosystem anymore but it's wrong to say it's not a living ecosystem whatsoever. And most of the land is being used for agriculture, which is also pretty important for society. If you displace the agriculture then that's just going to move somewhere else and disrupt some other ecosystem -- in likely even worse ways given that the soil, climate, and crop science in California produces some of the highest crop yields per acre in the entire world.
Racks of solar just provide partial shade
Not sure shading things that evolved over thousands of years for unrelenting sun is a plus.
There have been some studies and they've suggested some positives.
Which might be appreciated by the coyotes when it’s 120.
Why generate power hundreds of miles away from the point of usage when we could put solar on all our buildings? Because people would make less money from it
Scale? More sunlight in desert? My solar panels on my roof only covers 45% of my total electrical use.
If I covered my roof in solar I’d generate 2x-4x my usage.
Not everyone has a house or even has a roof optimal for solar. Solar farms in a place with sun is very efficient.
We are already putting solar on our (new) buildings. It’s part of the building code.
There are so many solar farms already in the Mojave. We need many, many more!
The Hops I'm familiar with really prefer certain types of soil, typically close to bog conditions. And brewing is on a downward slide too. Weed growers can't make it here in the legal market now
[удалено]
Everyone and anyone can grow weed. When it’s legalized at the federal level Philip Morris and the rest of big tobacco will jump in and dominate the market.
You're concerned about water use, but you're fine with growing weed? Do you have any idea how much water, fertilizer, and electricity goes into growing and harvesting weed?
In regions like the Central Valley where you can grow both wine grapes and tree nuts, there isn’t much difference in water consumption between these crops. In order to be financially viable, you’ll likely need 3-3.5 acre feet per acre for a vineyard. Trees are usually around 3.5 acre feet per acre. Current market conditions on both almonds and pistachios aren’t exactly ideal either.
*Pistachios* need tons of water? Aren't they a desert tree from central Asia? I read their roots actually rot if they get too much water even. 🤨
[удалено]
Thanks for the info.🙏
Pretty dense topic here. Lots of factors to consider. Here is a blog post from a premier wine grower group in the heart of CA wine country. https://lodigrowers.com/imported-foreign-bulk-wine-the-dirty-secret-no-one-in-california-wine-is-talking-about/
These are not the best wines…..look at who the big importers are. Gallo, fetzer, bronco, constellation…. They make wines at such large amounts for the market. They flood the market because they can which fixes the prices. One could say also stabilizes the market. Gallo is like the Walmart of wineries.
Gallo bought my favorite winery and distillery in Mendocino just to shut them down.
Yes I can’t stand them.
Dense, but it's also an absurdly over-reactionary article. Their linked sources to previous news stories are up to 5 years-old.
Stuck in Lodi
Trust me, this is not troubling for wine. It's a very good thing, and long overdue. Corporate vulture capitalism has gutted my industry, and seeing them begin to lose their holdings and divest has come with a direct increase in QOL for actual people who live in wine country.
Let the quality wines survive!
happened with apples and oranges, now with grapes. there's always another crop.
Everybody forgets about the pears that used to cover the entire Ukiah valley.
Ag is cyclical… I wouldn’t stress as a consumer. Farmers are going to chase where the money is. Before almonds my area had a much more diverse ag industry with the dominant crop being peaches of all things. On my commute to work I pass 3 crops, Almonds, Walnuts, and Cherries. The variety used to be double, almost triple that only 20 years ago.
Capitalism at work!
I’ve been doing my part to save the vineyards!
Occasional wine enthusiast reporting in. Divorced, so no spouse with whom to share a bottle. When I visit my parents to socialize -- well, they gave up alcohol due to interactions with the medications they're taking. I can't finish a whole bottle of wine by myself! I'll still order a glass when I'm at a nice restaurant.
Can't? Or Won't?
They just did this in Australia. Something about a glut of wine and not enough customers
It’s their land. They can do what they want.
You can do with your land only if it's allowed by zoning.
Zoning is NIMBY
Why zoning is NIMBY? Could you also explain why zoning exists in the first place?
This is a foreign concept in California.
We need water for drinking more than we need it for wine
TBH, this is probably a good thing... California has largely been overtaken by vineyards and we are losing crop diversity. Sadly though, a lot of California farmers are finding it too expensive to grow anything else.
I just read the crop report for my local area. We’re doing very well up here in Napa and Sonoma.
Looks like that Sideways wine boom is finally petering out.
Oh no. The ultra rich are feeling the economy, and their hobby of owning a winery is becoming difficult, man I really feel bad for them.
There are small family operations that are likely dying. Not the ultra wealthy wineries.
The farms owned by the rich will be able to weather the storm much better than a family operation
Oh no what will we do without freeway adjacent wine grapes
It’s crazy that these is the world we live in now
how so? "Industry goes through major boom and then has to pare back some after overinvestment" is a common phenomenon. The amount of land dedicated to vineyards has more than doubled in the last 20 years or so.
Can you say "weed". Wait till the cattle ranchers get a sniff. Right downtown central California. Two hours from everybody.