Troubles mount for California wine grape growers

LODI, California —

Times are getting tougher and tougher for many California wine growers.

Sour wine smoke from wildfires, grape-wilting drought and global warming have all played an increasingly damaging role in the state’s vineyards for at least a decade.

But those aren’t the only headaches. More recently, a tectonic shift in generational drinking habits has led to a global glut of wine.

Today, struggling California producers find themselves facing rock-bottom wine prices from foreign producers eager to get rid of their aging stocks.

“What is aggravating is that we have grapes that have not been picked or sold while the largest wineries in the state import cheap bulk wine from abroad,” lamented the commissioner by Lodi Winegrape, Stuart Spencer.

Here, in the heart of San Joaquin County’s prized wine growing region, thousands of tons of unpicked grapes cling to abandoned vines, and piles of gnarled wood and wire mark vast uprooted vineyards.

Much of that, Spencer says, is because California’s giant wineries have increased their purchases of cheap bulk foreign wine, then blend it with vintages produced on either side of Highway 99, to about 35 miles south of Sacramento.

Under Federal Tax & Trade Bureau regulations, the resulting blend can be labeled “American wine” if it contains no more than 25 percent foreign wine.

Although the mixing of foreign wines and Californian wines is nothing new, few winemakers have wanted to complain publicly, for fear of losing business with major winemakers. But today, as the plight of winery owners worsens, Spencer and others are speaking out about it.

In March, Spencer shocked the industry by releasing a report titled “Imported Bulk Foreign Wine: The Dirty Secret No One Talks About in California Wine.”

“I felt like I had to say something about a worrying aspect of our industry that has been left out,” Spencer said.

It’s a vocal criticism of the industry that has made Spencer, 54, something of a local hero at a time when many winemakers are grappling with the impacts of massive wildfires, an unprecedented drought, rising labor and equipment costs, COVID-19 mandates. and a brutal demographic disconnect across the world that has slowed the market for Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and Merlot.

Wine, once the height of baby boomer culture and conspicuous consumption, has lost its cool with younger, more thrifty and health-conscious potential customers, many of whom prefer cannabis to cabernet, experts say. In France, the government is spending more than $200 million to destroy surplus wine in the face of plummeting demand. In Australia, vineyards were forced to store the equivalent of two years of production due to a lack of buyers.

Today, growers in Lodi – the most diverse wine region in the United States, with 125 varieties in production – and across much of the state are being urged by industry representatives to remove dozens of thousands of acres of vineyards to balance supply and demand.

Adding to all other concerns is the increasing importation of cheap bulk wine from Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and Canada by wineries such as E&J Gallo, Constellation Brands and Delicato Family Wines, according to Spencer.

This spring, as green shoots emerged from the vines, the 700 wine growers represented by the Spencer Commission realized with alarm that they had lost control of their fate due to global market forces and the increasingly damaging effects of global warming.

“We were told there were potentially 400,000 tonnes of grapes left on the vine from the last harvest,” Spencer wrote in his report. “Growers were told they had to remove thousands of acres of vines to balance supply and demand. »

“But no one mentions that California’s biggest grape buyers also imported the equivalent of 400,000 tons of grapes in 2022,” Spencer wrote. “This situation is exacerbated by a global oversupply of wine that allows wineries to source incredibly cheap foreign wine in bulk in order to reduce their costs of goods sold.”

After reading Spencer’s report, some local growers said they stood up from their kitchen tables and applauded. Others worry about the possible consequences.

“He says things that could put us on a blacklist,” said Garret Schaefer, whose family has been growing grapes here since the late 1800s. “And we can’t afford to be blacklisted because we have too much wine to sell.”

The report highlights that “bulk foreign wine importation began in the late 1990s, as a rapidly growing wine market looked overseas to meet demand.”

The trend slowed considerably in the early 2000s, when California vineyard plantings outpaced demand, according to Spencer. However, it started to pick up around 2006 and has been growing ever since.

Natalie Collins, director of the California Assn. of Grape Growers, an advocacy group, said: “Importing foreign wine in bulk is not new. »

“But Stuart has done an excellent job of drawing attention to a worsening local dilemma: How can we compete when large wineries can buy wine in bulk from Canada, for example, for as little as a dollar a gallon?

None of the wineries targeted in the Spencer report responded to The Times’ inquiries.

The big question now is whether the report will become something lasting and beneficial at a time when every week it seems more and more growers are deciding whether to rip out the vines, put their land up for sale, or risk a new start with an alternative crop like almonds. , nuts or pistachios.

Removing vines has become an expensive proposition. Under the new San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District regulation, growers with more than 100 to 250 acres can no longer burn their uprooted vineyards.

Now they must hire crews to first extract the wires embedded in their vines, then bring in contractors with heavy machinery to stack them. The waste is then dumped into a crop crusher or air curtain burner – an insulated box equipped with a diesel-powered fan that produces less smoke and particles than traditional open burning.

Failure to timely remove a vineyard without maintenance leaves it vulnerable to pests and diseases that can invade vines owned by neighboring farmers.

As a result, urgent requests for vineyard removal have exceeded the ability of heavy equipment operators to carry them out.

“I have so many work orders I’ll never be able to fulfill them,” said Donald Wortley, 80, a general contractor who removed grapevines for Lodi growers for 50 years.

“The situation in the Lodi wine region is tragic: almost every wine grower in the region is struggling,” he said. “Every vineyard you see that hasn’t been harvested means the owner worked that year for nothing.”

“I fear we will start seeing bankruptcies soon,” he added.

Spencer said every retailer and grocery store he visited in recent months had their shelves stocked with bulk imports from overseas.

“And meanwhile, many retailers are proudly proclaiming their support for our local farms,” Spencer said. “It makes no sense to ship wine in bulk from around the world to a shelf in Lodi while thousands of tons of California wine grapes go unharvested and local growers cut out family vineyards and take out loans to pay their agricultural bills.

Greg Lauchland, 30, whose family has been growing wine grapes in the Lodi area for 104 years, described the situation as “a slap in the face.”

“It was a tough decision for longtime grape growers like us to make, but we planted 130 acres of almond trees in October,” he said.

In March, Blue Diamond Growers, a Sacramento-based almond growers cooperative, cut 38 jobs as part of an effort to remain profitable in the face of challenges such as an oversupply of almonds and changes in consumer purchasing habits.

Under the circumstances, Lauchland’s father, Robert, 62, suggested: “It would seem that it would be in the best interest of the big wineries to promote California wine – and instead of calling it ‘American wine,’ that would you say we call it “international wine”. wine.’ »

Spencer couldn’t agree more. “Look carefully at the labels of the wine you buy,” he said, “and make sure your purchase supports grapes grown in California.”