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California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

389 points · 987 comments · randycupertino

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ortusdux · 1790627747 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://wineinstitute.org/press-releases/one-year-later/" rel="nofollow">https://wineinstitute.org/press-releases/one-year-later/
<a href="https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/wine-related-products-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/wine-related-produ...
1. randycupertino · 1790628352 · focus · HN ↗
  - Tariffs so less international demand for US wine
  - Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
  - Boomer wine buyers dying off
  - younger generations drinking less overall and being less into wine
  - everyone on GLP-1s drinking less
  1. ortusdux · 1790628432 · focus · HN ↗
    - Legal pot
    reactordev · 1790628748 · focus · HN ↗
    - The economy
    sublinear · 1790643724 · focus · HN ↗
    ???
    THC has never been an alternative to alcohol. There are definitely people who prefer it instead of alcohol and there are people who use both.
    I don't know anyone who thinks they're interchangeable unless they're solely looking at it as a political/functional slot to fill.
    If you force a drunk who hates pot to switch and vice-versa, they genuinely might want to murder you, but why make this a wedge issue?
    zug_zug · 1790643977 · focus · HN ↗
    I think gummies are a superior (more pleasant, healthier, safer) social lubricant than alcohol and I’m sure I’m not alone
    sublinear · 1790644141 · focus · HN ↗
    > I think gummies are a superior (more pleasant, healthier, safer) social lubricant than alcohol and I’m sure I’m not alone
    Yes, exactly you're proving my point. You see this as a slot to fill and are making it a wedge issue.
    kelnos · 1790650903 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think anyone's making anything into a wedge issue in this discussion, except perhaps you.
    sublinear · 1790729418 · focus · HN ↗
    You got here after the dogpile.
    boringg · 1790648694 · focus · HN ↗
    Equivalent risk. No way is THC healthier than alcohol - both in moderation not at excess.
    Then its a personal preference thing.
    MrDrMcCoy · 1790651289 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol poisoning is a thing. I have yet to hear of a case of canabanoid poisoning. Canabanoids also don't lower your inhibition, which is why DUIs went down in states that legalized. The difference in risk could not be more stark.
    boringg · 1790689155 · focus · HN ↗
    I said in moderation please read my comments.
    MrDrMcCoy · 1790700880 · focus · HN ↗
    I did. Cannabis in excess has not shown to be harmful.
    NewJazz · 1790655932 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a pretty big claim. Alcohol's harm to major organs like the liver is pretty well known. What kind of harm does THC/CBD cause when consumed orally?
    boringg · 1790689457 · focus · HN ↗
    harm to major organs >> at high doses not at low doses but agree there is an increased risk to liver on alcohol.
    Gummies put a cognitive burden. If you are smoking that puts a fair burden on the cardiovascular system. High dose THC run a risk of psychosis.
    Look im not pro either I'm however not in this lala land of believing there isn't any negative effects of THC especially over time.
    NewJazz · 1790697094 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    mathgeek · 1790644380 · focus · HN ↗
    I believe they mean having alternative choices in what one can legally consume to get high/drunk/etc.
    sublinear · 1790644487 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal. Let's not whitewash the past. It became legal for a reason.
    If you feel this way about pot, have you not also considered that similar already occurred with alcohol roughly a century ago (in the USA)? Why do you think cops avoid overpolicing bars when they'd be entirely in their right to do so?
    Personal use of drugs is the clearest example in all of criminal justice where people of all beliefs have to admit there really is a much bigger and widespread mental health problem at the root of it. This is very very far from a new topic. There's nothing special about pot.
    mathgeek · 1790645463 · focus · HN ↗
    Sorry, but what way do you think I feel about pot? I was just providing anecdotal examples to explain the reasoning of why pot being legal could have an impact on demand for wine. It’s just a demand curve relationship, not my personal opinions on the legality of pot.
    For the pot smokers who care about legality, it does matter for folks who have to take drug tests for their jobs. Several of my good friends stopped using it when that was a concern.
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790646503 · focus · HN ↗
    > I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal.
    I know plenty.
    Generally the fit the pattern of being familiar with it from exposure a few times as teenagers or such and liked it, but it wasn't a big enough deal for them to want to find and maintain a relationship with a drug dealer, concerns that if they pulled it out at a party it might lead to consequences within their social or professional circle, etc.
    0cf8612b2e1e · 1790649597 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t know what GP is smoking. Most people do not maintain a relationship with a drug dealer. Legal access available from a convenient store front unlocks plenty of users who did not want the legal risk or hassle.
    tokioyoyo · 1790647357 · focus · HN ↗
    The biggest case you can follow is Canada. Even wine-drinking elderly sometimes switch to cannabis, due to lessened hangovers. Also, removing the friction is a huge boost to basically any industry.
    Brian_K_White · 1790651400 · focus · HN ↗
    I happily smoke pot while illegal if it happens to be around and someone else provided it and I don't have to do drive that day or do anything the next day. I chipped in or did favors but never bought it directly myself, nor posessed any. None oin my car, my house etc.
    So that means very very infrequently.
    I totally like it and the only reason I stayed away was it wasn't worth the risk.
    Even today I don't risk it because sometimes I drive across many state lines and I don't want to worry about keeping track of where I might possibly get in trouble if I piss off a cop at a traffic stop, which I am likely to do.
    NewJazz · 1790655820 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    mc32 · 1790644649 · focus · HN ↗
    Before it was legalized people went down to the 7-11 to buy beer/wine all legal, maybe a bum to steer around.
    They didn't want to get to know scuzzy dudes selling pot or driving to areas of town where at night they have street takeovers to score some pot.
    Now those scaredy cats have legal dispensaries from which to obtain their MJ legally. So they might opt for pot these days.
    dfxm12 · 1790646961 · focus · HN ↗
    There are definitely people who prefer it instead of alcohol
    Consider that these people may not want to break the law or didn't know what their preference until they were legally able to try it.
    randycupertino · 1790647513 · focus · HN ↗
    There absolutely is a contingent of "wine mom" types who used to enjoy a glass of wine in the evenings but have transitioned to gummies or other edibles before bed.
    kelnos · 1790650525 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. philipallstar · 1790631082 · focus · HN ↗
    > - Tariffs so less international demand for US wine
    Why's this?
    legitster · 1790631350 · focus · HN ↗
    I feel like this is a trolling question. Demand for US exports has never been lower in recent history.
    philipallstar · 1790632932 · focus · HN ↗
    Feelings aside, I was just asking a question because I didn't understand the link.
    Borealid · 1790633881 · focus · HN ↗
    Countries other than the US have, for reasons that you may choose to find mysterious, imposed tariffs on products exported from the US.
    Tariffs raise the consumer-visible price of those goods. This then, due to demand elasticity, causes consumers in those non-US countries to buy fewer of those products.
    Some impact may be badwill as well but quite a bit is first-order impact of second-order tariffs.
    mc32 · 1790644828 · focus · HN ↗
    That seems odd since the EU lowered tariffs on US ag products. They also took back some previous retaliatory tariffs that were in place.
    Borealid · 1790645180 · focus · HN ↗
    Question: what is the ratio of US wine imported into the EU vs US wine imported into Canada, by dollar value?
    Question: what is the percentage increase in tariff amounts on wine between the pre- and post-USMCA state of play between the US and Canada?
    Sometimes seeing why something has happened requires considering wider context, which is why it's usually good for a nation to ensure primary education includes solid economics, history, media literacy, etc curricula.
    hedora · 1790645255 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m in the US, and won’t buy booze from red states. I’m really getting to know our local (and also Scottish / Irish) distilleries.
    I don’t imagine I’d buy any American imports if I was overseas.
    ashdksnndck · 1790646335 · focus · HN ↗
    In 2024 (pre-trade-war), the US exported $168M of wine to the EU and $460M to Canada. Any recovery in wine exports to the EU won’t make up for Canadian boycotts.
    k12sosse · 1790652279 · focus · HN ↗
    Numbers for importing California wines went from $540 million, to $40 million in 3, 5 years. For one province alone. And this wasn't a federal decision, this was people telling their provincial government to do it. And they listened.
    intothemild · 1790679289 · focus · HN ↗
    I'll give my own personal reasons, our interest rates were going down.. Trump decides to start a trade war, then the central banks get a bit worried, then Trump decides to go to war with Iran.. now the central banks are increasing interest rates, as the future is uncertain.
    His whole rhetoric is America should make more stuff right... Well, we can certainly stop buying that stuff since the choices he's made have hurt us. I'd prefer to buy closer to home thanks.
    Not the only one I'm guessing.
    treis · 1790647269 · focus · HN ↗
    This is incorrect:
    <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports" rel="nofollow">https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports
    NewJazz · 1790655995 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    treis · 1790701475 · focus · HN ↗
    The trend is the same adjusting for inflation
    <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/3510/us-exports" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrotrends.net/3510/us-exports
  3. alkonaut · 1790675107 · focus · HN ↗
    > - Tariffs so less international demand for US wine > - Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
    The tariff wars and "boycott US wine" goes way beyond Canada. I (in Europe) completely stopped buying US wine during this admin. Polls support this.
  4. YcYc10 · 1790678441 · focus · HN ↗
    > Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
    Not just Canada
shmoil · 1790627979 · focus · HN ↗
[flagged]
1. bigwheels · 1790628278 · focus · HN ↗
  This is a totally different variety of grape compared to what they're setup to grow now.
  I was thinking along the same vein, though - what about special varieties of grape juice?
  It is objectively good if demand for alcohol goes down.
  1. ScoobleDoodle · 1790628655 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes! I don't drink alcohol but have gone wine tasting with friends and one vineyard had grape juice from some of their grapes and it was interesting and yummy.
    An interesting variety of grape juices would be very cool.
  2. neom · 1790629762 · focus · HN ↗
    It's gonna be quite a lot of additional surplus, and, they already do this. Surplus wine grapes get sold to concentrate makers, however, it pays less than it costs to grow them because concentrate is basically a commodity sweetener competing with sugar, corn syrup, and apple concentrate. Bottled grape juice is a small and shrinking market, and in that market, most people expect Concord flavour (these aren't that), plus a lot of bottled juice is reconstituted from that same commodity concentrate anyway.
  3. onlypassingthru · 1790631784 · focus · HN ↗
    NA grape soda made from wine varietals is a niche product you can find in some wine producing regions here in the US and usually fairly expensive for a soda. All of the ones I've tried are pretty tasty, tough!
2. dylan604 · 1790628705 · focus · HN ↗
  Why put something on sale when it is selling just fine at the current rates?
  1. shmoil · 1790629916 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess I am an outlier, I did not have any grapes until September, when Ontario grapes became available.
3. lukeify · 1790628961 · focus · HN ↗
  You realise to grow table grapes, you need to rip out the current vines you have right?
  1. EdwardDiego · 1790629190 · focus · HN ↗
    Wine grapes are rather nice to eat (at least the ones I've tried), but they're typically smaller than American table grapes I've experienced, but hey, sell them as heirloom varieties at Portland farmers markets maybe?
toomuchtodo · 1790628296 · focus · HN ↗
If you’re a wine lover, now is a great time to be buying if you have the space to store it.
1. JumpCrisscross · 1790628483 · focus · HN ↗
  :D
  That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.
  1. toomuchtodo · 1790628666 · focus · HN ↗
    I get the swill at a discount :) "The best wine is the wine you like best." Best deal I recently got was a few hundred bottles for under $1k, <$5/bottle. Easier than the trek to a Trader Joe's, ymmv.
    Ancalagon · 1790628912 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you just buy barrels at that point?
    toomuchtodo · 1790628986 · focus · HN ↗
    Only one so far, I'm willing to take more but not a lot on offer. Maybe I'm talking to the wrong suppliers. There's a right price for everything, but I am looking for fire sale prices. Replies with leads welcome!
    JumpCrisscross · 1790630361 · focus · HN ↗
    Large-format bottles are criminally underappreciated this side of the Atlantic.
    nkrisc · 1790629627 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like a great deal, but that’s quite a lot of space required to store them, no?
    toomuchtodo · 1790630137 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really, takes up a large wall in a basement somewhere in the Midwest.
    vehemenz · 1790631457 · focus · HN ↗
    Don’t even need that. If they’re packed in wine boxes they take up hardly any space.
    8n4vidtmkvmk · 1790663632 · focus · HN ↗
    You allowed to do that? You'd at least have to tip the box on its side if storing for a long time now? I'm no sommelier but I hear the cork needs to stay wet or they'll spoil.
    toomuchtodo · 1790686519 · focus · HN ↗
    The bottles I've received are in large boxes that hold ~20 bottles each, delivered via Fedex.
    hdjrudni · 1790828029 · focus · HN ↗
    Interesting. Never heard of someone using an inventory system for the wine.
    You haven't addressed what I asked though. Are you sitting the boxes upright? Do they have corks or are these cheapo screw cap bottles?
    harvey9 · 1790630795 · focus · HN ↗
    'a lot' depends on how much you had to begin with.
  2. alistairSH · 1790629629 · focus · HN ↗
    Not just American wine... wines from any region have always been more expensive in the US.
    Quick poking around Google... Italy, France, and Germany all have mid-tier bottles of their own domestic wine for far less than we (in the US) get any wine, domestic or import.
    intrasight · 1790645494 · focus · HN ↗
    I spent a month in Italy and drank many fine wines. The most expensive sold at supermarket was 15 euo. Most were like 6.
    chihuahua · 1790647993 · focus · HN ↗
    Have you bought wine at Trader Joe's? It used to be famous for its "2 buck chuck" aka Charles Shaw. And many other well-regarded wines for under $10.
    alistairSH · 1790682655 · focus · HN ↗
    I have, and their prices have gone up. Their reserve wines are $20 now. Still a good buy for bottles that are usually very drinkable. Bit similar wine in Italy would still be about half that price.
  3. _jwr · 1790634089 · focus · HN ↗
    It is incredibly difficult to sustainably run a winery in California. The margins are often negative without operating at a large scale, which is part of why the industry has consolidated heavily over the past few decades.
    Often times, wealthy people buy wineries as a hobby to dabble in, but end up selling and calling it a day before it drains their cash. If you want to buy wine for cheap that is made in California, buy mass-market wine.
    Smaller brands are generally expensive because that price is necessary to sustain operations, but most of the time that fails, and the owners end up selling.
2. vrosas · 1790628968 · focus · HN ↗
  I feel for the wine growers, but as an avid wine consumer I'm looking forward to better deals.
  1. egl2020 · 1790644383 · focus · HN ↗
    ...and less variety. Growers are not going to stay in business by lowering their prices.
3. EPWN3D · 1790632696 · focus · HN ↗
  I haven't noticed any retail wine prices stabilizing or decreasing, at least in the Bay Area. Napa wines are still exorbitantly priced, and imports are way the fuck more expensive due to tariffs.
4. jandrewrogers · 1790646686 · focus · HN ↗
  On a pure price-performance basis it is difficult to justify buying US domestic wine over French imports. The quality of the latter is consistently higher at reasonable price points. California wines haven’t justified their price tag for a long time on average.
5. metaphor · 1790658302 · focus · HN ↗
  2023 vintage any good? The article does seem to square with what felt like lower-than-expected prices at Costco this year.
neom · 1790628359 · focus · HN ↗
Wasn't SGMA always the big long term problem for them anyway? I recall reading some time ago many are looking to pivot to solar farms.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Groundwater_Management_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Groundwater_Manage...
driverdan · 1790629641 · focus · HN ↗
[flagged]
1. gonight · 1790629797 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
2. apparent · 1790630905 · focus · HN ↗
  Which policy related to Canada is affecting the grape business? I didn't see it referenced, and assumed that since it's being described as a trend over 3 years then it's not just about tariffs.
  1. jleyank · 1790633957 · focus · HN ↗
    Us alcohol products unavailable in most of Canada. So there’s a fair bit of export gone missing. And European response is probably reducing demand for us product in favour of their own.
    apparent · 1790653318 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah, gotcha. I presume there's then substitution effects on both sides of the pond, but the US loses more on net from the Canadian shift from American to other wines.
  2. epistasis · 1790649755 · focus · HN ↗
    > Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
    And it links to a Feb 2025 article titled "Canada Tariffs Paused, but California Wineries Fear a Trade Dispute Would Be Crushing"
    <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/12025404/canada-tariffs-paused-california-wineries-fear-trade-dispute-would-be-crushing" rel="nofollow">https://www.kqed.org/news/12025404/canada-tariffs-paused-cal...
3. legitster · 1790631111 · focus · HN ↗
  Even if that slippery slope logic were true, the vast vast vast majority of farmers in the country are some flavor of conservative. It would be hard to ignore all of them and also care about our food supply.
  1. twright · 1790632471 · focus · HN ↗
    I think OP was more pointing out a supreme irony with the farmer demographic. They rely heavily on seasonal immigrant labor yet they voted for immigrants to be rounded up and forbidden to enter the US. Their sales rely on exports (e.g. soybeans) and imports (tractor parts, fertilizer) yet they voted for a complete upending of the global trade system that benefitted them. So that they are complaining about the current economic climate while simultaneously politically being fully behind it is schadenfreude for many.
    legitster · 1790634109 · focus · HN ↗
    This is an unhelpful generalization.
    Both political parties are made up of constituent cohorts. All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists. I think you'll find farmers in particular are generally much more pro-trade and pro-immigrant than the rest of the party.
    The story is these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest. But the reality is they probably put up with his views on immigration and trade hoping they would be more than offset by his views on land use and tax policy (and have been sorely mistaken).
    I know that people really want to make schadenfreude out of this But when the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans make these same kind of ad hominem attacks they equally fall flat. No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
    bgilroy26 · 1790643071 · focus · HN ↗
    You aren't going to escape the association with President Donald John Trump. He is the present and future of the Republican party.
    floatrock · 1790644634 · focus · HN ↗
    Copium.
    rizzom5000 · 1790646350 · focus · HN ↗
    > these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest
    There is a good amount of research that suggests people do not vote using reason, or necessarily consider their own best interests. Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality; and then they vote on tribal lines.
    <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5120865/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5120865/
    1718627440 · 1790714230 · focus · HN ↗
    > Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality
    Well obviously, I rather have someone making decisions, that hurt me a bit, but are morally good, then someone who makes me a profit, but acts evil.
    wat10000 · 1790646491 · focus · HN ↗
    I could buy it if we heard about reluctant Trump voters who don’t really like him and disagree with a bunch of his actions but reluctantly voted for him because they thought he was better than the alternative. This seems to be extremely rare, though. Maybe those voters just don’t get air time.
    what · 1790653167 · focus · HN ↗
    > because they thought he was better than the alternative
    There has to be a large number of these? Or how do you explain voting him out and then back in?
    wat10000 · 1790654071 · focus · HN ↗
    His 2020 loss was all about turnout among the opposition. He got more votes than in 2016.
    what · 1790737205 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay. So all that opposition turnout disappeared in 2024? Where did they go? Were they so disappointed with the alternative that they just decided to just stay home?
    wat10000 · 1790773336 · focus · HN ↗
    Beats me. Maybe people just have very short memories.
    What does this have to do with the existence of reluctant Trump voters who disapprove of some of what he does?
    kelnos · 1790651741 · focus · HN ↗
    > (and have been sorely mistaken)
    It's a little hard to feel bad for these people when they already saw how Trump didn't actually push their interests during his first term, and yet they voted for him again.
    Meanwhile, the Project 2025 handbook was there for everyone to read, and Trump's rhetoric was based on cracking down on immigration (bye-bye, seasonal labor), beating up our trade partners (need to import farm tools? pay more!), and slashing federal government spending (haphazard and largely a failure to actually save money or tackle deficits or debt).
    The 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was a fine preview for more of the same in 2025, so I'm not sure what these voters were looking for when it comes to tax policy.
    Land use is generally a state-level concern, so I'm not sure what they think Trump would be doing for them there.
    watwut · 1790681889 · focus · HN ↗
    > All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists
    Democrats are not anti-work socialists and never were. They never had rhetoric that would imply so. However, republicans do have anti-immigration, anti-trade rhetoric and politics.
    > No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
    Of course, because Biden was not hating police and was not a communist. Republican party however is exactly what it is accused of being here. And Trump is its ruler and champion.
    domh · 1790661315 · focus · HN ↗
    Same as UK farmers voting for Brexit whilst being beneficiaries of EU subsidies for farming.
4. tomhow · 1790643451 · focus · HN ↗
  Please don't jeer like this on HN. Wine grape growers all over the world are experiencing similar declines in demand. The same thing is happening in Australia (I know people personally affected by it) and it has nothing to do with any flavor of political rule.
  Please always observe the guidelines when participating here, which include avoiding political/ideological battle and off-topic tangents. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  1. morkalork · 1790646358 · focus · HN ↗
    How noble of you
  2. driverdan · 1790650125 · focus · HN ↗
    How is this jeering? I'm pointing out important facts about one of the subjects in the story that weren't included. I didn't celebrate or express my opinion.
    It does suck for everyone else who didn't vote for this and I feel for them.
    tomhow · 1790652978 · focus · HN ↗
    You didn’t point out a fact; you’ve raised vague associations and extrapolated them in a way that seems damning, but without any evidence. There’s no record I can find that this man or his family members support this administration and its policies. Most of them haven’t been public representatives for over a decade. The last one left office in 2018.
    You shouldn’t have worded it a different way; you shouldn’t have raised it at all because it’s in clear breach of the guidelines I pointed out.
thot_experiment · 1790629866 · focus · HN ↗
I can't believe the leopards would eat MY face.
1. ncphillips · 1790630131 · focus · HN ↗
  Oh no
  Anyways
SwellJoe · 1790630463 · focus · HN ↗
While I enjoy a glass of wine every now and then, I'm not going to lament the decline of an industry producing alcoholic products; it's inarguably good that younger generations are drinking less. Sorry to the farmers, but profiting off of increasing public health risk maybe should be a precarious business. I'm not gonna get upset about tobacco farms shutting down or having to switch crops, and alcohol is just another addictive and harmful substance (I've known more people who died due to alcohol than any other substance, one in a drunk driving accident, one due to liver failure, two were alcoholics who died by suicide...can't be certain it was the alcohol, but addiction certainly didn't help their situation).
But, also, the income of younger generations has been crushed so much, the ones that do still drink can't afford expensive luxury booze. Decent wine is an expensive way to drink alcohol.
1970-01-01 · 1790630568 · focus · HN ↗
If demand is down globally, sell the land already. People will do everything except the hardest thing.
1. floatrock · 1790644510 · focus · HN ↗
  If you sell the land the rip up the vines, you've destroyed the winegrowing capacity.
  That's fine if you believe this is a long-term trend and creative destruction needs to replace it with something. Maybe it will even be more economically productive than a strip mall or a subdivision. (Maybe...)
  That's less fine if you think this is due to temporary fluctuations in demands, such as say decreased demand of american goods due to either economic status or perception of american goods in global markets. That framing is one where some stupid national-level moves may have destroyed or consolidated american economic might. And whether consolidation is the same thing as destruction, it at least decreases competition and increases mediocrity, which reading between the lines on your tone is something I suspect you in theory might support.
  1. jjk166 · 1790660599 · focus · HN ↗
    The decrease in consumption predates the current trade issues. Peak domestic wine consumption was in 2021 and has been falling rapidly ever since. There hasn't been a decrease in demand of this magnitude or duration since the 80s. Despite several years of declining consumption, per capita consumption remains over 50 percent above historical baseline. Combined with demographic changes that will decrease avid wine consumers as a fraction of the population, it's quite clear that the 2010s bubble was the short term abnormality.
2. s1artibartfast · 1790652759 · focus · HN ↗
  And do what with it?
3. ltbarcly3 · 1790655956 · focus · HN ↗
  People generally do find that the hardest thing to do is ... the hardest thing.
4. ltbarcly3 · 1790655974 · focus · HN ↗
  People generally do find that the hardest thing to do is ... the hardest thing. You might say that this is a tautology.
programmertote · 1790630641 · focus · HN ↗
Not sure how the extra supply for grapes affect retail prices of grapes for regular consumption. But at Costco in Southern CA, the price of grapes have been fairly stable (~$5.99 - $7.99) over the last year or a little more.
1. Starman_Jones · 1790630969 · focus · HN ↗
  California’s wine grapes (vitis vinifera) aren’t suitable for eating. Some varieties (vitis labrusca) can be used for table grapes or wine grapes, but those aren’t really grown in California.
  1. MassPikeMike · 1790645450 · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone says this, but here's a sample of size 1: some years ago I was at a Sonoma winery during harvest season, reached my hand through a fence, grabbed a bunch of grapes and ate them. They were delicious.
    Did I just get lucky? Anyone else do this?
    ac29 · 1790646922 · focus · HN ↗
    I've eaten wine grapes and while they taste... winey? I also quite like them
    dehrmann · 1790647423 · focus · HN ↗
    The issues are they likely have seeds, might not travel or store as well, and are smaller than consumers are used to. There's also already a supply of table grapes you'd be competing with. To your experience, if they're ripe, they'll taste sweet and grapey. They're not that different.
    asdff · 1790665521 · focus · HN ↗
    They taste so different than the grapes in the grocery store they might as well be a different fruit entirely imo. So much better. Sweeter. Berry or stone fruit like. Almost floral. The vintners are seriously holding out on us. Yes there are seeds, but that is the price you pay for the finest grape you will ever feast upon. You go back to a store bought "red seedless" it taste like a sad old cantaloupe in comparison.
    1718627440 · 1790713805 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean that's the case with basically every fruit. The modern variants are larger, shelf-able for longer, while the older ones are smaller, but taste way better.
  2. blueg3 · 1790646133 · focus · HN ↗
    Labrusca makes terrible wine, it's too foxy. There are some hybrid varieties that make okay wine.
    Vinifera makes a perfectly fine table grape and grape juice, depending on the varietal.
    For example, Thompson Seedless, an incredibly common table grape, is vinifera.
2. [deleted] · 1790631163 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
3. jasonwatkinspdx · 1790646712 · focus · HN ↗
  The varieties used for win are generally not good for eating and vice versa. Not universally so but generally.
legitster · 1790630747 · focus · HN ↗
My parents live in a massive fruit growing region of the country. Just this year, 2 of the major packing firms in the county both declared bankruptcy. It's not just the trade war, but years of shrinking seasonal workers that fell off to a trickle as well.
The knock on effect is massive. The seasonal workers supported a large permanent workforce - and more importantly tax revenues in the county are collapsing.
But the really important thing to understand is that once the industry is gone, it's gone for a long time. The other markets competing with the US are already expanding their industries to fill the void. Once those trees are planted, they produce fruit for several decades to come.
1. kyleee · 1790642442 · focus · HN ↗
  Trees?
  1. King-Aaron · 1790643480 · focus · HN ↗
    If you have to argue about nomenclature then your argument is probably not worthwhile.
  2. mathgeek · 1790644270 · focus · HN ↗
    While technically incorrect, tree is informally used to describe grape vines in some regions. Similar to “tomato plants” which is a more common example.
  3. mandevil · 1790644918 · focus · HN ↗
    Grand-post doesn't specify what kind of fruit the region their parents live in specializes in, and plenty of fruit grows on trees (citrus and stone fruit leap immediately to mind).
    They never said that what kind of fruit it was.
  4. anigbrowl · 1790650199 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
2. hedora · 1790645055 · focus · HN ↗
  Wait for climate change to really get started.
3. TheJoeMan · 1790646146 · focus · HN ↗
  From a layman perspective, American fruit growers refused to change with the times. How long are they still trying to make the “Red Delicious” apple work? Another ex-major packer I know of made the peach fruit cups, which people have been catching on are just filled with corn syrup. But these have been long term purchasing trends, yet the growers seemed blindsided by the packers ceasing operations.
  1. bradfa · 1790646428 · focus · HN ↗
    There has been massive innovation and development in apples in the past 20 years. Every apple farm with a clue is growing trees for the past decade that look nothing like the trees of old. They’re growing varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If you’re still seeing Red Delicious anywhere, it’s on the buyers at your local markets that missed the boat.
    boringg · 1790648511 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean it also takes a long to build an orchard and get the apples to fruit. So older orchards are happily still producing old varietals instead of ripping and replacing the trees. Not everything old must be replaced with new - so wasteful.
    WalterBright · 1790648979 · focus · HN ↗
    I planted an apple tree in my yard 20 years go, just for fun. Last year, it finally decided to push out more than a few apples. This year, it put out so many the branches have bent nearly to the ground.
    NegativeLatency · 1790651366 · focus · HN ↗
    Possibly you know this but there are pruning techniques to get a good yield of also good tasting apples
    WD-42 · 1790659114 · focus · HN ↗
    Get the fruit off the tree. I had one blow over and die because it was too heavy in strong wind
    WalterBright · 1790660106 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like a good idea.
    Dylan16807 · 1790658194 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course you don't replace everything old with new.
    But when the specific varietal always sucked, that's a good reason to replace it.
    jppope · 1790658402 · focus · HN ↗
    Espaliers and different pruning techniques can have you up and producing fruit in 3-5 years. Totally popping under 10.
    djtango · 1790648533 · focus · HN ↗
    Is that why apples just taste like sugary water nowadays and barely taste of apples?
    stickfigure · 1790649601 · focus · HN ↗
    I have no idea what you are talking about. The honeycrisp revolution made me like apples again. Maybe your taste buds have changed?
    djtango · 1790862209 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think I've ever seen a honey crisp. I had to look them up I think they're more common in the US. But the royal galas, pink ladys, jazz and fuji all are just really sweet
    [deleted] · 1791014879 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    djtango · 1791014912 · focus · HN ↗
    I found a shop selling Hunnyz which is a mix of honey crisp and it was quite nice much nicer than some of these sugar water variants you get nowadays. Still quite sweet but at least it tasted like an apple. So thank you for the recommendation
    Der_Einzige · 1790648946 · focus · HN ↗
    Idiot consumers forcing us to take forever for market innovations to come to market is not even close to new, and the consumers 100% deserve the blame, contempt, and policies designed to frustrate them.
    I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
    Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
    "Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
    Oh, and Americans refusing to embrace bidet toilet seats, or air purification (both important circa covid, fecal plums and poor indoor air quality were a significant infection vector!)
    luqtas · 1790652235 · focus · HN ↗
    i don't think one necessarily needs the best of the best... probably cheap is enough for a bunch of people
    i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
    totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
    lazide · 1790655027 · focus · HN ↗
    I literally can’t think of the last time I had laundry that didn’t clean up perfectly fine with normal laundry detergent.
    WTF?
    This just sounds like yet another thing that can give me a rash or some kind of weird cancer in 20 years.
    astrange · 1790655788 · focus · HN ↗
    Ever tried getting curry or blood stains out of anything?
    lazide · 1790656725 · focus · HN ↗
    Blood stains are easy. Wash cold, and they come right out.
    I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though.
    astrange · 1790697701 · focus · HN ↗
    You might be lucky. Those both typically don't wash out and can set if you do it wrong.
    For curry, it does get better if you leave it out in the sun a day and pretreat it, I forget why.
    lazide · 1790716287 · focus · HN ↗
    I just wash them in cold water the moment they happen (or as close to it as possible), with some soap. Works fine.
    Setting takes time. Heat makes it worse, as it accelerates the chemical reactions.
    Most of the heavy duty stuff is when people ignore it, or industrial settings.
    reverse_list · 1790675257 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok so I have a soy sauce, or so I think it is, stain that I can't remove on a shirt. Is it still possible to clean it? Nothing I've tried seems to get rid of it.
    lazide · 1790690061 · focus · HN ↗
    That is where the enzyme cleaners might help. It’s a protein stain.
    They sell little cleaner sticks (look like deodorant sticks or the like). Most dry cleaners will have someone who specializes in stain removal.
    AlanYx · 1790691028 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot depends on what clothes you're washing. Modern enzymes are most useful with modern synthetic material blends, especially underwear. If you've ever had that type of thing stay stinky after washing, that's what's missing.
    If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
    ikr678 · 1790662464 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know that central vacs were the height of vac technology, but I cannot understand how weak cordless/battery vacuums have such marketshare compared to a vacuum unit that gets 110/240v of power direct from the wall.
    asdff · 1790664637 · focus · HN ↗
    No one wants to wrangle a cord or locate a plug evidently. I don't mind it but people have made their choice.
    asdff · 1790664531 · focus · HN ↗
    The enzyme stuff is funny to me. DNAse, no purpose there. Why not RNAse too? People can't articulate why they even want a DNA degrading enzyme. Lipase to degrade lipids seems good, but then again, that is already the function of soap.
    Der_Einzige · 1790714760 · focus · HN ↗
    Exhibit A on "why it takes 5 years for awesome innovations to come to market" right here!
    adwn · 1790679671 · focus · HN ↗
    > CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s
    Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
  2. jimbob45 · 1790646898 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess I’m out of the loop. What’s with the Red Delicious hate?
    chihuahua · 1790647202 · focus · HN ↗
    It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.
    But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
    phoghed · 1790647438 · focus · HN ↗
    Honeycrisp is still the king, and afaik farmers hate growing it.
    chihuahua · 1790648739 · focus · HN ↗
    I've read that Honeycrisp is difficult to grow, that's probably why.
    Cosmic Crisp is much easier to grow, at least in the climate it was developed for/in. Those 2 varieties are somewhat similar, although I find Honeycrisp a bit more subtle in flavor and enjoyable, while Cosmic Crisp has just a strong sweet/tart flavor.
    FpUser · 1790649275 · focus · HN ↗
    >"Honeycrisp " - it was my love until it was not. over the years the taste and texture have completely changed
    [deleted] · 1790656464 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    mandevil · 1790656599 · focus · HN ↗
    My understanding is that demand killed the Honeycrisp. When it first came out, it was very delicate and could only be grown in certain places. But it was a perfect apple- crisp and sweet and bursting with flavor. So everyone who tasted one loved it and wanted more.
    And so the food scientists went to work, and figured out how to cross-breed in the ability to grow in a wider variety of places. And adding in the capability to grow in large numbers like the Red Delicious turned the Honeycrisp into an apple that tasted more like the Red Delicious.
    The US is really amazingly good at growing food, but it is because the physical reality- not just transportation but growing conditions- trumps taste in the main.
    Dylan16807 · 1790658357 · focus · HN ↗
    Are there any rules about labeling that can distinguish the old and new Honeycrisps?
    Edit: <a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycrisp-apples-went-from-marvel-to-mediocre-8753117" rel="nofollow">https://www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycrisp-apples-went-from-...
    Based on this a big problem is overlong storage, which could be avoided with some effort into local purchasing.
    mandevil · 1790661501 · focus · HN ↗
    My advice, as someone who grew up regularly apple-picking, for going local is to prefer the types that are local versus the names that you recognize from the supermarket. Unless you are in exactly the right area (upper Midwest), you will be much better off with the best apples for your region then with a locally grown Honeycrisp.
    In upstate New York, I would recommend Autumn Crisp, Blondee, Macoun and Shizuka. I haven't picked apples in Virginia in about a decade, so I'm probably out of date on the right types to get there, but I remember loving Stayman apples.
    phoghed · 1790686413 · focus · HN ↗
    smdh even my apples are getting enshittified
    joquarky · 1790667094 · focus · HN ↗
    I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse in any other subject.
    cosmic_cheese · 1790647238 · focus · HN ↗
    In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.
    randycupertino · 1790647346 · focus · HN ↗
    It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.
    mohaine · 1790647901 · focus · HN ↗
    The original Red Delicious wasn’t even bred, but was just a chance seedling found by chance.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious
    No idea if this is still true of what is currently sold under the name. All apple verities are clones so the they should be (mostly) the same but the verity is old enough to not have anyone protecting the name.
    bluGill · 1790648636 · focus · HN ↗
    Red Delicious is not a pure clone of the original. Random genetic mutations have happens over the years and those were cloned. Normal breeding has more genetic variation but clones get some
    lazide · 1790655199 · focus · HN ↗
    Normal Apple trees will have wildly different flavors on even individual branches.
    Specific varietals are from cloning specific branches widely, but at some point it often gets ‘lost’ due to natural imperfect cloning.
    throwaway7783 · 1790652857 · focus · HN ↗
    I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious.
    tczMUFlmoNk · 1790647349 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://applerankings.com/red-delicious-apple-review/" rel="nofollow">https://applerankings.com/red-delicious-apple-review/
    phatfish · 1790716471 · focus · HN ↗
    This site is good fun, thanks.
    mohaine · 1790647356 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, they kind of suck these days, at least compared to how we remember they used to taste.
    Who know if they are actually the same, plain genetic drift, or they have been selected to be more shelf stable at the cost of taste.
    happymellon · 1790647735 · focus · HN ↗
    No. They kept trying to push it over here.
    It was always grim, bitter, but "oh so pretty".
    phyzome · 1790648727 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember Red Delicious being kinda gross in the early 90s. Bitter and cardboardy.
    However, it seems there are multiple things with that name. I've had one that looked different and tasted... less bad.
    giardini · 1790647646 · focus · HN ↗
    While the red delicious are a good usually-large American apple that ships easily the newer varieties are much tastier.
    raddan · 1790649368 · focus · HN ↗
    My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.
    One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
    At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
    None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
    I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
    For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
    TheJoeMan · 1790687789 · focus · HN ↗
    The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.
  3. nullisland00 · 1790647312 · focus · HN ↗
    Cosmic Crisp was marketed to growers as a replacement for Red Delicious with a similar shipping toughness and a long shelf life.
  4. lelandbatey · 1790662377 · focus · HN ↗
    Nobody in any major apple growing region (Washington) is growing Red Delicious as their main apple variety for consumers, not even close. They're all growing various club apples (e.g. Envy, Cosmic Crisp), and there's massive competition to be the next honeycrisp (btw, honeycrisp quality is seasonal due to packaging, out of season they're significantly worse because they've been in storage for a long time, Apples are harvested only once a year)
    See this as a list of merely the most popular varieties you can find at stores: <a href="https://waapple.org/varieties/all/" rel="nofollow">https://waapple.org/varieties/all/
4. pfdietz · 1790646316 · focus · HN ↗
  Was one of them Del Monte? They made a bad bet about consumption patterns from COVID persisting, but canned fruit demand didn't stay high, if I understand correctly.
5. dorfsmay · 1790646507 · focus · HN ↗
  Why has the seasonal workforce shrunk?
  Usually most staffing issues can be solved with higher wages. Could it be a solution here?
  1. pchristensen · 1790647008 · focus · HN ↗
    I’d imagine many of them are immigrants that either fled, were deported, or decided not to return for the picking seasons.
  2. aaronbrethorst · 1790647047 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.kuow.org/governing/2026-03-23/between-ice-and-a-hard-place-wa-farmworkers-fear-deportation-family-separation" rel="nofollow">https://www.kuow.org/governing/2026-03-23/between-ice-and-a-...
  3. mandevil · 1790647192 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh, I read this as "disease killed the fruit=>the packing companies went bankrupt=>the farmers stopped growing=>no one needed a seasonal workforce=>all of the people who served the seasonal workforce lost their jobs."
    Something like this for oranges: <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/04/florida-orange-juice-industy-decline-death/" rel="nofollow">https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/04/florida-oran...
    The thing about the "wages are low because of immigrants" is that it neglects that all of those immigrants are consumers just as much as they producers. They need food, medical care, places to relax, places to live, and so these immigrants employ plenty of native born people.
    linuxftw · 1790652574 · focus · HN ↗
    Not all farm workers are immigrants, legal or otherwise. There are many temporary, seasonal workers that make poverty wages, but it's more than they would make in Mexico or wherever else. The farms provide basic necessities and pay the workers as little as possible.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790732652 · focus · HN ↗
    But even those temporary seasonal workers are in lower supply now bc the money doesn't outweigh potentially getting detained in a migrant detention camp or worse
  4. s1artibartfast · 1790651711 · focus · HN ↗
    Depends on the staffing issue, but many cant be solved by raising wages without going out of business.
    Not every industry has tech level profits.
  5. aprilthird2021 · 1790652158 · focus · HN ↗
    Higher wages means higher prices. At a certain point your price is uncompetitive with imports. You can use tariffs to protect a local product against an imported one, but that would require a competent leader who doesn't get emotional and declare a war (bomb-based or trade-based) when his feelings are hurt
  6. AngryData · 1790655974 · focus · HN ↗
    Technically yes, but it still isn't a quick fix. Seasonal and temporary workers still need other seasonal work or jobs that let them leave for seasonal work and need the capital investment to be able to travel for work and live at different farms. A single seasonal job paying good won't by itself get someone to invest into van-life, its maybe 2 months out of 12 and not entirely predictable work/profit just from yield variability. And most modern jobs don't let someone leave for weeks at a time to work elsewhere, atleast not any that are near the price range of basic physical labor.
    You also lose a significant amount of productivity from first-timers in any process, and other full-time jobs taking away your expe
6. landdate · 1790651435 · focus · HN ↗
  Good. Let this nasty industry and its parasites die.
7. aprilthird2021 · 1790651990 · focus · HN ↗
  I was told if we kill people in the streets and create concentration camps to put everyone suspected of being an immigrant in (even if they have legal papers, bc hey those can be fake who knows when your Prez thinks voting is fake) and send every immigrant back then Americans would be wealthy and prosperous and you're saying that's not the case in a country that's had extremely low unemployment for almost 15 straight years (excepting COVID)?
8. JumpCrisscross · 1790655423 · focus · HN ↗
  > not just the trade war
  I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)
  Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.
rayiner · 1790631014 · focus · HN ↗
We shouldn’t be farming things in California.
1. dumpHero2 · 1790632471 · focus · HN ↗
  why not?
2. OkayPhysicist · 1790632827 · focus · HN ↗
  Huh? We've got the best farmland in the US, possibly the world. It'd be a terrible shame not to take advantage of it.
  1. jleyank · 1790633851 · focus · HN ↗
    Bit short of water, though…
    Teknomadix · 1790634056 · focus · HN ↗
    No, that's Colorado.
    jleyank · 1790634591 · focus · HN ↗
    SoCal has water?
    rabidheuristics · 1790643749 · focus · HN ↗
    SoCal grows grapes?
    gensym · 1790644368 · focus · HN ↗
    Temecula resident checking in... yes, it does.
    It gets hot here, but Temecula gets a breeze from the ocean that makes it somewhat tolerable for growing grapes. The wines were tend to be the high-alcohol variety (think cabs and zins) because those are what grow better in the heat.
    Most of the wines here aren't that good, but the wineries are more the attraction because they're beautiful and a short drive from LA, SD, or Palm Springs. Popular for weddings and bachelorette parties.
    (There are some wineries here doing interesting things but if I'm buying wine to consume at home I'm usually looking for other regions than my backyard).
    kelnos · 1790652100 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. rayiner · 1790634845 · focus · HN ↗
    It has no water. That’s why it was worthless to Mexico before the U.S. annexed it and the Army Corps of Engineers terraformed it.
    OkayPhysicist · 1790636615 · focus · HN ↗
    You're confusing SoCal and the Central Valley here. Southern California (LA, San Diego, the Mojave Desert) doesn't have enough water. The Central Valley, fed by the Sacramento River from the Sierras and Cascades, and then extended south with canals, has plenty of water for agriculture. In fact, it was quite prone to flooding before we engineered the water shed.
    All of which is irrelevant to the wine conversation, because the relatively dry climate is exactly what makes the Napa and Livermore valleys some of the best in the world to grow grapes. You've got good soil, dry summers allowing for control over how much water the grapes get that make them grow more flavorful, and very few frosts. The fact that the region gets almost all of their rainfall during the winter also helps avoid the grapes going to mold.
    trollbridge · 1790645458 · focus · HN ↗
    There are farms near Sacramento airport in a “reversed irrigation district.
    They have to pump water OUT of their fields and pay for the privilege of doing so as opposed to pumping it in from an irrigation canal.
    Nothern California has no shortage of water whatsoever, and indeed it’s a regular news item whether or not to divert a few million extra gallows into the ocean to sustain some variety of fish that likes to swim around in the delta.
    wat10000 · 1790646787 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s good to remember that California is one of the biggest states, with land area similar to Japan or Sweden. This area covers a wide variety of climates, from towering frozen mountains to one of the lowest and hottest places on the planet. It’s not a place that admits much generalization.
    m463 · 1790647117 · focus · HN ↗
    I sort of laughed when the california bottling companies are made out to be water-wasting-villains.
    Even if there was an extreme drought, putting water in people's bodies via drinking should never be curtailed.
    (though maybe stop watering crops with brawndo)
    opinion-is-bad · 1790653003 · focus · HN ↗
    Just for some context, a million gallons of water is about three feet covering one acre. Almonds use four per year. There are individual farms in the California delta using three orders of magnitude more per year.
3. m4ck_ · 1790644482 · focus · HN ↗
  I'd worry about farming in Utah or Arizona deserts long before sonoma and central valley.. They're draining rivers and aquifers to grow grass in the desert to sell to even drier deserts in China and the middle east.
4. khazhoux · 1790648383 · focus · HN ↗
  The empirical evidence (which can be found at any grocery store) says otherwise.
5. kelnos · 1790652223 · focus · HN ↗
  You do realize that California is a huge state, spanning nearly 10 degrees of latitude, and not all of it is a dry desert like much of inland southern California is, right?
  Some of the best and most versatile farmland in the US is in California, and the northern half of the state is flush with water. Before the current system of watersheds was built, there was regular flooding. Some of us in NorCal get to experience some of the tastiest, cleanest drinking water in the country.
  What an uninformed take...
  1. rayiner · 1790681757 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
vehemenz · 1790631356 · focus · HN ↗
I’ll believe it when wine prices go down. Prove it!
1. charles_f · 1790644986 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah, maybe if a bottle of crappy wine is less than $30, people will buy it.
iharuya · 1790631435 · focus · HN ↗
I don't mean to dismiss wine as something people can appreciate almost like art, but sometimes the pricing does feel a little absurd.
I once had a red from Franciscan, made from a vineyard right next to Opus One. To me it tasted remarkably similar, yet it cost more than 30x less.
1. 0xB31B1B · 1790645573 · focus · HN ↗
  There are taste difference, brand prestige and story differences, and scarcity. The most extreme examples of this would be in burgundy where laws from a few hundred years ago ranked the value of very small and fractured plots of land and it’s been memed into the best wine in the world so you have the prestige of this ancient law, the scarcity of these small plots built in, and a region that is good but not my favorite selling the most expensive wine in the world.
djmips · 1790644503 · focus · HN ↗
Perhaps demand is going down abroad due to people eschewing US products.
1. _spduchamp · 1790649957 · focus · HN ↗
  This.
  1. ltbarcly3 · 1790655872 · focus · HN ↗
    OMG, it's interesting to see how the average person reasons about the world.
    You have your pet theory, you, without evidence, decide that every fact you see is confirmation for that theory, so now you believe your theory even more.
    I want to say something to make you feel bad about this, but you think I'm telling you that you were right all along.
    alkonaut · 1790675003 · focus · HN ↗
    The fact that US wine declines more than other wine isn't a theory it's a fact. The reason could have several theories. One is that people are simply boycotting. This is supported by polls etc. But another would be if prices drift apart and a strong dollar makes US wine less attractive relative to (say) French and Italian wines.
    As usual the reason overall wine sales would be down e.g. 10% and US wine sales down 20% in a country will be a combination of multiple factors. My pet theory though is that at least for some countries, the boycott factor is the big one.
    ltbarcly3 · 1790741149 · focus · HN ↗
    Since all the us wine sold in canada is a tiny fraction of the dip in sales it literally can't have any real consequence. But enjoy your little theory.
    alkonaut · 1790768602 · focus · HN ↗
    What does Canada have to do with what I wrote? I described one country and it wasn't Canada. But ok, Re: US wine exports to Canada (I have no idea about what this looks like, but a quick googling found several articles).
    > "In 2025 the U.S. wine exports plummeted 33.5 percent compared to 2024, driven largely by a 76.8 percent drop to its largest market, Canada, according to new data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau. In total, American wine exports fell from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $850 million this past year, a $428 million loss." [1]
    So the largest export market dropped by 3/4 which led the total exports to fall by 1/3. I don't know how that is anything but a "real consequence"?
    [1] <a href="https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/us-wine-exports-fell-33-percent-1237578978/" rel="nofollow">https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/us-wine-exports-fell-...
    ltbarcly3 · 1790837549 · focus · HN ↗
    US wine sales domestically are $115 Billion per year.
    You documented a 450 million dollar drop.
    That constitutes a 0.3% reduction in sales vs the US domestic market.
    As you can see, you are completely wrong. Even if Canada stopped importing US wine completely, it would constitute about 1% of just domestic sales.
    m4ck_ · 1790680230 · focus · HN ↗
    Do we really need evidence to draw a line between the US's biggest trading partners boycotting the US alcohol industry and a drop in sales in the US alcohol industry? I feel like the only way you don't make that connection is if you're either severely uninformed or so lost down the MAGA rabbit hole you've forgotten the taste of food, the sound of water, the touch of grass...
    ltbarcly3 · 1790691749 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, you need evidence lol. Yes.
    Thank you for confirming my point though.
    Do you really go through life seeing confirmation of all your beliefs everywhere, without ever checking?
    US consumers spend about $115 Billion annually on wine. Exports to canada are less than 1% of that. I don't see how Canada matters much to the US in general, and specifically it doesn't make sense that a 70% reduction in half a percent of wine sales (that's like 0.4% reduction overall) is a major factor in putting the industry out of business, but you are welcome to look it up yourself or correct me. Keep in mind that US wine sold in canada will have gone through several hands and be heavily taxed, so the amount per bottle getting back to grape growers is a very small percentage of that already tiny percentage.
    But of course you won't bother to look it up, you will just roll your eyes and assume US grape growers are being forced out of business because Manitoba's liquor stores are finally flexing their international influence!
    m4ck_ · 1790693241 · focus · HN ↗
    If you believe that the US trade war and threats to Canada and Europe aren't directly impacting US alcohol sales, I'm fairly certain that is exactly what you are doing. I don't need "evidence" beyond what I'm already aware of: Alcohol industry trade groups (American craft spirits association for example), and representatives from states with strong alcohol industries, have publicly acknowledged the trade war's impact, or even begged for relief. And that's on top of Canadian liquor stores publicly announcing they're pulling American products.
    My guess is the only evidence you'll accept is the word of the party and the dear leader.
    Hugsbox · 1790682321 · focus · HN ↗
    Where I live in Canada, it's not even a case of the consumers boycotting the products... they've been ordered to be removed from the shelves by the government. They're not even an _option_ to purchase. I think it's fair to say there's a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there when it comes to the impact on American alcohol producers. And when/if they do return to shelves, the general sentiment seems to suggest they still won't sell very well.
2. crummy · 1790650549 · focus · HN ↗
  The same thing is happening in Marlborough, NZ - the center of the wine industry in New Zealand. (And probably elsewhere in NZ, but Marlborough is where I grew up). All my life, every year has seen more and more vineyards throughout the valley, until a few years ago it began to slow and recently they've actually pulled some out, which is totally unheard of.
3. dleslie · 1790656354 · focus · HN ↗
  Even if it ends up back on the shelves the damage is done. Many will avoid American products until the day they die, and endeavour to teach their children to do the same.
  America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.
4. helsinkiandrew · 1790658970 · focus · HN ↗
  If so its been going on for a long time. I remember seeing UK TV ads in the 70's/80's for Paul Mason's Californian Carafes - cheap/mainstream wine. Now I'd say most American wines for sale in Europe are higher end and more expensive.
  If you want a cheap bottle of wine it would be New Zealand, Chilean or Spanish
5. mcintyre1994 · 1790667515 · focus · HN ↗
  The article mentions this - Canada was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
  I suspect wine is extremely susceptible to this effect too. It’s basically always stocked alongside produce from many other countries, the origin is most of the marketing, and there aren’t really any stand out brands. I’ve probably had a Californian wine before but couldn’t name a single one.
  If you own a venue or store and decide to stop stocking American alcohol, someone will probably notice you don’t have Jack Daniel’s but not that you’ve stopped selling Californian wine.
  1. dleslie · 1790699567 · focus · HN ↗
    Anecdotally, the only American liquor that was widely missed was Bourbon.
    I say it in past tense because Bourbon drinkers in Canada are switching to similar liquors. "Corn Whisky" is selling well, now.
alexandre_m · 1790644533 · focus · HN ↗
> while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
1. 1-6 · 1790645754 · focus · HN ↗
  I may be old-fashioned but the substitute mind-altering drugs you're mentioning does not sound like a more responsible pathway.
  1. [deleted] · 1790646589 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. onthrowaway457 · 1790646972 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that is the point parent is making
  3. asa123 · 1790646980 · focus · HN ↗
    it's really not
    looking from the tail end of the generation, many of my friends ( and also I ) were led to believe somehow that things like marijuana, psychedelics, non-Alcohol have such low consequences that are entirely a rounding error compared to alcohol. which is ...
    superkuh · 1790647395 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and damaging to peoples lives and the lives of those around them that it doesn't even compare. Alcohol would never be legal if discovered today. Compared to alcohol the risks of cannabis are a rounding error.
    But that's only because alcohol is so incredibly dangerous. There is real risk with inhaling particulates and burning gases into your lungs. And it should not be ignored. It's just that compared to the lives ended by alcohol it is a rounding error and that makes it seem safe. Neither are.
    djtango · 1790648307 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is deeply deeply ingrained in society. (Almost) universally. It has been for thousands of years. I just don't think you can extricate history and culture from how we set policy and views on alcohol.
    While it may be rational to try to lump it with other newer dangerous substances, removing alcohol from humanity would be full on cultural erasure for many places. Not to mention to total destruction of entire industries that people's livelihoods depend on.
    I guess a way to think of it is - if it was part of culture for 1000s of years it'll probably take at least 100s of years to phase out.
    superkuh · 1790648564 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree. Individuals have the right to chose to damage their bodies if they wish. And laws already exist covering hurting other people while irresponsibly intoxicated. I see no reason to try to use state violence to prevent people from hurting themselves. This doesn't change that alcohol is a poison and seriously incapacitating compared to say, cannabis/THC.
    landdate · 1790651382 · focus · HN ↗
    No they don't. unless you think health care should be singularly the responsibility of the individual and we have no responsibility for caring for the sick or seriously injured even if they have lack the financial resources to cover expenses.
    sampullman · 1790658951 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a very slippery slope. What are you going to ban next, extreme sports? Running too fast? Eating french fries?
    landdate · 1790751428 · focus · HN ↗
    All these poisonous foods should be banned yes. The biggest killler in the US is obesity and we are here talking about individual rights. 1/3 of people aee obese, 2/3 are overweight, I am all for individual liberties but when you have this deadly of an epidiemic I become a lot more practical than idealistic.
    Rest of your comment is asinine and I won't bother to consider.
    sampullman · 1790965879 · focus · HN ↗
    It is at most as asinine as your comment.
    We could start trying to solve obesity through education and perhaps limiting advertising/marketing, rather than jumping to the massive of erosion of individual rights that you suggest.
    cgio · 1790649333 · focus · HN ↗
    Cannabis was the same to some extent. Psychedelics too in the context of rites.
    djtango · 1790666843 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes but not nearly in the way alcohol is.
    Alcohol used to be safer than water to drink for a period in time.
    landdate · 1790651248 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is engrained because it was safe to drink because of the process of fermentation. However, it had much lower alcohol content and certaknly the hard liquors we know now were almost never at all drunk.
    Your comparing 1-2% alcohol consumed because the regular drinking water was not accessible and unsafe to 7%+ alcohol consumed for recreation. Disengenuous.
    hdgvhicv · 1790652556 · focus · HN ↗
    People have been drinking wine for 8000 years. Grapes ferment in the 10% abv range.
    <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1714728114" rel="nofollow">https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1714728114
    Some Roman wines were drunk undiluted in the 14% range
    <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vintage.html" rel="nofollow">https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vint...
    landdate · 1790814824 · focus · HN ↗
    By the wealthy. The average citizen or non citizen (who made up majority or close to at various points) was not drinking 14%. Its laughable you would believe fhat just because rhey found it. They also found some gold face masks, i guess they must have all been wearing gold masks then.
    evilduck · 1790656389 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    landdate · 1790814889 · focus · HN ↗
    it was diluted bubba
    evilduck · 1790950644 · focus · HN ↗
    Not for the purposes of safety and sanitation. You're clearly out of your depth.
    The_Blade · 1790651603 · focus · HN ↗
    there was some commentary on the amazing regenerative power of the liver on a post here a few days ago to this end. i did a little more homework and the way in which agricultural civlization and the ability of the liver to process ethanol evolved in parallel is profound. some settlement had a bumper crop of wheat enough to ferment over the winter and they were like, sheeeeeit and then the liver was like sheeeeeeeit
    we've been collectively alcoholic for 15000 years, turning the body's chemical filtration plant into the body's largest organ that is literally called the liver, and we're supposed to give it up in 20 years? bosh. flimshaw
    FlowingRiver · 1790658680 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think we will give it up in the next 20 centuries.
    adrianN · 1790649154 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is indeed dangerous, but I think it is misleading to compare the number of lives ended by alcohol to the number of lives ended by other recreational drugs just because there is a much larger number of people consuming alcohol. Almost everybody who consumes alcohol is not an alcoholic.
    8note · 1790649764 · focus · HN ↗
    you should go look back at profiling and optimization
    if you want to fix the most things with the least effort, you optimize the hot paths. in this case, thats alcohol and tabacco. they have the biggest opportunity
    hattmall · 1790651751 · focus · HN ↗
    That's dumb though because then you just push people to other things and you will see the same issues arise as consumption increases to alcohol levels and there's a reasonable probability they will be worse. Already the percent of fatal accidents involving active marijuana found in the blood stream is higher than alcohol car fatalities. 40% vs 30%. Homicides show a similar pattern. And marijuana consumption is only 17% vs 54%. All time high for MJ and near all time low for alcohol.
    literalAardvark · 1790653742 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is consistently more dangerous statistically than most other things, I doubt lowering consumption is the driving factor behind the patterns you're mentioning.
    lobf · 1790665714 · focus · HN ↗
    What is “active marijuana?”
    adrianN · 1790701698 · focus · HN ↗
    I optimize the things where I get the most benefit per hour of work. Banning alcohol is so difficult politically that it’s not obvious that this is the best thing to work on to improve public health.
    laurencerowe · 1790668301 · focus · HN ↗
    Smoking kills several times more people per year than alcohol use. The CDC attributes 480k to smoking vs 178k from alcohol. People smoking cannibis likely smoke less than those smoking tobacco but it’s not safe. Maybe try edibles instead?
    <a href="https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm" rel="nofollow">https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/tobacco/data_statistics/...
    <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html
    iambateman · 1790647406 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m in the same age group and I agree but I feel frustrated that our grandparents went with “marijuana is the gateway to hell” as the social message.
    I don’t know if there is responsible weed or psychedelic use (not my area) but I’m confident that responsible alcohol consumption exists.
    Though I doubt any of it is a net benefit to society.
    WalterBright · 1790648765 · focus · HN ↗
    I have a couple friends in their 60s who drank a single glass of wine every day, for decades. Then, they decided to stop. They were amazed at how much better they felt.
    Cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s.
    hirvi74 · 1790649740 · focus · HN ↗
    Potency is an interesting subject because in theory one should have consume less amounts over the same time period for the same effect. In other words, smoking one potent joint, while carrying its own risks, is probably healthier than smoking n > 1 joints to get a similar effect.
    Cannabis, the literal plant, is strong than the 70s, but it's not like humans haven't been making concentrates (hash, resins, etc.) for 1000s of years.
    bunderbunder · 1790650390 · focus · HN ↗
    In places in the US where it’s now been decriminalized, it’s a completely different beast from what it was in the 70s. So much so that the potency of the plants kind of isn’t even relevant anymore for typical users. It’s a far cry from when I was a kid and there was peer pressure to keep taking hits from a joint of unknown potency at too quick a pace to do any sort of dose control.
    The people I know who are using it are buying it as tablets and gummies that come in 1mg increment doses, and taking exactly as much as they want to have, which typically isn’t much.
    Vape pens are presumably also more consistent and predictable, and seem to be taking over. I can’t even remember the last time I smelled actual weed smoke.
    It actually strikes me as much more healthy than alcohol culture, where dose control can still be a problem because it’s hard to tell how many units of alcohol the bartender put in your cocktail, and driving home afterward is still quite normalized.
    WalterBright · 1790651025 · focus · HN ↗
    I recall a "60 Minutes" segment on it asserting that cannabis today is much stronger.
    literalAardvark · 1790654123 · focus · HN ↗
    I think their argument is that while it's stronger (and it is), it's also more predictable and has safer and more predictable delivery mechanisms.
    Also, there are high grade derived products that do exactly what's on the label.
    For an example of reasonable use: if you want to lower anxiety a bit, which is a primary driver of alcohol use, you can now reliably get a high CBT strain, or CBT gummies, or CBT vapes, and they are generally less dangerous and less addictive than other chemical solutions.
    This would also hold for decriminalising party drugs. Most of the fentanyl deaths for instance are in people that didn't even know they're having fentanyl.
    bunderbunder · 1790689454 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, more or less. From what I can tell few people really want to just smoke the plant anymore. That makes the THC concentration in the plant itself less relevant to a discussion of potential harm of cannabis consumption. Because there’s some amount of remove between the production yield of the raw material and the potency of the finished consumer product.
    You can make an argument in the other for alcohol. Yeast can only ferment up to a certain alcohol concentration and then they die. But that doesn’t tell us much about the potency of consumer alcohol products because we have a variety of manufacturing processes for controlling alcohol concentration. These it’s less common, outside of home production, to just accept whatever unpredictable thing the yeast are doing and call it good.
    hattmall · 1790652117 · focus · HN ↗
    It's still inconsistent as fuck. There's no real industry standards and analysis. The same gummies from the same pack bought at a dispensary can vary wildly in my experience. Pens are a bit more consistent. But yeah not as variable as the bathtub gravity bong rips of random weed that people got from who knows where.
    Karrot_Kream · 1790665812 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes I find this a big difference in modern weed culture and alcohol culture. At my age most of my friends know their tolerance for weed quite well and we usually keep low dosage edibles around just to offer for friends who consume weed a couple times a year.
    literallywho · 1790655664 · focus · HN ↗
    Idk, when I was young I was drinking heavily, today I drink some beers and smoke weed and I feel I’m much better for it. It doesn’t ruin the next day and I can do more things. But you can definitely overdo it. Psychedelics definitely can mess with your head, though, if not careful.
  4. abrookewood · 1790648662 · focus · HN ↗
    All recreational drugs, legal or otherwise, are mind-altering.
  5. kelnos · 1790650184 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    tsunamifury · 1790657816 · focus · HN ↗
    No. As much as everyone wants to cheer on weed it’s long term biochemical and mental effects are very real.
    FlowingRiver · 1790658487 · focus · HN ↗
    This is an argument I have had on both sides. One side demonized it, the other said it could do no wrong.
    No, weed is not a one way path to a death sentence as you become a raving Satanist! But it also isn't harmless and there are things to keep an eye on, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean it gets the all clear.
    If you want to do it, go for it, but please be aware of the potential issues.
    rcxdude · 1790673641 · focus · HN ↗
    They are significant but so are those of alcohol. Most data indicates weed is safer. (This study puts it at about half in terms of harm to the user: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harms_in_the_UK_A_multi-criterion_decision_analysis" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harm... . Alcohol ranks the highest in terms of harms to other but that is also a function of how widely it is used)
    hunterpayne · 1790673097 · focus · HN ↗
    Yea, but the currently popular drug with kids is a tranquilizer normally given to horses. I'm not sure you have these things in perspective.
    sfn42 · 1790675332 · focus · HN ↗
    Ketamine is also normally given to humans. It is used in hospitals as a sedative/anesthetic, and also in depression treatment.
    Used responsibly it's perfectly safe. Much less harmful than alcohol. I don't know why people assume that something is unsafe just because we give it to horses. Do you think people want to harm their horses?
  6. landdate · 1790650740 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is responsible for more deaths and addiction that any other drug in the world.
    Not only that, alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood, which in essence means the feeling you get from drinking is brain damage.
    Notice how like 90-95% of the tkme when skmeone does something uncharecteristically horrible such as rape, murder of passion, or assault, they are drunk. Is that a coincidence?
    That's not even talking about drunk driving, one of the leadings cause for all major traffic accidents in the US.
    Prohibition literally started because drunkards were beating their wives, wasting their entire paycheck at the saloon (free lunch), and other savagry so much the women, who couldn't even vote at the time, were so pissed off they created the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Let's be clear here too, most temperance groups were the biggest supporters of abolition. Only reason abolition didn't work is the government was too lax on enforcement and allowed written doctors notes for alcohol use the basis for evil organizations like CVS and Walgeens that have devestated this country as the distribution arm of the highly lucrative pharmecuetical drug trade.
    adventured · 1790651201 · focus · HN ↗
    The parent is clearly implying the more reponsible pathway is: neither.
    landdate · 1790651502 · focus · HN ↗
    i replied to wrong person my fault
    EA-3167 · 1790651643 · focus · HN ↗
    In the real world telling people to make the hard choice you support (such as abstinence only stances) makes a large majority dismiss you completely. It’s mostly self-serving sort of advice that might apply to individuals, but we already know you can enforce it on a society.
    landdate · 1790818681 · focus · HN ↗
    You can enforce it on society, by making it not a choice. Poison all alcohol thats used for industrial purposes and make drinking or possession of alcohol a capifal offense.
    The reason these things never work is they choose in between half measures. You want to stop something you stomp on its skull into its brains are leaking out onto the pavement and then you keep stomping until your whole shoe is covered a bloody mess of gray matter and bits of skull.
    tomhow · 1790842834 · focus · HN ↗
    We've banned this account. Please stop registering accounts to break the guidelines with.
    tsunamifury · 1790657954 · focus · HN ↗
    You really. Really really. Need to research the temperance movement and the utter disaster that it was.
    You’re regurgitation of propaganda here is so laughably missing the point.
    Downvote me if you want but look it up. The temperance movement and prohibition that followed was run by wealthy women who filled their time judging the lower classes and factory owners who wanted to end labor union meetings and continue to underpay workers in horrid conditions while blaming alcohol as the problem.
    Easily one of americas worst decisions and propaganda people like you still believe to this day.
    qmr · 1790663944 · focus · HN ↗
    Stop saying accident when you really mean crash. Especially in the context of drunk driving.
    Drunk driving is a conscious decision, not an accident.
    lh712 · 1790673263 · focus · HN ↗
    But that is also because it has been used much more often than other drugs. Don't get me wrong, I agree that alcohol has some very bad effects. But if you ban (or decrease consumption of) alcohol, but that gets compensated by an increase in the usage of other drugs (which I am not saying is inevitable), you might be trading a bad situation for something far worse.
    A personal anecdote. My extended family has a long history of substance abuse and addiction. Of course, historically the substance so abused has mostly been alcohol (and tobacco, but that is less harmful in this kind of sense), and I saw [both first-hand and second-hand] a lot of direct and indirect effects of it that were very harmful and destructive. But recently, with another family member, I also saw first-hand the effects of addiction to another drug, methamphetamine, with induced psychosis, and I would choose dealing with an alcohol addict over this a thousand times. At least an alcohol addict is unlikely to suddenly decide to murder you, or to jump out of window, or any such mad move, just because some demons tell them or they suddenly realize that you have been an alien or a reptilian all along, or any similar crazy thing [which is actually pretty horrific when you face it in a real life from a close person]. A drunk person is also much more easily defeated physically than somebody who is high on meth and has some psychotic episode. [Though I am aware that alcohol caused or catalyzed many violent attack and murders too, I am not trying to trivialize that.]
    mrob · 1790677309 · focus · HN ↗
    >alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood
    Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol
    lh712 · 1790682952 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup. That original post had several factual errors.
    I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
    landdate · 1790818164 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't use drugs, and if you are implying weed then you are out of your mind. I think weed should stay illegal as should all psychedelics. Don't put me in a box, I just despise alcohol because most other dangerously evil drugs aren't tolerated. Seeing people drink alcohol is like seeing someone on a crack pipe. Its wrong and disgusting and normal people are enranged at this intolerable behavior. Forced rehab for all alchys, druggies, and the like.
    Worst is all the nonsense that infiltrates society because of alcohol. How many people claiming rape or raping or whatever or bar fights or swerving jnto the road killing innocent people. Its a big mess and I am sick of this. No more. If you drink I don't care if you get water boarded, I will walk right past you, no sympathy except for those who seek help.
    lh712 · 1790863018 · focus · HN ↗
    I did not mean to imply anything about you specifically. I understand that it might have sounded that way, and for that I apologize.
    As for other points, I think you take that too emotionally for your own good. (It just clouds the judgement.) And this I am saying as somebody who (1) does not use drugs, and drinks alcohol very rarely, and (2) experienced negative externalities of drugs and alcohol abuse by other people firsthand, to quite an extreme level actually.
    To be honest, in principle, if done correctly, I would not be against banning and eradicating all (non-medicinal and non-scientific) use of drugs including alcohol. But one should keep in mind that these substances also play some beneficial roles in society (and for individuals). Among other things, they serve as a valve that allows people to "release pressure", and numb their dissatisfaction with circumstances of their life. In this way, the increase in the substance abuse is an indicator of wider dysfunction in our societies (although it is by no means directly related to it, since there are other factors). You close that valve completely, and the pressure might get released in way that is even more destructive.
    landdate · 1790751194 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay whatever, but the point is ut decreases oxygen to the brain and causes permanent brain damage.
    fragmede · 1790755680 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't drink alcohol if you don't want to, you can just say no. It doesn't cause permanent brain damage by decreasing oxygen to the brain though. The damage to the brain by alcohol from frequent repeated exposure to high doses which causes measurable brain damage comes from chemical effects. An occasional beer really isn't going to destroy your brain.
    landdate · 1790766151 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay, but you missed my larger point which was the deaths and violence and rape and crime caused by alcohol. If you alchys want to drink it should be far away from good law respecting citizens and you cant call the police if you get hurt while drinking or utilize the hralth care system.
    fragmede · 1790769923 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure why you're making it personal and calling me an "alchy". Who are you really arguing with here? I'm not whoever wronged you, I'm just pointing out that it's not oxygen deprivation that causes brain damage from alcohol.
    landdate · 1790814032 · focus · HN ↗
    I get your point, but your missing mine. "He killed over a hundred people and also raped women and children" "Actually he didn't rape women, he only raped children." "okay he didn't rape women but anybody who supports him should die" "woah buddy why do you think i should die"
    obviously not to that level, but we are ralking about a serial killer of hundreds of thousands if not millions and untold amounts of rape and serious injury/accidents. i was wrong on one account but lets keep on the subject.
    landdate · 1790814287 · focus · HN ↗
    Regardless your prior claim about one berr not causing brain damage is categorically false. While I was wronf about mechanism its true, even drinking in moderation causes brain damage.
    <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/alcohol-even-in-moderation-could-harm-your-brain" rel="nofollow">https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/alcohol-even-in...
  7. johnnyanmac · 1790657786 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
2. breezybottom · 1790647543 · focus · HN ↗
  Your anecdote is meaningless. And you're the only one who said "responsible". It doesn't appear in the quote.
  1. s1artibartfast · 1790651389 · focus · HN ↗
    They didnt say it was in the article
    jjk166 · 1790657061 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's a nice claim to say
    kinda implies the claim was said
3. Reptur · 1790649637 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. noisy_boy · 1790655568 · focus · HN ↗
    Uneducated guess: wine is seen as more of an "older people's" drink making it uncool for gen-Z?
    klardotsh · 1790658817 · focus · HN ↗
    Or it's just bang-for-buck. If a bottle of vodka can be had for anywhere even vaguely in the ballpark of a bottle of wine (and at the grocery store scale, they often are: say, $15-20 for the wine and $20-30 for the vodka), then vodka (and maybe mixers) is gonna deliver a whole lot more intoxication per dollar.
    I guess I just wrote a much longer variation of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker", eh?
    (this is not drinking advice, folks: you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too)
    simoncion · 1790659405 · focus · HN ↗
    > ...you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too
    I'm skeptical. I don't see how there can be a meaningful difference [0] between a regular-strength sixteen ounce beer and one shot of regular-strength vodka mixed in with slightly less than sixteen ounces of water.
    I do agree that -because you're drinking far less fluid- it's far easier for those who aren't monitoring how much they drink to get massively intoxicated when drinking liquor rather than beer or wine.
    [0] ...other than taste, that is. Sixteen ounces of dilute vodka-water wouldn't be a joy to drink.
    notahacker · 1790664771 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't see people carefully mix their liquor in the exact same proportions as beer and then drinking at exactly the same rate, so your argument is about as relevant to real world drinking as "if you mix 5% strength beer with four parts water it's basically not going to get you drunk". With or without normal amounts of (typically sweet) mixer, spirits tend to lend themselves to faster consumption and the carbonation in beer also has the property of giving you that buzzy feeling (and that vomity feeling) earlier so you don't feel quite so much inclination to top up.
    simoncion · 1790668663 · focus · HN ↗
    ...did you bother to read my second paragraph?
    OneDeuxTriSeiGo · 1790676579 · focus · HN ↗
    Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. Like IDK how different things were in the past but back when I was in university (right up until covid) the drink of choice was straight liquor plus a chaser. Many a party were had around handles of whiskey, vodka, or rum with limited "mixing in".
    It was just outright more cost effective and as college students we just didn't have money for the alternative so most of the time it was hard liquor and maybe once a week we'd go out to drink and then it was mostly rail liquor mixed drinks or outright shots and shooters.
    simoncion · 1790682617 · focus · HN ↗
    > Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. ...
    Exactly. If you want to get fucked up, you drink it straight, or with minimal flavoring. If you want to drink on the cheap, you prep it in one of many "sane drinking" preparations, like a Screwdriver.
    notahacker · 1790677997 · focus · HN ↗
    One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice, typically served at between two and four times the alcohol concentration of beer and consumed at equivalent speed. What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
    Sure, I read your second paragraph, but as I pointed out in my own post, you might as well express skepticism that people harm themselves faster with beer than with shandy whilst treating not mixing beer with four parts water as edge case irresponsibility rather than how people actually drink it...
    simoncion · 1790682793 · focus · HN ↗
    > One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice...
    I used to be a serious drinker and remain an abstinent alcoholic, but your description obligates me to ask "What the fuck is wrong with kids these days?".
    > What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
    One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
    > Sure, I read your second paragraph...
    I -uh- think that whomever you tend to drink with is way more hardcore than I was... and that's frightening.
    notahacker · 1790736404 · focus · HN ↗
    > One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
    So about 1.5 fluid ounces of 40% strength vodka mixed with about 4 of orange juice; a little more alcohol than a regular beer at more than twice the strength.
    I think your evident belief you weren't drinking something twice the strength of beer proves my point entirely. And you may well have made the sensible decision to have stopped all that, but I assume at the time the notion of doubles and shots weren't alien to you or more moderate drinkers either.
    simoncion · 1790782021 · focus · HN ↗
    > ...mixed with about 4 of orange juice...
    In all my years, I've never known anyone who serves up breakfast OJ in four-ounce glasses. Twelve to sixteen is normal. I mean, shit, bro... you've seen a red Solo cup? The standard size for those is eighteen ounces.
    > ...I assume at the time the notion of doubles, shots... [was] alien to you...
    gestures back at this thread fork [0] you've probably not seen
    I stand by my claim that diluted drinks like Screwdrivers are what you drink if you want to get drunk on the cheap [1] and straight liquor is what you drink if you want to get fucked up. Your continued reference to careful measurement does make sense if the only drinking glasses you've ever had around you were four ounces and smaller.
    [0] <<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49890725">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49890725>
    [1] ...and if you're too strapped for cash to buy stuff like OJ, you cut it with tap water...
    TeMPOraL · 1790663610 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably, yeah. N=1 but that's what I remember from my university years. Wines were for dating; cheap beers and vodka with cola or juices was for general socializing.
    asdff · 1790664012 · focus · HN ↗
    This generation doesn't know about how to be a proper wino. Go and take a look at the $7.99 1.5L jug bottles of carlo rossi next time you are in the grocery store. You will notice they are covered in dust. The charles shaw at trader joes still moves though. It's up to 4 buck chuck now.
4. silisili · 1790649905 · focus · HN ↗
  That's what big tech wanted, looks like they succeeded. Hard to shove targeted ads into the eyeballs of people socializing with one another.
  1. teitoklien · 1790650628 · focus · HN ↗
    since when did everyone, ditch personal responsibility to the drain ? I understand that social media platforms are hardcore unethical with the way they prioritize screentime and addiction
    Over our wellbeing even at the cost of knowingly decreasing our attention spans with all the Shorts / Tiktok Algorithms.
    But we must also take personal responsibility, it costed me $2 (/year) to buy a screen time addiction removal app that works for my iPhone, iPad and even my linux machine with firefox browser, and to lock down every damn social media app in both intervention and absolute blocking ways, and it worked great !
    I moved from a screen time addiction of 9h / day to just using my phone in total for 2h out of which most of that is Phone Calls, Apple Music, and Booking Ubers. I was able to set free, and my life was better for it, because of my personal responsibility towards my own life.
    It doesnt cost much / almost nothing, to reclaim your life back, there will always be people / organizations trying to screw you over, they have always existed since time millenium , be it corrupt empires, cults and anti-social religions, horrible food, bad peer pressure in school leading to poor influence, bad habits picked up from parents/elders in a kid's life.
    The only consistent way that humans have been able to survive, thrive and personally excel in their own lives, against all odds of their society, family, and their sorroundings.
    Is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I sometimes feel many of us have given up on any outlook of fixing ourselves, i see it with my friends and my loved ones too, we have to make personal responsibility, popular again, if we want a better future.
    landdate · 1790650906 · focus · HN ↗
    Classic "personal responsibility" argument used to subjegate the masses.
    Individuals have personal responsibility, but the behaviour of a group of humans regresses towards the mean as it gets larger.
    You can't assume someone will get fat just because you offer highly addictive processwd food, but you can assume the population as a whlle will.
    teitoklien · 1790652337 · focus · HN ↗
    You mistook what I said, for saying nothing needs to be done regulatory, and everything is ok.
    What I said is, dont wait, for the government to come save you, regulations take a lot of time to happen, societal level malice/bad things take a decently long time to correct itself.
    So dont wait until then, life is too short to wait for the government to come save you. Save yourself ! atleast thats what I did.
    Folks can downvote me all the want, doesnt change , that personal responsibility is the only reliable way in this world to consistently lead a happier life.
    autoexec · 1790657333 · focus · HN ↗
    > personal responsibility is the only reliable way in this world to consistently lead a happier life.
    If there's a fight between you and a multinational corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees and trillions of dollars, and they're willing to devote more money that you'll ever see in your life towards manipulating you, lying to you, addicting you, removing alternatives, and making it harder for you to resist them, do you seriously think you're going to hold out? And even if you manage to do it, how long can you keep that up?
    We do need people to try to act responsibly, but we need corporations to act responsibly as well. Regulations make that possible. Until we get them, sure, resist all you can, while you can, but you will slip up or be worn down eventually. If not in one area of your life, then in another and another. You can't stay hypervigilant 100% of the time, and the stress of being hypervigilant will hurt you.
    As long as companies can continue to assault your well-being for their profits unchecked you're fighting a battle you can't win. Even if you manage to resist, not everyone can.
    specialist · 1790652526 · focus · HN ↗
    I prefer the notion of shared responsibility.
    cortesoft · 1790656843 · focus · HN ↗
    Personal responsibility is what you focus on when you are talking to an individual. If you are trying to make your life better, or someone you know's life better, it is great to talk about personal responsibility and making choices for your life.
    But that doesn't apply when we are talking about society wide shifts in behavior. It isn't like people suddenly got genetically better or worse at taking personal responsibility. If suddenly a lot fewer people are making healthy decisions, that isn't because we just happened to birth a bunch of people who don't take personal responsibility. Something has changed. Individuals have a lot of control over their own lives, but at a society level all of those individual decisions average out, and you are left with a representation of the effect of society.
    Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
    wredcoll · 1790659093 · focus · HN ↗
    Man, this was a really good response to that type of argument. I'm going to save it for later.
    sellmesoap · 1790717553 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes people can get swept up in things and be unaware of downstream consequences of their actions, but you can also become informed and decide to change your behavior, find ways to mitigate damage, or communicate with others the damage/solution. How easy to wave your hand at the government or a corporate entity and abdicate responsibility, the parent is correct; personal accountability is faster and more effective than government regulations that also have knock on effects. My regulation example would be how cars in north america became less popular when fuel economy regulations were applied to them, but not SUVs creating the monster car epidemic we all live in.
    johnnyanmac · 1790657509 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. popularonion · 1790651444 · focus · HN ↗
    US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.
    californical · 1790653761 · focus · HN ↗
    More than half of Gen Z is over the legal drinking age now, I’m not sure teen drinking is it
    NewJazz · 1790655239 · focus · HN ↗
    But lower teen drinking can lead to lower lifelong drinking. Habits formed during those years have inertia.
    TeMPOraL · 1790662839 · focus · HN ↗
    With US legal drinking age being 21, this eats into drinking at university/drinking after work, which is very much where bulk of socializing for young adults happens. Can't imagine it's not hugely affecting adulthood habits.
    kortilla · 1790666568 · focus · HN ↗
    Eh, 21 limit was in place for all millennials and most of Gen X. And millennials drink like fish.
    seizethecheese · 1790654517 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    johnnyanmac · 1790657050 · focus · HN ↗
    All thanks to crashing the economy and making the act of spending $15 on a low quality beer untenable for young adults giving 60+% of their income to rent.
    Alcohol tax would have been a simpler and much less destructive means of achieving such a goal, but I guess breweries can't lobby when everything else is collapsing too.
    FlowingRiver · 1790657931 · focus · HN ↗
    When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.
    jeltz · 1790671706 · focus · HN ↗
    You see the same trend in countries without a crashing economy. The economy is not the main reason.
5. whatever1 · 1790650231 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s the tech wet dream. Come back from work (where you are doing some manual labor the LLMs cannot automate yet), consume content while the rented rob car takes you to your apartment, get some weed and immerse yourself in your consumption device (phone, tv whatever).
  Effectively every non sleeping minute of your life monetized by tech.
  1. Dylan16807 · 1790657907 · focus · HN ↗
    Doing a job that can't be automated sounds like the exact opposite of "monetized by tech" to me.
    And if "people be watching videos" was the wet dream of tech monetization, we wouldn't need to be worried about tech monetization.
    mschuster91 · 1790672850 · focus · HN ↗
    > Doing a job that can't be automated sounds like the exact opposite of "monetized by tech" to me.
    The number of these jobs is constantly shrinking, and a lot of jobs actually have people training AI models to replace them.
6. WheelsAtLarge · 1790650907 · focus · HN ↗
  I suspect this is temporary. I think eventually we'll see a wave of laws outlawing weed and psychedelics (again), and then alcohol will make a strong comeback. Booze has been part of civilization since the beginning. There’s even a theory that grains were domesticated so people could brew beer first, as opposed to making bread first. Also, there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
  1. aprilthird2021 · 1790651801 · focus · HN ↗
    > there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
    I never understood this logic. It can absolutely change. Tastes and habits do change in society sometimes forever. Just because people did a thing a long time ago and a tradition has lasted for thousands of years doesn't mean it will continue.
    hx8 · 1790653421 · focus · HN ↗
    Generally speaking, the longer something has been common the more time it will continue to be common. A fad vs a trend vs a tradition. Of course alcohol use can change. We see several cohorts with very low alcohol consumption. It's just that if we've been doing something for thousands of years, we're likely to continue to do it for thousands of years.
    This is far from the first fluctuation of alcohol consumption rates we have data for. This is a major trend that will last decades but not a march to long term 0.
    cortesoft · 1790656912 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, but we see traditions that have lasted for centuries die out, too.
    hx8 · 1790698009 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, it happens. It's even happened with alcohol in certain population cohorts. I would just want to see stronger data before predicting alcohol consumption going to zero. Alcohol is a tradition lasting millenniums.
    margalabargala · 1790657935 · focus · HN ↗
    On one hand, tobacco smoking in the US has dropped to tiny amounts among youth.
    On the other hand, alcohol has already survived prohibition.
    llarsson · 1790661418 · focus · HN ↗
    I've read several threads about how cigarettes are making a comeback because it's perceived as more natural or less chemical than vapes. If you care about facts at all you will find it completely wrong and intensely stupid, of course, but you just never know how people will react and then counter-react.
  2. AngryData · 1790654479 · focus · HN ↗
    I doubt weed will be made illegal again. It also has a history dating back thousands of years and even in places where weed is still treated as dangerous as things like heroin, has failed to really control its usage. It grows in pretty much any climate and can be consumed in "raw" form, so supply control is impossible.
    pjc50 · 1790676279 · focus · HN ↗
    It's still illegal federally in the US! It's illegal in many European countries and the UK. The places which have legalized it exist in a fragile state that could very easily be washed away with a moral panic again.
    I would be more willing to bet on someone trying Prohibition 2.0 again.
  3. FlowingRiver · 1790658103 · focus · HN ↗
    This is a shoot from the hip idea. Speaking to younger folks, it seems to be much more cultural/social change rather than anything to do with health.
    This might be an odd fluctuation to do with the first primarily social media generation? Don't know but that is just how I have seen it.
    You are probably right about banning weed/vapes. They don't have anywhere near the same indoctrination into the structures of commerce and power that alcohol has.
7. aprilthird2021 · 1790651620 · focus · HN ↗
  You're right, but the idea that "Oh I'm not drinking it's just not healthy" is more common among younger people I've noticed than it was around people who were older when I was very young. I meet many young people whose main two activities are overworking and overly gymming/fitness activities. Such people drink a lot less than normal.
8. hdgvhicv · 1790652910 · focus · HN ↗
  U.K. figures of amount drunk at aged 25 has fallen
  Born 1940s, about 14u/week. 1960s about 12u, By 1980s dropped to 10u, and by 2000 down to about 7-8.
  1. tonyedgecombe · 1790661601 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
9. theholygrail · 1790654981 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah, and a lot of them still drink. They just don't buy wine.
  The grocery-store bottle lost to seltzers and stuff that comes in a can. That's a worse problem for a grape grower than people being sober.
  1. eastbound · 1790659674 · focus · HN ↗
    Also fitness. The Covid "sheltered" population is also the Instagram generation, it's easier to get inspired, feel pressure from social media, or find information about how to become muscular. It's at odds with drinking.
    TJSomething · 1790660311 · focus · HN ↗
    There could be a link there. I've known people with eating disorders who only drink spirits because of the calorie content.
    littlecranky67 · 1790663767 · focus · HN ↗
    Ubiquitous cameras and social media surely play a role. Each and all of your drunk stupidities can and will get recorded and posted to your social group for eternal humiliation.
    hunterpayne · 1790672507 · focus · HN ↗
    This I think is the key here. The traits I would associate with Millennials and Gen Z are all related to reacting to being watched all the time. And while alcohol can help a bit with anxiety, zero tolerance for just being a kid breeds a culture where doing anything that can be clipped is a bad idea. Basically, they are boring kids because anything at all that can be used against them is. I really feel sorry for them. If time machines existed and they could see how kids behaved in the past, I think they would destroy all their phones and computers immediately.
10. tarkin2 · 1790655682 · focus · HN ↗
  Is beer drinking also on the decline?
  Or are we saying that wine drinking is significantly more social than beer drinking?
  It's "interesting" that this new isolationist culture we've built for ourselves is causing economic problems
  1. margalabargala · 1790657863 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, beer drinking is also on the decline.
  2. distances · 1790663889 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, beer is down too, and these are global trends.
    In Germany beer is down 20% in a decade, and 33% since 2000.
    <a href="https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/4628/umfrage/entwicklung-des-bierverbrauchs-pro-kopf-in-deutschland-seit-2000/" rel="nofollow">https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/4628/umfrage/...
  3. gniv · 1790689270 · focus · HN ↗
    Based on the large selection of no-alcohol beers I'm seeing I would say yes.
11. smolder · 1790658086 · focus · HN ↗
  Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy. Part of the Gen z crowd that doesn't give a shit about wine is correctly disillusioned with flawed culture. We don't live in a world where you can get by growing grapes and making wine at your small vineyard. It's industrial. There is no bottle of wine actually worth $1000 to anyone with a sense of pragmatism and the fact the exist just turns people off from caring about wine. A lot of societal ills come from the fact that we have old people unwilling to change running the world. Gen Z is doing okay considering the rent-laden prison they grew up in.
  1. askjdfksdbfhk · 1790659113 · focus · HN ↗
    >Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy.
    Scrunching up my face trying to figure out how to respond to this...
    I think you are right that a lot of the wine which people consume, the mega industrial mass volume stuff sold in supermarkets, is a bit sweet, although often not by a lot--Josh and Bota Box, two of the biggest brands, have like 5-10 g/L of sugar. Stuff like La Marca Prosecco and Barefoot Pink Moscato is noticeably sweeter.
    However, in general, I don't think it's fair to say "wine is sweet". Wine in general is not sweet outside of certain styles that are intended to be so. If you grow grapes, crush them, and ferment them, the fermentation will generally run until the yeast run out of sugar, leaving only trace amounts behind.
    I've noticed that a lot of people who don't have that much experience with wine will tend to mis-identify things as sweetness when they're really noticing some other aspect of the wine.
    smolder · 1790766237 · focus · HN ↗
    Sorry, but you're wrong that wine isn't overwhelmingly sweet. The standard is about 15% alcohol and lots of sugar that has not been turned into alcohol. There are dry versions, but they are rare, just like dry hard ciders are rare. Sugary shit is what sells to the fat gluttons who prop up the industry.
12. lwansbrough · 1790658366 · focus · HN ↗
  About Here did a good video on what they think the "problem" is with Gen Z (hint: they're a product of the environment they have inherited)
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmLO69c_fyw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmLO69c_fyw
  I'm using night life as a stand in for drinking, but I think it's closely related.
  1. hunterpayne · 1790672890 · focus · HN ↗
    A big part of the increases in door costs are from two sources. Lower bar sales and a dramatic increase in the fees for DJs over the last 15 years. Also, taxes from city counsels, higher energy costs (speakers use lots of power), and the youth having less disposable income are also part of it. Basically, its a case of "its not one thing, its everything".
    lwansbrough · 1790675387 · focus · HN ↗
    Some would argue those are all connected.
    <a href="https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/" rel="nofollow">https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
13. fzeindl · 1790658996 · focus · HN ↗
  > My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life…
  A barkeeper from a prestigious, world class cocktail bar around the corner told me that it really is more about health/alcohol.
  He had a group the other day of 20 young people and 18 of them ordered non-alcoholic drinks. He is desperate about his profession.
  1. refactor_master · 1790660218 · focus · HN ↗
    My take is that people “these days” just don’t want to put in the time, money or effort in socializing, especially with new groups of people. Be it dating, meetups or other social gatherings with strangers, it’s about giving as little as you can, in case the event turns out to be a dud. Why risk paying for 2 beers when you could buy one tea for less?
    There’s most definitely a health aspect in there too, but I don’t think it paints the whole story.
    dmantis · 1790670348 · focus · HN ↗
    I dunno. I don't drink, but I do put time and effort to socialize.
    It's just not related to drug consuming acts and more about sports, poker, board games, etc.
    I believe that drug-related communications are flawed and closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones. It's better to have a maturity and social skills to communicate, joke and maintain a conversation with interesting people without stimulators.
    I'm not from the US though so it's not about the US social scene which is mainly discussed here.
    anal_reactor · 1790680133 · focus · HN ↗
    > closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones
    That's exactly the point. To experience animalistic joy, rather than the socially-conditioned one.
    > It's better to have a maturity and social skills
    That's a very silly argument because it doesn't take into account the fact that a day has 24 hours and also people have different natural abilities. Imagine telling a kid with Down Syndrome "come on, you can do it, PhD in physics ain't that difficult".
    dmantis · 1790681088 · focus · HN ↗
    > That's a very silly argument
    I disagree.
    Communication is a skill like everything else. Having a constant workaround just reduces your ability to be good at it. Why would a healthy young adult make his own skills worse?
    You can either get short-term gains with long-term worsening of your daily life by being incapable of new connections and genuine communications or cut the short-term low-level improvements, suffer for a year or two, learn a bit and have a better life for years to come.
    It's like going to gym or do other sports. It's often hard and unpleasant at the start, but the more you're doing it, the fitter you are and the more benefits you bring to yourself in the long-term.
    anal_reactor · 1790688339 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't understand my core premise that given finite lifespan and finite attention, one can learn only a finite amount of things. People have shit to do and they cannot fit one more responsibility into their calendars. Not to mention that it takes two to tango so if you want to be fun and interesting while sober, you also need to convince your friends to also be sober so it's not all awkward.
    It's really difficult to square the circle that being sober improves your communication skills long-term yet somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends that previous generations of alcohlics.
    dmantis · 1790688812 · focus · HN ↗
    > somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends
    I have a feeling that many young people sit behind the screen all the time.
    My argument doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize.
    anal_reactor · 1790691401 · focus · HN ↗
    > My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize.
    Yeah exactly. Alcohol makes it easier to start and then continue.
  2. Xirdus · 1790660599 · focus · HN ↗
    I and virtually everyone in my generation have been constantly lectured throughout almost entire education about the dangers of smoking and drinking. As a result, while we smoke and drink heavily, it's not even close to our parents. So it makes perfect sense that the next generation, who were not only lectured their whole life but also didn't grow up surrounded by people smoking everywhere and drinking all the time, overwhelmingly avoided picking up these habits at all.
  3. CTDOCodebases · 1790661673 · focus · HN ↗
    I would agree with his opinion. You can see it with the increase of non-alcoholic wine and beer.
  4. sneak · 1790661998 · focus · HN ↗
    Alcohol is one of the worst recreational drugs. Internet natives grew up with more access to information and less draconian drug laws than their predecessors.
    In the 90s, MDMA got senators’ panties in a twist. Now, there are multiple 100k+ MDMA-focused events in the western USA annually.
  5. whiteblossom · 1790663815 · focus · HN ↗
    I could see it being a mix of both factors. Cash-strapped antisocial members staying at home, and the more outgoing career-focused gen-z members going out but trying to protect their sleep quality. feel like i know a decent amount of people in both of these buckets
  6. Majikujanisch · 1790666214 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean, i am about to marry in about 2 months and have no one to invite as i never was able to socialize with anyone outside of school (and since then 5 years passed) and if they mostly have a unhealty relation to alcohol so i don't want to do something with them. I have like 1-2 friends that i can smoke with and also only know them because of that, we game in out free time and only meet to hand over some herbs. I would love to go out and meet new peers but i cannot without drinking and after spending like 60-70% on rent there is not enough to spend 6-8€ on a WATER.
14. BLKNSLVR · 1790659516 · focus · HN ↗
  My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
  Getting Gen-z to even get close enough to the glass to smell a nice red is a challenge. And when they do, they seem to recoil rapidly.
  Anecdata only.
  1. friendzis · 1790660541 · focus · HN ↗
    > they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
    Not surprising, sweetness literally mutes palate sensitivity. Genzers are the most sugar addicted generation, from a very young age. It would not surprise me to see research in some future that this massive early life sugar exposure comes with muted development of taste.
  2. willtemperley · 1790660970 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not surprised.
    There's untold levels of chemicals in wine. Organic wine is BS in Europe, organic vineyards actually use more chemicals like giant quantities of copper sulphate. The US is actually a lot better than Europe in this regard.
    Source: My father owned a vineyard in France before he keeled over with a subarachnoid haematoma after drinking 3 glasses of Rose at lunchtime.
    anonzzzies · 1790661756 · focus · HN ↗
    And these things were cause and effect by some proof? Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
    lukan · 1790661947 · focus · HN ↗
    " Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives."
    No one doubts that, but statistics are pretty clear, that those who do not do that, have a longer life.
    anonzzzies · 1790662674 · focus · HN ↗
    But is that alcohol or the other chemicals was my point; GP seem to imply it was the other chemicals; I doubt that. But yes, no alcohol would on average make you live longer.
    willtemperley · 1790664362 · focus · HN ↗
    > GP seem to imply it was the other chemicals
    I didn't draw any conclusions or make a link, you assumed the link.
    Let's look at some evidence instead. There are very high levels of TFA in wine:
    <a href="https://www.pan-europe.info/press-releases/2025/04/study-reveals-alarming-surge-forever-chemical-tfa-european-wine" rel="nofollow">https://www.pan-europe.info/press-releases/2025/04/study-rev...
    It'll be decades before we know the true effects of the chemicals other than alcohol that are evidently present in wine, but TFA is known to pose serious health risks.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoroacetic_acid" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoroacetic_acid
    I find there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in people who are partial to a bottle or two, they tend to hang on to the myths that it's good for them.
    sillyfluke · 1790665155 · focus · HN ↗
    Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
    But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
    [0] "Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
    <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming-increase-forever-chemical-tfa-european-wines" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming...
    willtemperley · 1790666695 · focus · HN ↗
    The labelling standards are a lot stricter in the US:
    <a href="https://www.winespectator.com/articles/us-and-europe-have-different-definitions-of-organic-wine-46432" rel="nofollow">https://www.winespectator.com/articles/us-and-europe-have-di...
    sillyfluke · 1790668527 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks, it'd be interesting if there was an empirical testing study that reflected how much the labeling prevents the chemical contamination like the one observed in europe.
    jjgreen · 1790670726 · focus · HN ↗
    Do they? Or does it just seem like it?
    willtemperley · 1790662469 · focus · HN ↗
    The point is the chemical levels in the wine. The anecdote about my father is just that. Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
    I used the anecdote to illustrate I have some experience in the wine industry, having worked hands on for a few years. My father studied chemistry at Cambridge so his understanding of wine chemistry is, or was, expert level.
    I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry?
    anonzzzies · 1790662736 · focus · HN ↗
    > Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
    Apologies; that was not my intention; I was reacting to your chemicals claim only.
    I am not advocating; I am saying that I don’t believe it’s the other chemicals, it’s just alcohol, which is the poison in wine. They have 0.0 wine here which is just real wine with the alcohol removed after; that has then, I assume, the same chemicals and drinking that is harmful?
    chopin · 1790675673 · focus · HN ↗
    It's harmful as it tastes awful. At least compared to a good traditional wine.
    moooo99 · 1790664456 · focus · HN ↗
    > I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry
    I do not think anyone would argue that alcohol consumption is good for your health, regardless of what kind of alcohol.
    tsunamifury · 1790667558 · focus · HN ↗
    The burden is never on the person not making the claim. Come on man.
    willtemperley · 1790668460 · focus · HN ↗
    They're making a far stronger counter claim:
    > there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
    froddd · 1790661923 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you have a source for those claims?
    The “source” you do mention seems rather anecdotal, and linking it to the discussed topic requires a fair number of other assumptions, too.
    sillyfluke · 1790664928 · focus · HN ↗
    Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
    But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
    [0] "Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
    <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming-increase-forever-chemical-tfa-european-wines" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming...
    willtemperley · 1790665224 · focus · HN ↗
    I told an anecdote for illustrative purposes and made no explicit links. Others have assumed the link however.
    My purpose was to draw people's attention to some lesser known aspects of the wine industry which I think are consequential, and I was illustrating I have some insignts into this that people that haven't worked in the industry probbaly don't.
    TeMPOraL · 1790662054 · focus · HN ↗
    That's true of organic food in general.
    tpm · 1790663860 · focus · HN ↗
    You can't generalise from one wineyard in one country, but you know that. And France is hardly an organic wine leader.
    Copper sulphate is a fungicide used for centuries and is pretty safe (so safe that my chemical engineer father was willing to use it in his otherwise completely sans-chemicals garden). Organic wine not only does not use (other) fungicides and herbicides; it also does not use other chemicals and processes in later stages of winemaking.
    GJim · 1790669630 · focus · HN ↗
    > There's untold levels of chemicals in wine.
    Such as dihydrogen monoxide?
    ricardobayes · 1790671811 · focus · HN ↗
    My grandfather used to burn sulphur strips to clean the glass demijohns. I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days. Apart from this, I don't recall any other "chemical" being used, other than sugar.
    Of course, this was decades ago and today would be called "artisanal" wine making.
    tpm · 1790673307 · focus · HN ↗
    > I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days.
    Partly. There is some natural level of sulfites present in wines - very dependent on the terroir, and then the rest comes during the manufacturing process; some sulfites may be added directly so the wine does not spoil.
    There are wines that do not contain any added sulfites and even then may cause trouble to the sensitive persons if the sulfur content of soil is naturally high. Some manufacturers therefore also add info about total measured sulfite content to the label.
    And nowadays, not only demijohns or wooden barrels are used to hold wine; of course stainless steel vessels, but also concrete vessels and even things like the Georgian qvevri underground clay vessels or amphorae are having a comeback.
    ButlerianJihad · 1791106917 · focus · HN ↗
    I hope wines don't contain enough sulfates to trigger "allergies" because it would actually be toxic.
    Sulfites and sulfates are very different, though related, and the sulfites are the things in question that have required warning labels.
    bawolff · 1790671866 · focus · HN ↗
    > There's untold levels of chemicals in wine
    Most notably the chemical alcohol is known to cause all sorts of health problems and is present in wine.
    If you are going to talk about "chemicals", you should be more specific. Most chemicals are harmless, some aren't.
    willtemperley · 1790674474 · focus · HN ↗
    You are correct of course.
    You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
    I'm rather glad I've drawn people's attention to the issue, despite having to endure extremely patronising comments like yours.
    Second, I clearly have skin-in-the-game here because you did read the first comment, so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one (well done that was clever in 2015) can go forth and multiply.
    bawolff · 1790692155 · focus · HN ↗
    > You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
    You have not. Maybe you think you have, but just linking to the name of a chemical is not a cogent argument that that chemical in the quantities present in wine, are harmful in any way, and certainly not an argument for it being more harmful than the primary ingredient.
    > having to endure extremely patronising comments
    Apparently not patronising enough...
    > so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one
    You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
    Look, i'm sorry for your loss. However you are basically spreading pseudo-science here. Doing so has potential to harm a lot of other people too.
    willtemperley · 1790745358 · focus · HN ↗
    > You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
    No! At what point did I imply that? Can you please stop trolling.
    Again, go back and read the links that were posted by both myself and some others. Or do some research yourself.
  3. DaedalusII · 1790661429 · focus · HN ↗
    roy lee, the founder of cluely got lost his spot in harvard because he was caught "sneaking out" of a high school field trip
    if you played hooky on a high school field trip in 80s or 90s you would probably not lose your college admission to harvard
    this police state attitude completely sterilizes young people socially, their parents regulate behaviour and monitor people with airtags and life360
    apical_dendrite · 1790663118 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there an independent source for this story? The guy is not exactly a reliable narrator.
    vasco · 1790663444 · focus · HN ↗
    What does police have to do with a field trip? What are you guys doing in the states?
    jonasdegendt · 1790673412 · focus · HN ↗
    There was no police involved. The police state attitude verbiage used by the OP refers to the constant monitoring of children and teens, by parents or other guardians, using things such as Apple FindMy to the point where teens can’t be mischievous to the degree they were able to in the past.
    There’s also the implication that the repercussions are worse.
    a_bonobo · 1790663470 · focus · HN ↗
    Lord Byron famously had a tame pet bear at university; he did it because the rules forbade pet dogs explicitly. The police state has been going for a while :)
    timoshishi · 1790666250 · focus · HN ↗
    Apparently until recently there was no rule about skinning bears in the dorms at Cornell. Kids at college can still be kids, at least until the administration catches wind of it
    <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cornell-university-students-killed-bear-skinned-inside-dorm-rcna230570" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cornell-university-stud...
  4. moooo99 · 1790664323 · focus · HN ↗
    > My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
    Born in 1999, I qualify as GenZ. All my peers drink beer, which is unsurprising given the strong cultural presence. But more and more people have been moving to alcohol free beer, which is becoming more and more widespread. Loads of breweries reacted and started with alcohol free beers, even the ones you would have never expected, like Augustiner Bräu in Munich.
    Pretty much all surveying data for my home country for the last few years suggests that GenZ is just drinking less alcohol overall. While there probably are some shifts within the consuming population, that does not fully explain the shift away from the alcoholic staples.
  5. hiimkeks · 1790668271 · focus · HN ↗
    [always_has_been.jpg]
    Before 2004 Germany had a %vol limit for selling alcohol to 16 year olds. In 2004 they changed the law such that it is not based on percentage, but whether it contains distilled alcohol to prevent under 18 year olds from drinking sweet alcopops.
15. topkai22 · 1790661795 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
16. thefourthchime · 1790661830 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't think the science is settled, but the idea that there's a lot more to do at home to stay occupied and entertained rather than going outside is factually true.
  When I was growing up, there were only a handful of channels and then cable. Compared to what we have now, that was the Dark Ages. There's so much you can do on a screen now that's compelling.
  Infinite scrolling on Shorts, YouTube, video games, social media, hanging out with people online, chatrooms—combine that with Uber Eats, and you can do whatever you want.
  The one thing that will make you want to go out is, of course, meeting someone to have sex with, but that's become weaponized, especially for young adults.
  Boys being called creepy and predatory for making the wrong move was always an issue, but now you can be shamed online with a video as proof. Why take the risk when you can meet somebody online?
  1. watwut · 1790662949 · focus · HN ↗
    If there is a creepy video as a result, the "move" was likely creepy.
    thefourthchime · 1790664030 · focus · HN ↗
    The move is only creepy if the interest is one way.
    This is why the memes of some guy talking to a coworker is considered sexual assault, where if Tom Brady does it, it’s considered cute flirtation
    shshsjsj · 1790664434 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    watwut · 1790668099 · focus · HN ↗
    Except you made that up.
    Mountain_Skies · 1790668634 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a common meme. You can disagree with the validity of the meme but not with the existence of it.
    <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1663497-hello-human-resources" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1663497-hello-human-resource...
    moate · 1790696872 · focus · HN ↗
    The above statement can be read as disagreeing with the validity of the statement. IDK why OP would try to refute a meme's existence and not the sentence the meme semes to be supporting. Why did you believe that was their intent?
    gilrain · 1790683208 · focus · HN ↗
    Actually, most women don't like being assaulted, regardless of the attractiveness of the assaulter.
    It's really gross that you think of women as so alien and inhuman, because this is very obvious human behavior.
    matkoniecz · 1790664310 · focus · HN ↗
    Selective editing can achieve very impressive effects, add some lying to it and you can have utterly misleading video with very limited effort.
    stefanfisk · 1790666133 · focus · HN ↗
    If you like reading sci-fi, I’d really recommend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) to get some perspective on the extreme of a life where everything you do is potentially visible to any and everyone around you.
    kortilla · 1790666250 · focus · HN ↗
    The reality is that most awkwardness comes across as creepy. Lots of people are awkward, especially young people. They shouldn’t be shamed for it.
    watwut · 1790668022 · focus · HN ↗
    Frankly, I am waaay past this bullshit argument. No, awkward does not come across as creepy on itself. Yes, it is possible for an awkward guy to be creepy, harasser or abuser.
    It is never ending cycle of "they do not understand social", "you are infantilizing them by explaining them social explicitly" while the same guys are perfectly charismatic to anyone with actual power or friends.
    laughing_man · 1790680429 · focus · HN ↗
    Awkwardness doesn't come across as creepy to you, but it may to other people. The vast majority of men aren't harassers or abusers, but a lot of women revel in the power to label them "creepy".
    If I were young I would stick to dating apps exclusively, since everyone on the app has already signaled a receptiveness to advances.
    watwut · 1790694695 · focus · HN ↗
    Vast majority of men are not accused of being creepy. I also dont know what "women in power" have to do with dating or hook ups, are you trying to hit on a boss or something?
    And I mean, yes, obviously if you are looking for hookup, you should go to where hookup looking people go. That is not something specific to modern society.
    laughing_man · 1790703098 · focus · HN ↗
    I said nothing about "women in power".
    norome · 1790669943 · focus · HN ↗
    what i've derived from my north american anecdata is that any kind of flirtation or even just talking to a stranger about a neutral topic is increasingly automatically graded as creepy. I'd say the social fabric has simply degraded to the point that people have forgotten how to talk to one another, social atrophy i guess. In my northern europe experience women deflect attention with much less fearfulness, and I'd say people just have much higher trust towards one another.
    croon · 1790676058 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm too old, and my kids too young, so the current landscape is foreign to me.
    As an outside observer, could it be that manosphere influence has an undue effect on young mens behavior, which (if true) would indeed be creepy for a lot of (most?) women, regardless if the execution is awkward or not.
    I was certainly awkward in my teens/young adulthood, but in my singular experience, the maturity and confidence didn't come from acting cocky or showing off, but just treating anyone I had an interest in as a person first and foremost, and being comfortable and even open about my awkwardness and shortcomings.
    That did wonders. Also accepting that a rejection doesn't mean a personal slight to you, nor a failure in appreciation of you from her, but merely a lack of mutual interest, which is also fine.
  2. doikor · 1790663135 · focus · HN ↗
    One big problem is a camera in everyone’s pocket together with a culture of posting everything online.
    In an environment like that getting drunk just isn’t very good for your life/career. Even something as small as going to the dance floor when you are not really good at it takes a lot more from you when there is 5 cameras recording you the moment you look stupid/funny dancing.
  3. VerifiedReports · 1790663242 · focus · HN ↗
    There are chatrooms again?
    Y-bar · 1790664116 · focus · HN ↗
    They moved to places like WhatsApp and Discord I believe.
    jeltz · 1790671227 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, they are on Discord.
    VerifiedReports · 1790689942 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah OK.
  4. metalliqaz · 1790700744 · focus · HN ↗
    My pet theory is that this is also the reason for the plunge in murder rates.
17. watwut · 1790662709 · focus · HN ↗
  Afaik, they also commit less crimes and get less pregnant as teenagers. They are overall more responsible then the generation that complains about them.
  1. TeMPOraL · 1790663204 · focus · HN ↗
    Question is, is it being responsible, or apathetic and lethargic? How do you distinguish responsible character from clinical depression?
    erxam · 1790692087 · focus · HN ↗
    > How do you distinguish responsible character from clinical depression?
    By how much work you get done. That's it. You can be the saddest sack of shit in the whole wide world and, as long as you keep being productive, nobody will notice.
    At my worst, I kept grinding even though I was one step away from jumping off the nearest bridge so nobody could tell I was this depressed.
    watwut · 1790694830 · focus · HN ↗
    We know their attitudes too, yes they are being responsible.
    But also, violence, unsafe sex and excessive risk taking are all reactions to mental health problem. People engage in them to make whatever issue they have feel better.
18. infinite-hugs · 1790662852 · focus · HN ↗
  I wonder also if Covid exasperated that for some too.
19. infinite_spin · 1790665908 · focus · HN ↗
  Anecdotal experience tells me that they're just better at hiding it than previous generations. Gen-z is depressed, and depressed people reach for drugs and alcohol to cope. I think we're going to find that the data on this has been manipulated.
20. mschuster91 · 1790672601 · focus · HN ↗
  > While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
  All of these are cheap. As long as you got a garden and it's legal, growing weed is ridiculously easy - it's literally called weed because it thrives pretty much anywhere. Vapes are much cheaper than cigarettes (eh, we'll see how long that lasts and authorities crack down on shops selling smuggled / greymarket vapes...).
  In contrast, going out and getting drunk to the point of getting decently hammered can easily cost you 100€ and more here in Germany, and we have low alcohol taxes...
  1. foobiekr · 1790699064 · focus · HN ↗
    People are not growing their own anything at all scale necessary to be responsible for the decline.
yunicc · 1790645469 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
[deleted] · 1790645590 · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
1-6 · 1790646000 · focus · HN ↗
Let's just say it as it is... Wine is 'supposedly' an acquired taste but for most, it tastes bitter and not enjoyable for the cost. Tastes shift and luxury items from yesteryear no longer makes a strong statement about affluence to this generation.
1. frutiger · 1790649439 · focus · HN ↗
  I like the sentiment but wine has been made for thousands of years, with famous stories of kings and emperors enjoying them.
2. ajam1507 · 1790651285 · focus · HN ↗
  I think beer is even more of an acquired taste, but it doesn't stop the breweries from outselling the wineries.
3. seiferteric · 1790651409 · focus · HN ↗
  I think it just depends on what you like. I am not a big fan or most red wines (though some are good) and they give me headaches, but many chilled white wines I can drink like water.
4. deathanatos · 1790656375 · focus · HN ↗
  > it tastes bitter and not enjoyable
  Try a sweet wine, or if that's still too bitter, try a dessert wine. Wine has a huge range of sweetness.
  1. nottorp · 1790664492 · focus · HN ↗
    > Wine has a huge range
    Yeah, that's another problem with wine. Too many options and you never know what to expect.
    asdff · 1790665250 · focus · HN ↗
    To be fair though there's only so many types of wine you are liable to encounter. Doesn't take long to figure out a couple types of wine you like.
    roryirvine · 1790676013 · focus · HN ↗
    Learning the basics is fairly easy and many people find the process to be quite enjoyable...
  2. nmeofthestate · 1790678771 · focus · HN ↗
    Sour is the word they were going for I think. Wine isn't bitter IME.
    acuozzo · 1790696331 · focus · HN ↗
    Acrid is probably the word they were looking for. Wine isn't sour.
    It could be that my affinity for port & madeira biases me, but the wine-haters I know have all expressed a strong dislike of what they described as its "acidity".
    veqq · 1790743955 · focus · HN ↗
    Totally unrelated, you had a comment about scripting languages using sqlite allowing them to query arrays, do joins on vars and stuff <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342329">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342329
    This lets you do it: <a href="https://codeberg.org/veqq/declarative-dsls" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/veqq/declarative-dsls
5. joegibbs · 1790659537 · focus · HN ↗
  Bitter? I’ve never found that with wine. Definitely beer is quite bitter, and coffee can be too. I find wine has more like a sour flavour.
6. magicalhippo · 1790666300 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
7. alkonaut · 1790675313 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't think you'll have several thousand years of people enjoying wine and then suddenly one generation decides that "wait this doesn't even taste good?".
  I really like wine, and a $8.50 bottle of good quality French bubbles isn't a luxury good or a status symbol it's just life.
  But it's definitely acquired - and the fewer that acquire that taste, the less you'll sell. And people I guess often establish that taste in the 20-30 year age, and if people go out less and drink less, perhaps they'll not grow up to be wine-drinking 50 year olds?
beej71 · 1790646084 · focus · HN ↗
An NA wine that wasn't completely horrible might ease the burden a bit.
Gonxa6282 · 1790646209 · focus · HN ↗
They can sell them to me instead, I could be eating grapes all year long.
1. skyberrys · 1790650535 · focus · HN ↗
  I was thinking the same thing. Why not just sell the grapes straight to us grape loving people? They do have a short shelf life though, and as a lover of concord grapes I do go bananas during concord grape season but I really can only eat so many before they start to spoil and I do eat large amounts of them. The concord grape dealers know me and flag me down to give me deals.
2. kelnos · 1790651239 · focus · HN ↗
  Most grapes good for winemaking are not good for eating. (And vice versa.)
  1. merry_flame · 1790664610 · focus · HN ↗
    This is being repeated over and over again on this page, but it's factually untrue… I've tasted dozens of kinds of wine grapes, and lots are tasty or at least as palatable as some of the blander table grapes – some are even widely recognized as such (muscat!). Also, even varieties that are not great for eating can often be used to produce some very nice juice – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay are all used for high-end, monovarietal grape juices in France for instance.
    Thrymr · 1790698571 · focus · HN ↗
    "Eating" grapes are mostly not optimized for eating, they are optimized for shipping and lifetime at the supermarket. Wine grapes taste great, but don't travel well (and have bigger seeds, smaller fruit, etc.). American supermarkets sell mostly seedless grapes, which don't taste great, but are easy to eat and to give to kids.
  2. asdff · 1790665645 · focus · HN ↗
    Not in my experience. The best eating grapes are wine grapes by far.
tmpz22 · 1790646375 · focus · HN ↗
Hey want to poison yourself? Want a massive headache the next day? Want to pay $80 at the restaurant for what you could pay $15 at the grocer? Want to drive 3 hours for the privilege (wineries)? Want to pay $100 for a tasting that used to be complimentary with bottle service?
- CA wineries
pfdietz · 1790646567 · focus · HN ↗
This thread reminds me: I need to make a concord grape pie. It's the season for it.
jnaina · 1790646571 · focus · HN ↗
I'm Gen X. I lived my best life in the 80s and 90s, socializing, partying (frat boy years included), with alcohol as the main social lubricant. After Covid, almost everyone in my circle stopped or cut back on going out to bars and drinking, me included. It wasn't the price of drinks. Something about the lockdowns simply rewired the social norms (and our brains).
I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
1. kkotak · 1790647053 · focus · HN ↗
  As a fellow Gen Xer I identify with this. More and more of my friends drink less and less and when they do they prefer a cocktail instead. I think wine has lost the appeal it used to have in the early 2000s. The cost of a glass of wine in the restaurant doesn't help either. As an ex-avid wine drinker, I would be hard pressed to spend more than $30 of a bottle because of the diminishing difference in incremental quality after that price point.
2. breezybottom · 1790647607 · focus · HN ↗
  It's called getting old lol. Blaming it on COVID is ridiculous.
  1. dceddia · 1790648394 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah it’s probably both at once though. At least my experience has been that spending some time away from alcohol made the negative effects more apparent, and simultaneously, time marches on, making the negative effects more pronounced.
  2. hamsterballclea · 1790649192 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s hip to be square. <a href="https://youtu.be/LB5YkmjalDg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/LB5YkmjalDg
  3. mikeg8 · 1790649867 · focus · HN ↗
    To imply that the global pandemic and lockdowns didn’t effect social norms going forward is incredibly ignorant. A little more than “getting old”
    breezybottom · 1790681284 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not a social norm if you're the only one doing it.
  4. kelnos · 1790651136 · focus · HN ↗
    It's both. We got older, but COVID hastened a change in behavior and helped lock it in (if you'll excuse the expression).
3. dataflow · 1790649697 · focus · HN ↗
  > I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
  As far as farmers go, this specific incident feels like a weird one to sleep over. IIUC something like 78% of farmers voted for the current president, whose health secretary literally ran on making the country healthy again, and whose own policy is causing said farmers to sell less of a particular crop that is heavily used to supply their nation with a well-known toxin.
4. bunderbunder · 1790650821 · focus · HN ↗
  Millennial here, and it was the same for me.
  The thing is, over lockdown I stopped drinking socially. And then I realized I didn’t miss the feeling of intoxication. And then I realized my sleep got a whole lot better.
  And then lockdown loosened, so some friends and I went out for drinks for old times’ sake, and I felt awful, both that evening and the next morning. My tolerance for alcohol is just gone, and I don’t have any particular desire to get it back.
  1. globular-toast · 1790661159 · focus · HN ↗
    I had the same realisation but before COVID. I had a friend who didn't drink, but he was always the most fun person to be around. I realised you didn't need alcohol, or any drugs, to have a good time. Without alcohol I was funnier, had more and better sex, slept better, and had no hangover the next day. I never looked back really.
    Nowadays I'm older and not looking for sex so don't take part in that scene. I would say a few years ago when I would go out there was still some peer pressure to drink and I was considered odd going for non-alcoholic options. But nowadays it's not weird at all and the alcohol-free options are much more numerous and varied. Lime and soda was my go to for years but now I'll partake of an alcohol-free beer or cider.
5. boobsbr · 1790671158 · focus · HN ↗
  I just drink at home now. It's cheaper and I can find different beers I want to taste rather than the meager selection available at a pub.
6. BoxOfRain · 1790677037 · focus · HN ↗
  I found the opposite effect from covid personally as a 'zillennial'. As soon as the lockdowns and 'rule of six' were over the first thing me and my friends did was rent a nice house in the middle of the Welsh countryside and have a massive multi-day party. We all felt that lockdowns had stolen what was left of our early 20s from us and wanted to make up for it!
  I often wonder if there's a lot of national differences here, in the UK people for the most part wanted to reverse everything about the covid norms as quickly as possible after Partygate and all the political drama. People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
  1. ajsnigrutin · 1790697938 · focus · HN ↗
    > People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
    Yep, same over here in central europe/balkans.
    Covid came, bars were closed, bars reopened with limited seating, prices went up, tourism restarted, our city center became a tourist trap, prices went up, and higher prices then radiated outside the tourist traps, and well... it doesn't add up anymore.
    Sure, college students can buy cheap wine or booze and drink in parks, but sitting in a bar has become very expensive.
vondur · 1790646969 · focus · HN ↗
It’s amazing how much more land in the central coast area is now dedicated to growing grapes.
Padriac · 1790647759 · focus · HN ↗
I know a duck who might be willing to buy some.
jan_m_savage · 1790649389 · focus · HN ↗
simple: dry them into raisins, export.
1. crummy · 1790650700 · focus · HN ↗
  for consumption as raisins? I think raisins come from a particular variety - wine grapes aren't even that good to eat fresh, I would guess they wouldn't make good raisins either.
dluan · 1790650752 · focus · HN ↗
Because of years of trade war, American wine industry is taking a beating around the world and a lot of Australia, NZ, and South Africa is picking up that slack. Even niche producers like Chinese and Japanese wine industry are very quickly maturing into real home-grown industries. The biggest market for California has always been Asia, and it's been near impossible to stumble into Opus One the way you used to be able to in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc.
Old world has always been able to be flexible, eating these kinds of punches by pivoting into NA or brandy during gluts, and demand has less fluctuations. This contraction, like a lot of everything else happening in the US, maybe was already coming because of some trends overlapping, but policy threw gasoline onto a combustible and fragile situation.
1. hattmall · 1790651047 · focus · HN ↗
  Ok, so does this mean prices in the US will go down? I keep seeing stuff about countries shifting away from US goods but prices seem to continue to rise.
  1. brewdad · 1790651344 · focus · HN ↗
    Companies will try to make up lost sales by serving American "whales", especially in a luxury good like wine. I would expect prices to rise here in the short term and then the market will decide whether that means those of us outside the 1% stretch our budgets to keep buying or turn to the cheaper options.
    Kind of like the Super Bowl and other major sporting events. Normies can make that their "major trip" for the year but mostly they want to sell their multi-thousand dollar tickets to folks who will be at the next big thing the following month.
  2. dluan · 1790651460 · focus · HN ↗
    Reportedly, last year ~10% of California vineyards were uprooted, some grapes like Pinot Noir production is down 30%. Growers are going to keep trimming until they get back into the black, or prices fall down far enough for consumers to come back, whichever happens first. And it's not going to be just CA, it will be NY, TX, WA, OR wineries too, all areas that had big capex expansion over the past 10 years.
    You can see it happening in real-time, right this moment. Go to your local Costco wine section, look for the clearance markdowns where the price ends in $0.97. That means it's marked for clearance and won't be coming back, and there's some screaming deals right now.
  3. aprilthird2021 · 1790651543 · focus · HN ↗
    No
  4. linuxftw · 1790651827 · focus · HN ↗
    Many wines are already well under $10/bottle. Plenty of cheap wines already, I don't think there's room for prices to go down much farther.

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