Thread

1. 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. 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.

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