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

389 points · 987 comments · randycupertino

  1. dluan · · 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. qurren · · focus · HN ↗
      Is it just me or why don't people just eat the grapes?
      1. gostsamo · · focus · HN ↗
        dessert and wine sorts are different. Also, people eat much less grapes than they drink, though some could be turned into raisins, but it is again not that much.
        1. eszed · · focus · HN ↗
          Raisin grapes are a whole different thing, too. Wine and eating grapes don't make good raisins.
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