Timothy Birdnow

Know how you make a small fortune in the wine business? Start with a large one.

Know how you go completely bankrupt in the wine business? Start a winery in California.

California is going to squeeze the wine industry worse than those wineries squeeze grapes in a press.

Hair gel Newsom has a scheme that will bankrupt many of the smaller wineries, which are always marginally profitable at best.

FTA:

These are farmers, not playboy wine makers. Grapes are a very labor-intensive and demanding crop to grow, and to grow grapes that will make great as opposed to bad wine requires a huge amount of attention and effort. I know; I used to grow grapes in my backyard and make wine. Grapes are notoriously fussy. To do it right requires a lot of costs and if the price of irrigation goes up these farmers will find it more profitable to grow olives or some other crop that needs less effort - and perhaps less water (not sure if olives do either but certainly there are other crops that need less of both).

And while California has been America's vineyard that may well change as new techniques have made it possible to grow the Vitis Vinifera grape (wine grapes from Europe) in other states, where the deadly Phylloxera Vastatrix bug lies in wait to feast on the roots of the defenseless plants. Actually Phylloxera was vanquished long ago by the grafting of Vinifera plants onto native American rootstocks - mainly from my home state of Missouri, but often by way of France which imported Missouri rootstocks - but there are other things that make Vinifera suffer in the middle of the country - fungi, swings in temperature, etc. Most of these have been addressed and now it's possible to grow Vinifera in most states. Constantine Frank, a guy from Russia, has grown great Pinot Noir and other Vinifera in upstate New York despite the bitter cold that hits the state. We grow some in Missouri although we prefer the French-American hybrids here. (They don't get a fair shake because of pure snobbery, but what can you do? I'd stack Chardonel or Traminette or Seyval up against Chardonnay or Gewurztraminer or Sauvignon Blanc any day, and as for reds Chambourcin gives many Pinots a run for their money. Oh, and Stark Starr or Cynthiana makes port style wines that can compete with the very best Portuguese.)

At any rate other places can and will work when California pushes a lot of winemakers out. In The Heartbreak Grape the owner of Calera, the winery that pioneered great Pinot Noir in the Central Coast, said he strongly considered opening his winery in Texas. Texas might be too warm for Pinot but I rather doubt Iowa would be. He might well wind up moving to Texas in the end or some other state. (Pinot likes hot days and cool nights.)

At any rate the cheaper wines will go up, making wine drinking less affordable for all Americans. So will the price of better wines, but the well-to-do can absorb the price spike. We've been in a golden age for wine; you can buy some very good cheap stuff. Heck, Charles Shaw's "two buck Chuck" wine is couch-cushion change price and gives a decent, palatable wine. Those days are going to be over. Shaw's cost for wine grapes will rise.

So perhaps Kentucky Bourbon will be the next big thing; there's plenty of it and it's prices aren't going up any time soon. And while microbreweries are struggling now as the younger folk drink cocktails they may see a resurgence as people buy good beer rather than good wine. And heck, some of 'em might even decide to try Missouri wine, or Texas wine, or Ohio wine. We all make some pretty good stuff here.

I assure you it ain't no Thunderbird.

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