Record winegrape acreage left unpicked last season

By Caleb Hampton

California’s winegrape sector continues to reel from a shrinking market that has left the state with too much vineyard acreage and, year after year, an oversupply of grapes. Last year, more than a tenth of the state’s crop was left unpicked, according to industry estimates presented last month at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento. 

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we left that many acres of grapes on the vine,” said Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, a grower-owned marketing group that sells winegrapes for 400 growers across California.

After years of growth, global wine consumption has declined in recent years, with U.S. sales falling for three straight years and experts forecasting the trend to continue.

Industry experts have attributed the weak wine market to multiple factors, including a shift in messaging from health experts about how safe it is to consume low levels of alcohol, the industry’s failure to win over younger demographics, and market share lost to seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails and marijuana. 

“We’ve seen some precipitous drops in consumption,” said Bitter, who grows winegrapes in Madera County. 

California growers harvested around 2.9 million tons of winegrapes last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual Grape Crush Report released this month, the lightest crop in two decades. As many as 400,000 tons were estimated to have been left on the vines as growers were unable to find buyers for their grapes. 

The unharvested tonnage last year is roughly equal to that of 2023. However, with last year’s crop coming in much lighter, the portion of the crop that went unharvested was greater, Bitter said, and the unpicked acreage likely the most ever. 

For farmers, “the acreage is what really matters,” Bitter said, because it indicates how much they invested in farming a crop—from pruning to pest control and other maintenance—only to see no returns. 

Last year, Bitter called on California growers to collectively rip out 50,000 acres of vineyards, roughly 9% of the state’s bearing acreage, to achieve market balance.  

Growers removed roughly 37,500 acres of vineyards between the 2023 and 2024 harvests, according to estimates released last month by Allied Grape Growers. The removal represents the most in years, though still short of the target. 

“We’re still clearly oversupplied,” said Bitter, who this year renewed his call for growers to rip out 50,000 acres. “We need to be even more aggressive than we were last year in removing vineyards, especially in the coast.”

Wineries continue to have high levels of inventory due to weak sales, said Glenn Proctor, a Sonoma County vintner and partner at the Ciatti Co., a global wine broker. 

“We still think the market has not bottomed yet,” Proctor said. 

For growers, that has meant wineries declining to renew multiyear contracts, causing more winegrape acreage to compete for sales on the spot market.  

Last year, Bitter said, many growers, especially of red varieties, sold on the spot market at a loss—if they were fortunate enough to sell their grapes at all. “It’s a beauty contest,” he said of the buyers’ market, with wineries able to pick and choose from an abundance of available grapes. 

Because newly planted vineyards take a few years to start producing, some new acreage continues to come into production, but new plantings are slowing. 

California vineyard nurseries sold about 13 million vines last year, planting an estimated 12,000 acres, the lowest total in years, according to a nursery survey conducted by Allied Grape Growers.

Before planting new vineyards, winegrape growers typically sign preplant contracts with wineries to plant and farm a vineyard block for 10 years or longer. But growers across the state said preplant contracts are nowhere to be found. 

John Arellano, field representative for Hughson-based Duarte Nursery, said most of the vines the company sold last year were replants bought to recondition existing vineyards, not to plant new blocks. 

“Everybody is being cautious,” Arellano said.

Looking ahead, growers face significant challenges entering a new season. 

With wineries offering fewer contracts and more acreage entering the spot market, growers said it has become difficult to secure the yearly financing they rely on to farm.

“We’re seeing kind of a financial squeeze on this,” Bitter said. 

Stephen Rannekleiv, a strategist at Rabobank, said the current winegrape market “is probably one of the most challenging environments we’ve navigated for decades.”

Rannekleiv said banks are trying to be patient and work with growers. “Nobody wants to create a downward spiral,” he said. But he added, “At some point, you have to make tough decisions.”

The problem of securing operating loans is especially acute for out-of-contract growers who were unable to sell their grapes last year and cannot demonstrate to a bank that they will have greater success in the coming year. 

“It’s a very big issue,” Bitter said. “There’s a lot of talk out there about how growers are going to finance this year’s production.”

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)