16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 19-25, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com The plummeting demand for wine has many in the industry worried. But is the situation so dire? By Dave Faries NOT SO FINE When Allison Langhoff considers wine, she tips the conversation in an unexpected direction. “I always talk about coffee,” she says. Comparing the two beverages is not as outlandish as it might first appear. Go back three or four decades and coffee was either black or with cream and sugar. Now menus have become a gauntlet of cortados, flat whites, mazagrans, cold brews, pour-overs and more. The array of options has Langhoff beaming. “Look at how they’ve met demand,” she says of coffeehouses. “We need to start meeting other demographics.” “We” in this case refers to the global community of winemakers. Langhoff spent 20 years with Wine Enthusiast company before joining beverage industry veteran Jennifer Hord to form the San Francisco-based consulting firm A+J Partners. But she turns to the coffee industry—to ubiquitous brands such as Starbucks—as an example because wine is in something of a free fall. According to the Silicon Valley Bank’s annual wine industry report, revenues for U.S. brands tumbled by 3.4 percent in 2024, the fourth consecutive year of plummeting sales. When vintners gathered in January at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, the president of a Fresnoarea growers association, Jeff Bitter, urged wineries to tear out 50,000 acres of vineyards in California alone. Closer to home, Pierce Ranch Vineyards shuttered its Monterey tasting room in 2023. Boekenoogen turned its tasting room in Carmel Valley over to McIntrye Vineyards, placing its planted acreage up for sale. Jouillian—its tasting room and vineyards—is on the market, and others have been recently listed, including significant plots such as Massa Estate and Bernardus’ Marinus vineyard. And the situation is no better in wine regions across the world. The International Organization of Vine and Wine reports that when global consumption figures for 2024 were tallied, the result was the lowest since 1996. The most obvious culprit in this Albatross Ridge winemaker Garrett Bowlus checks the progress of vines midway through the growing season. While winemaking may seem glamorous to some, it is farming—and subject to the whims of nature and market forces. DANIEL DREIFUSS
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