As wine sales continue to decline both in the US and globally, winemakers are looking to the coffee industry as a model for reinvention, according to Monterey County Now. Just as coffee evolved from a simple beverage into a diverse, personalized experience, experts like Allison Langhoff argue that wine must also adapt to changing consumer preferences, especially among younger generations, who are drinking less alcohol and seeking more variety. With oversupply, shifting demographics, and declining interest in traditional wine culture, producers are exploring innovations like low-alcohol wines, spritzers, and canned formats. While some wineries cling to tradition, othersโparticularly smaller, Central Coast operations- see opportunity in embracing flexibility and storytelling to engage new audiences. They write:
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. โLook at how theyโve met demand,โ she says of coffeehouses. โWe need to start meeting other demographics.โ […]
According to the Silicon Valley Bankโs 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 Fresno-area growers association, Jeff Bitter, urged wineries to tear out 50,000 acres of vineyards in California alone.. […]
โThe big beverage companies went on a spending spree over the last 20-25 years,โ he says. โThey were thinking market share.โ
In the early 2000s, the wave of young winemakers that established California vineyards in the early 1970s began to age out, or their families tired of the challenges of farming. In Napa County, few of the wineries from that original entrepreneurial rush remain under family ownership. […]
This time it is Scheid who makes the coffee analogy. With free-trade, different beans and roasts, milk alternatives and the array of drinks, she observes: โNobody just orders coffee.โ […]
โWeโre not going to beat White Claw,โ Scheid points out. But a chef-driven spritzer and sustainably farmed wine fits a niche.
Across Monterey County, wineries are filling those interests โ dry farming methods, micro-terroirs, winemakers and land with stories to tell. The aspects of farming and making wine that set the price point also fit the interest in artisanal products with a narrative. […]
Amid all the turmoil, it remains farming and winemaking. And while demand draws some to addressing the growing breadth of demandย โ spritzers, low alcohol wines, cans and such, the fundamentals have yet to flinch.
โWe keep turning out good wine,โ Shea says. โThatโs all we can do.โ
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