Dirty Little Secret
According to the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, nearly 68 million gallons of foreign bulk wine were imported by California wineries in 2022. And no one is talking about it. Over the past couple of months, countless industry presentations have discussed the slowing wine market, the anti-alcohol movement, how young people aren’t drinking wine, and the excess inventory of California-grown wine. We’ve been told that potentially 400,000 tons of grapes were left on the vine last harvest. Growers have been told they need to remove thousands of vineyard acres to balance supply with demand. But no one is mentioning that California’s largest grape buyers also imported the equivalent of 400,000 tons of grapes in 2022.
