Should Winegrowers Make Bulk Wine?
Latest issue of Wines & Vines has an article from me about how to decide whether or not to make bulk wine, in terms of expected return and changes to the risk profile of your business. I give a bit more detail in this blog post, if you're looking for more.
Crush Report Is Out - Here's My Schedule
So, the Crush Report is out now: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Grape_Crush/Final/index.php. For those of you who use my grape data tool, I wanted to share my post-Crush Report schedule. First, I need to spend a couple weeks updating price reports for clients. Then, I’ll update the grape data tool. I may have to do two releases, since the percentile tool takes longer. That is, I would release an update without that tool and then an
USDA looks to be calculating total crush value in a sub-optimal manner.
Read a great working paper from AAWE: http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AAWE_WP213.pdf. They make the point that the USDA is underestimating the total value of wine crushed in California. It's pretty technical, so here is the simple explanation. Some growers crush their own wine. There are no prices reported for these. If 10 tons are crushed statewide and 7 are sold for $100 each, while 3 are crushed by the grower, the USDA calculates the total
Bulk Wine Price Volatility vs. Grape Price Volatility
I have an article coming out in Wines & Vines, if it’s not already out. In the article, I look into growers turning to bulk wine production. One of the issues I look at it is the comparative volatility in the bulk wine market, versus the grape market. I wanted to make sure that anyone who is interested can see how I compared volatility between the two product types. As in the article, let’s use Sonoma County Chardonnay as an example. First, take a look at the data below,
