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Update (4:43p, 4/18/19): The Lake County Winegrowers Association e-mailed me with some more information: "Thanks to a near-perfect growing season in 2018, the crop was big everywhere in California, including in Lake County. 2018 prices varied slightly in comparison to the previous years but considering the extent of the fire, the prices recorded in the grape crush report reflect both a commitment to quality from the growers and a good collaboration between growers and winery

So, this post may be coming a bit late to be of much help, but maybe it will be useful to someone. This stems from some casual research I was doing. I've been hoping for a contract to forecast Napa County Cabernet Sauvignon. It's such a huge question going forward, as to what extent Napa Cab will follow a steady, upward trajectory and to what extent it is still vulnerable to cyclical effects and macroeconomic headwinds. To really look at an issue like that would take, in m

Three weeks ago, I posted my first installment of this series about the coming Grapepocalypse, which discussed the effects of the changing grape market cycle. I promised some more doom and gloom, but it took me a bit to get this article out. Unfortunately, both of my young children fell ill and in the 4th incident in 15 months of PG&E equipment failure on my homestead, my computer was fried, among other damage done. So, I apologize for the delay. Of course, there is no bett

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how we’re due to see a downturn in the wine market. As those of you who have gotten a glass of wine with me anytime since 2012 probably know, I’ve been predicting a peak in wine grape prices in 2018. Over the past 6 years, I’ve refined and softened that prediction. We have not seen over-planting on the same scale as we have in past grape market cycles. In 2017, I changed my tune a bit to state that (a) the peak will occur in 2018/

A little bit ago, I posted a new Grape Data Tool tutorial video that showed how to use the tool to evaluate Cabernet Sauvignon in Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma and Napa Counties by price level. In a previous blog post, I posted some findings on Mendocino County Cabernet Sauvignon. I promised to post some of the findings on the other three counties soon after. I realized that I over-booked some client projects, so I've been slow on getting to this, but today I'll examine high-end

In my continuing push to get people to use my free Grape Data Tool, I've made another tutorial video. This one shows how to use the AllPercentile macro to explore percentile pricing. Specifically, it focuses on how the top several percent of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes sold in each Pricing District relate to the average Cabernet Sauvignon price for the region. It also includes a bit of education on how percentile pricing works and how it can relate to grape purchase contract

In August, I had predicted a price of $1300 per ton for Lake County Sauvignon Blanc for 2016. Single-year forecasts are the riskiest forecasts I make. The reason for this is that it typically pits purely quantitative methods against expert knowledge. The case of 2016 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc is a great case in point. For this blog, I put out purely statistical, single-year forecasts. That is, I use only historical data to forecast a price. Someone out in the field, wi

So, as I have mentioned before, my worst forecast ever was a massive failure to predict the 16% jump in price for Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon between 2013 and 2014. I'm still working on stronger and stronger models for Lake County - and, for that matter, everywhere else - and have a new one to try out. Now, I know, this information isn't so useful for you now. After all, we're about to harvest and anyone on the frontlines has a pretty good idea of where prices are at -

District 2 Cabernet Sauvignon Update Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon saw an enormous price increase of about 17% this past year, while yields and Brix levels held steady. With very little opportunity to increase vineyard acreage in Napa, many are turning to Lake County for wine to blend into Napa SKUs. For this reason, Cabernet Sauvignon leads Lake County in terms of both pricing and total yields. It accounts for over one-third of all winegrapes grown in Lake County. In 20

The last post was wholly dedicated to Napa Cabernet Sauvignon and was quite bullish for the future. I do want to reiterate that those are very basic projections and I would strongly recommend you have VFA customize projections for you, instead of using those. At the very least, use the lower limits of probability that I provided. Even in today's market, Napa cabernet is already very expensive. One of the strategies used for controlling Napa cabernet costs is to blend in c