California’s battered wine industry is spiraling deeper into crisis as vineyard values across wine country plunge, buyers vanish, and experts warn the pain could drag on for years.
At an AWG Wine Advisors conference in Santa Rosa on May 21, industry insiders called this downturn one of the toughest in decades. Vineyard owners are now rushing to sell land in a market crowded with sellers and very few buyers.
“It’s like catching a falling knife,” Sonoma-based agricultural land appraiser Tony Correia said of the collapsing vineyard market. “The market’s moving faster than the appraiser does.”…