The Napa Valley wine industry produced nearly $1 billion worth of wine grapes in 2023, but the industry is changing and demand may be plateauing — possibly even dropping.
“You know, if you had the patience, you could almost watch these tendrils grow,” laughed Tom Davies, President of V. Sattui Winery. “On a sunny day like today, this might grow over an inch or more.”
Davies is keeping an eye on the V. Sattui 2024 vintage, in its earliest formation, and if it’s anything like ’23, there will be a lot of it.
“We had we had a phenomenal vintage in 2023,” he said.
But what’s happening in the wine industry is a story several years in the making, and that includes some years that were not so productive.
“You know, we had the fires in ’17, fires in ’20,” Davies recounts. ” So, we were short those years. Plus the drought years. We made much less than we normally would.”
And when the rain finally returned while demand for grapes was still on the rise, the times in wine country were as good as ever.