Why can't you find that brand of wine you liked last year? The owners may have just given up, because there aren't enough buyers for all the California wineries and vineyards that are for sale.
"About 85 percent of wineries in the US are smaller than 5000 cases," said Azur Associates founder Pat DeLong. "There are far more wind-downs than sales. They just don't get publicized."
DeLong was one of five panelists last week at a seminar called "Love It Or List It" at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento. He said the overall market for winery and vineyard sales in 2026 may be less than half the size of 2021, when about $3.5 billion worth of assets were sold.
There are many more sellers today, but far fewer buyers.
"We used to talk about pools of buyers," DeLong said. "There are not pools of buyers. There are individual buyers for individual deals."
Moreover, people trying to sell a winery building can't expect big wine companies to be interested.
DeLong said Gallo's purchase of the Whiny Baby brand last year shows a change in focus of the big wine companies. In past years, Gallo gobbled up vineyard land and facilities. With Whiny Baby, it bought a Gen Z-focused brand with no physical assets attached. He also mentioned The Wine Group selling the Simi brand last year, without its winery facility, just a few months after buying the brand and land together. DeLong said The Wine Group may have gotten a better price for the brand because it had no assets attached, indicating that in today's market, vineyard land and winery buildings may actually have negative value.
"Think about what the big companies are doing right now," DeLong said. "They're doing portfolio hygiene. They're exiting brands that don't fit their portfolios."
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