The preliminary annual California Grape Crush Report was just released publicly last week. Packed with statistics on the volumes, types, and pricing of grapes across the state’s various winegrowing districts it tells an interesting story about the 2023 vintage.
The primary headline is that the state crushed 3.668 million tons of wine grapes. That amount puts this harvest around average as far as California goes, at least since the big bumper harvests of 2016-2018. Last year was on par with 2021, and a little bit more than 2022’s harvest of 3.37 million tons.
Many grape varieties saw significant jumps in their price per ton, some achieving the highest prices ever for their respective regions, sometimes even as their volumes also increased.
Below the headlines, however, many commentators are suggesting that the harvest could have been much bigger, had the state’s farmers actually harvested all their grapes.
So why would a farmer leave grapes on the vine instead harvesting them? The easy answer, of course, is because no one wanted to buy them. Indeed, that happened this year. Demand seems to be softening for wine grapes as the industry faces the continued stiff headwinds of falling demand. Of course, the grapes might not have ripened or might have disease issues, both of which were something of a challenge in what was a very cool vintage.
But there’s another factor at play as well for some growers.
In many cases last year, farmers did have people offering to purchase their grapes but they still refused to sell them, preferring to let them rot on the vine than put money in their pockets.
What on earth could have motivated them to do this? One answer is actually the California Grape Crush Report itself. This document is so powerful, it might as well be the one ring to rule them all when it comes to the majority of the $1.8 billion California wine grape economy.
But most people (myself included, until recently) think it’s just a bunch of statistics gathered by government bureaucrats.
The secret power of this annual government document really comes down to tables like this one:
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