The last time California had a grape harvest as small as last year was 1994. OJ Simpson led cops on a slow-motion chase through LA. Kurt Cobain shot himself. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.
The last time California had a wine grape harvest as small as last year was 1999. Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture in one of the academy's worst mistakes. The words "blog", "texting" and "vape" were added to the dictionary.
The preliminary California Grape Crush Report for 2025 was released on Friday by the US Department of Agriculture. It's big news, this small harvest. For wine lovers, it's actually pretty good news. But for Americans in general, it's disturbing news, which I will explain in a moment.
But first, here's why it's good news for wine lovers. As small as the crop was – 2.76 million tons, of which 2.62 million tons were wine grapes – it's actually bigger than the experts expected. Many grapes were unpicked, but growers in premium areas like Sonoma and Mendocino Counties picked more grapes than were expected, and maybe more grapes than they should have.
"This is going to mean opportunities for consumers," said Glenn Proctor, global wine and grape broker for Ciatti Company.
Proctor said that private store label wines that used to be made from fruit from the hot central valley are now being made – for the same retail price – from grapes from the cooler, more expensive coastal regions, like Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Soon, a store's $15 private-label Pinot Noir might even come from Russian River Valley.
"The prices are rough for the sellers, but they're putting appellated wines in their stores," Proctor told Wine-Searcher. "Longterm, I'm hoping this introduces these varietal wines to consumers. They'll say, I kinda found this. Is there a winery in that area that I like? That's the hope."
From the industry's perspective, Proctor says grape farmers are going through a painful, but necessary, reconstruction. The state is finally harvesting a little less Cabernet Sauvignon. The Chardonnay crop continues to get smaller. We may have reached the limit of interest in Pinot Noir as it is down in Sonoma County.
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