Vintners Ensure Grape Supply

By David Eddy|July 23, 2012

Predictions of a coming shortage of winegrapes — with an attendant rise in prices — appear to be causing some wineries in at least one premium California winegrape growing region to spring into action.

In June alone, hundreds of acres of prime vineyards in Sonoma County were snapped up by some well-known wineries, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.

“There is a little bit of a flocking to buying land,” Robert Nicholson, principal at International Wine Associates, a winery and vineyard brokerage, told the newspaper. “This need for vineyards, this desire for vineyards, has come up in every single conversation with principals, with multinational and privately held small business. I’d say it’s the beginning of a gentle roar.”

Early in the month, Jackson Family Wines purchased the 350-acre Ramal West Vineyard in the esteemed cool-climate Carneros appellation, which straddles both Sonoma and Napa counties. Then just weeks later Napa-based Duckhorn Wine Co. bought a 400-acre vineyard in the well-known Alexander Valley from Artesia Vineyards & Winery.

The purchases make sense as the harvests on the North Coast have been down the past two years. The California industry as a whole is “on the cusp of a shortage” of winegrapes, the president and CEO of the grower cooperative Allied Grape Growers, Nat DiBuduo, said in his annual “State of the Industry” address at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in January. Allied projections show that the wineries’ demand will outstrip supplies through at least 2014.