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Consumer Demand Blunts Crisis
By Robert Whitley
Nov 4, 2009
Seems hardly a day goes by that I don’t encounter another tale of misery and financial pain in the wine industry. The pain is real, and I suspect it will get worse before it gets better.
Vineyard values, winery values, grape prices, even the price of an ordinary bottle of Cabernet rode the dotcom bubble and housing bubble to unsustainable levels. There is a reluctance to accept the new reality: Few wine-related assets are worth now what they were a year ago. The pain I observe most is the anguish of falling prices set against the hopeless struggle to maintain unrealistic price points.
Robert Whitley, http://win
Photo by Gerry Dawes, copyright 2007.
I’m so over it. Time to move on. While it’s true the ground shifted underneath the wine industry, the world didn’t come to an end. Everyday people continue to drink wine, and some recent numbers point to a robust recovery. Winebusiness.com reports, for example, that domestic wine sales rose seven percent in October, the second consecutive month they’ve seen an increase. And the October sales figures were four percent greater than those from the same period one year ago.
The sky is not falling. Americans who’ve taken their lumps in the financial and real estate markets haven’t abandoned their love affair with wine. They are merely being careful and buying smarter.
So as we barrel toward Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to take a step back and consider the positives rather than dwell on the negatives.
Read the rest of the article, Consumer Demand Blunts Crisis, here.
From winereviewonline.com.
About Gerry Dawes
Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009.
Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television
series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com
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