Chapter 8. Grape and Wine Production in California
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Grape and Wine Production in California Chapter 8. Grape and Wine Production in California Julian M. Alston, James T. Lapsley, and Olena Sambucci Abstract Authors' Bios Grapes were California's most valuable crop in 2016. Julian Alston is a distinguished professor in the Grapes are grown throughout the state for wine production Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and, in the San Joaquin Valley, for raisins, fresh table the director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for grapes, grape-juice concentrate, and distillate. This chapter Wine Economics at the University of California, Davis, outlines the broader grape growing industry as a whole and a member of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural to provide context for a more detailed discussion of Economics. He can be contacted by email at julian@primal. wine grapes and wine. We discuss the spatial variation ucdavis.edu. Jim Lapsley is an academic researcher at the in grape yields and prices within today’s California UC Agricultural Issues Center, and an adjunct associate wine grape industry and the evolving varietal mix; professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, the economic structure of the grape-growing and wine University of California, Davis, and emeritus chair of the producing industry; and shifting patterns of production, Department of Science, Agriculture, and Natural Resources consumption, and trade in wine. We interpret these for UC Davis Extension. He can be reached by email at patterns in the context of recent changes in the global wine [email protected]. Olena Sambucci is a postdoctoral market and the longer economic and policy history of scholar in the Department of Agricultural and Resource grape and wine production in California. Economics at the University of California, Davis. She can be contacted by email at [email protected]. The work for this project was partly supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 2011- 51181-30635 (the VitisGen project), and award number 2015-51181-24393 (the Efficient Vineyard project). The authors are grateful for this support. Views expressed are the authors’ alone. © Copyright 2018 by Julian M. Alston, James T. Lapsley, and Olena Sambucci. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non- commercial purposes by any means provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies 1 California Agriculture: Dimensions and Issues Table of Contents Abstract .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Authors' Bios ............................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Current Grape Production Patterns—An Overview .....................................................................................................................................4 Area, Volume, and Value of Production ..................................................................................................................................................4 Figure 1. Area, Volume, and Value of Production, by Type of Grapes, 1967–2016 ...............................................................5 Figure 2. Area, Volume, and Value of California Production, by Type of Grapes, 2016 ......................................................6 Figure 3. Grape-Producing Areas of California ..............................................................................................................................6 Table 1. Area, Volume, and Value of Production, by Types of Grapes and Region, 2015....................................................7 Structure of the Grape-Growing Industry ................................................................................................................................................8 Table 2. Total Grape Area and Number of Producing Farms, 2012 ..........................................................................................8 Table 3. California: Size Distribution of Grape Producers, 2012 ................................................................................................9 Utilization of California's Grape Production Systems ............................................................................................................................... 10 Box 1: Evolving Demand for California Wine and the Media ..................................................................................................... 10 Table Grapes .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 Raisins ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Juice Concentrate and Distillate ............................................................................................................................................................. 12 Table 4. Utilization of California's Grape Crush, 2000–2016 .................................................................................................... 13 Wine Grapes ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 15 Figure 4. U.S. Wine Regions: Area, Volume, and Value of Production, 2016 ........................................................................ 14 Table 5. Characteristics of U.S. Wine Grape-Growing Regions, 2016 .................................................................................... 15 Table 6. Characteristics of California Wine Grapes Crushed, 2016 ........................................................................................ 16 Wineries ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................17 Domestic Production and Consumption ................................................................................................................................................17 Table 7. Gallons of Bottled Wine Removed, Tax-Paid into the U.S. Market, 2005 and 2016 ............................................ 18 Table 8. Shares of all California Licensed Wineries (2017) and Tons of Wine Grapes Crushed (2016) by Region .... 19 Imports and Exports ................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 5. Volume and Value of U.S. Imports and Exports of Wine, 1966–2016 ..................................................................20 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 Box 2. U.S. Per Capita Consumption of Wine in Context ........................................................................................................... 21 References ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 22 Appendices .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Appendix Table 5A. Characteristics of U.S. Wine Grape-Growing Regions, 2016 ............................................................. 26 Appendix Table 6A. Characteristics of California Wine Grapes Crushed, 2016 ................................................................. 27 Appendix Table 8A. Shares of all California Licensed Wineries (2017) and Tons of Wine Grapes Crushed (2016) by Region .... 28 2 Grape and Wine Production in California Introduction Grapes have been cultivated in the United States for more varieties—such as Thompson Seedless—could be grown than 400 years and in California for more than 200 years. for any and all of these end-uses, and flexibly allocated However, California’s grape and wine industry did not among them from one season to the next. Nowadays, vari- really take off as such until the end of the 19th century. As eties, trellises, and other aspects of the production system discussed and documented in detail by Pinney (1989, 2005) are much more specialized for particular end-uses, and the and summarized by Alston et al. (2018), the longer history different parts of the grape industry are much less inte- of grape and wine production in America reflects several grated with one another. In many ways, they are now alto- significant influences. These include ongoing struggles gether separate