California North Coast wine grape crop value hits record $1.8 billion

The value of the North Coast wine grape harvest last year reached a record $1.81 billion. That 17% rise in grower revenue from the year before is largely thanks to the biggest local cabernet sauvignon crop ever picked and another high for what vintners are paying for those premium red grapes.

Wineries in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties crushed 549,000 tons last year (up 24% from 2022), while the whole California wine grape crop weighed in at 3.67 million tons (up 8%), according to analysis of National Agricultural Statistics Service’s California Grape Crush Report, released Friday.

Local county tonnages were 244,300 in Sonoma (up 22%), 168,800 in Napa (up 25%), 71,400 in Mendocino (up 15%) and 64,600 in Lake (up 41%). An unspecified portion of Solano County’s 27,600 tons crushed last year came from the western side that’s also in the North Coast appellation.

This first official look at last year’s harvest showed North Coast tonnage was 22% above of the five-year average, while the crop statewide was nearly 2% above average.

The lower tonnage statewide and some large North Coast crops partly resulted from the challenging cool and sometimes wet growing season last year that led to larger-than-expected crops that were ripening all at once, grape brokers say.

“Everything got topped off,” said Glenn Proctor, partner with San Rafael-based global grape and wine brokerage Ciatti Co.

Wineries were more eager to buy up to the maximum tonnage specified in grape purchase contracts, but because of scheduling red and white grapes for different crush equipment, vintners often had little ability to take excess fruit, Proctor said.

Ciatti had estimated that 400,000 to 500,000 tons of the roughly 4 million tons of wine grapes estimated statewide before harvest would end up not being picked because of issues with mildew, not being ripe or too much winery inventory.

That largely affected cab grapes outside the North Coast, but Proctor and Turrrentine Brokerage’s Christian Klier said there were some local grapes that were left on the vine in Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties.

“There was an abundance of cab in Napa, and the wineries were not as forgiving for low brix because they can go to neighbors and take ripe fruit at much overage prices,” Klier said.

Brix is a measure of grape sugar and fruit ripeness, so it is often a benchmark for purchase contracts. The deals also can include discounted prices per ton for tonnage above the limits in the contact.

Napa’s 2023 tonnage ranked sixth for the county historically, but its top grape variety, cabernet sauvignon, weighed in at new record of 92,300 tons. The additional grapes crushed last year would be the equivalent of 1.27 million more cases of cab wine.

Napa cab average pricing edged up 1.4% last year to a new high of $8,775 a ton, pushing the county’s wine grape crop value to $1.13 billion, passing the previous peak of $1.02 billion in 2018.

New cabernet sauvignon acreage that has come into commercial production in the past three years swelled Lake County’s wine grape crop in 2023 to 64,600 tons, up nearly 40% from average. Lake’s cab crop jumped nearly 50% last year to almost 31,800 tons, and the county average price for the variety rose almost 6% to $2,356 a ton.

Lake County has become known for sauvignon blanc over the years, and last year its tonnage for the trendy white grape jumped 28% to 20,000 tons, passing Sonoma County for the first time.

The state grape crush report is set to be updated in March and July.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.