In 2024, California grew the lightest crop of wine grapes in two decades, down nearly 1 million tons from 2023.
Director of Grape Brokerage for Turrentine Brokerage Audra Cooper said the industry hadn’t seen numbers this low since 2004.
“The fact that the 2024 California wine grape crop was 2.844 million tons is nothing short of shocking,” she said in the brokerage’s annual Grape Crush Report. “The 2024 crop was generally light, and overall demand was lackluster.”
The report released on Feb. 10—based off numbers from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Grape Crush Report—attributed the downturn to unprecedented economic pressures, changing consumer preferences, and an emerging generation seeking alternative beverages.
Central Coast Grape Broker Eddie Urman told New Times that while the entire state saw light crops, the Central Coast saw specific declines in cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc—Paso Robles produced 95,000 tons of cabernet in 2023 but produced 55,000 in 2024.
“It’s a pretty large reduction, 40,000 tons less than last year,” Urman said. “2023 was a record year, so that’s something that has to be accounted for, but 2024 has proved to be near record light, at least for us on the Central Coast.”
According to the report, the local sauvignon blanc crop only reached 18,176 tons—a 32 percent decrease from 2023. In total, 340,865 tons of grapes were crushed on the Central Coast, 30 percent less than the 526,670 tons of 2023.
Urman told New Times such a decline was due to climate—the Central Coast initially had a wet start during the El Niño storms, then extreme heat in the summer and fall.
“2024 was a good rainfall year. We had what we thought would be a good setup for a large yield,” he told New Times. “However, once we really started to be able to count clusters, we realized our cluster count was lower and our overall cluster weights were also lower than average.”
According to Urman, chilly Central Coast conditions in early 2024 frosted the fruit, reducing the crop size. Once 100-degree days hit in July, the crop was reduced even more.
“So, it wasn’t one single event, in my opinion, that caused the light crop in the Central Coast,” he said.
The conditions were the opposite in 2023, he said, adding that while the Central Coast received rain, the summer season also remained fairly cool and allowed crops to flourish.
Due to light crops, Urman said many wineries in Paso Robles had to look elsewhere for wine grapes, calling the phenomenon “replacement demands.”
“They were just realizing they were coming in so short, they needed to go buy [elsewhere],” he said.
Urman said it’s hard to predict what the next year will bring because each year’s crop results from a series of events.
“There are year-to-year variations. And when you come off of a large crop, oftentimes you can see a lighter crop the following year,” Urman said. “Farming, you don’t get the same yield every single year. It’s just not how it works.” Δ
Editor’s note: This article was updated to include an image and links.
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2025.