At Engelmann Cellars in Fresno County<\/a>, owner Bret Engelman said the industry\u2019s recent struggles began since COVID.<\/p>\nEngelman, who grew up on his grandfather\u2019s raisin farms, said his early exposure to agriculture shaped his interest in the work. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt eight, ten years old, your dad’s teaching you what’s going on. And it was just interesting, you know, not that we cared about the wine. It was just interesting,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Engelman has been making wine for almost 30 years.<\/p>\n
According to data from the California Association of Wine Grape Growers, about 38,000 acres of wine grapes were pulled out across California last year, about 7% of all grapes statewide.<\/p>\n
Engelman said he\u2019s hearing concerns across the industry. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hear the rumblings about downsizing, price cuts, everything else and it’s scary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also said winemakers are seeing people lean away from drinking as much, creating a situation where there is a lot of product but not as much demand. <\/p>\n
Vineyards have also been severely affected by wildfires.<\/p>\n
To adjust, Engelmann Cellars has expanded beyond wine, hosting live music and movie nights and selling beer. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to diversify a little bit because not everybody’s a wine drinker,\u201d Engelman said.<\/p>\n
The winery has also leaned into events and entertainment to bring people in. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou start doing weddings out there and then one day there’s a concert out there, and then you go, hey, there’s something to be said with these concerts. So the next thing you know, you’re a music venue and on the Friday nights we have food trucks out here and a bunch of people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Engelman grows all of his own grapes, reducing reliance on outside supplies. <\/p>\n
The winery offers reds, whites, rose and beer.<\/p>\n
Despite the uncertainty, Engelman said he believes the industry will stabilize. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere’ll be a balance to this. They will find a balance. I don’t know how long this balance is going to take, but it’s going to get found,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 California\u2019s wine industry is facing a downturn in sales and grape production, and wineries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-420576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}