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I have an urgent request: please drink a glass of wine this week. Share a bottle with your wife, your roommate or your Uncle Randy. It's your duty as a citizen of the world.
The wine industry in California and around the world is suffering, and I find it heartbreaking that something so deeply human--one of the oldest threads running through civilization--is struggling to survive.
For thousands of years, wherever human beings gathered, wine seemed to find its way to the table. Egyptians drank it and the Greeks gave it a god. Romans planted vineyards everywhere they went. It became part of religious ritual, weddings, funerals, celebrations and ordinary dinners. We have raised glasses to births and marriages, victories and new beginnings for thousands of years. Wine isn't just another product sitting on a grocery-store shelf. It is part of our history.
That's why wine feels so ancient and intimate at the same time. It is agriculture produced by patience. You can stand in a vineyard and understand the basic task ahead of you: these vines grow in this particular earth, under this particular sun, in this particular year. Then people pick the grapes, crush them, and wait while an invisible natural process changes them.
Every glass then carries two histories: the history of the place it came from and the much larger history of human beings discovering that nature could be cultivated, transformed, and shared. It is one of the things human beings have been doing for so long that it has become part of the story of being human.
I recently read an article that captured the state of the wine industry in one sweeping and rather alarming account. Gundlach Bundschu, the second-oldest winery in Sonoma County and one of the oldest continuously operating wineries in California, has filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 1858, the winery survived generations of upheaval, only to reach this uncertain point in history.
And it is hardly alone.
Wineries large and small are struggling with dwindling demand, tariffs and trade disputes, natural disasters, rising costs and a changing culture around alcohol.
Wine behemoth Gallo announced plans earlier this year to lay off more than 90 employees by the end of January 2027 and close a major Napa Valley winemaking facility.
In February, Constellation Brands announced plans to lay off hundreds of workers at its Mission Bell Winery in Madera. The company, which owns Robert Mondavi wines as well as Modelo and Corona beers, has set a goal of $200 million in cost savings.
And the list goes on. Santa Rosa-based Foley Family Wines wound down operations at its Chalone Vineyard in Monterey County and laid off the facility's winemaking staff. McManis Family Vineyards, founded in 1990, is selling 3,500 acres of property across two counties.
There are more, but you get the picture.
California wineries have also been hurt by Canadian provinces pulling American alcohol from store shelves in response to U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods. Canada has historically been an important export market for American wine, so losing that business at a moment when the industry is already struggling certainly hasn't helped.
What the heck are they drinking up there instead? Whiskey? Have you ever had a glass of Canadian wine?
I'm going to leave that question right there before I cause an international incident.
And the young folks! Wine makers are competing with aluminum cans of fizzy drinks mixed with vodka or tequila. Can you imagine? The absolutely beautiful art of winemaking--ancient and historic--is competing with aluminum cans of stuff. What is new and trendy should never replace the products that include millennia of man's toil. The art should be respected and protected. How can you compare a pop-off top on an aluminum can to a cork holding back the beauty of 8,000 years of earth, sun, rain, fruit, and time?
We've had to bend down to all sorts of new things that modern living has exposed us to, but we can't take this one sitting down. I don't want to live in a world without bundles of grapes hanging like a constellation from a grape vine.
I don't want to watch an art form replaced with the help of our Canadian neighbors or an aluminum can from our children.
You have received your mission. You know what to do.