Growth remains the trend in both California and the Central
Coast. Given the glut of juice available in some of the recent years past, you
have to wonder when it will - or should - slow a bit. Many of the new wineries,
which now number a reported 688 in the Central Coast's three counties
(Monterey, San Luis Obispo & Santa Barbara), produce less than 5,000 cases
annually. Still, it is an amazing number and represents a 16% increase in 2012,
year over year.
Recent reports note that the statewide average crop tonnage
per acre is 7.5 tons. Considering that most of the quality makers of premium
varietals restrict harvests to two tons per acre or less, there must be a
significant market for what the Brits refer to as plonk. Of course much of this
is farmed by large operations for use in value priced blends and includes such
varieties as French Columbard. Large volume wineries don't always worry much
about concentrated flavors, equal levels of ripeness and other fine wine
factors, they can adjust for this in the winemaking. Consider also that a lot
of this goes into flavored wine based beverages such as coolers and proprietary
label bottlings.
Central coast land under wine grapes is predicted to reach
nearly six hundred thousand acres by 2016 with 528 thousand already planted and
15 thousand more scheduled to be planted this year. This represented 2.2
million pounds of wine grapes being harvested in 2012. If you do the math, you
will see this translates to just over two tones per acre. This being the norm
for the better winemaking efforts, it appears the focus locally remains on
quality.
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