Tasting room attendance downturn proxy?

I have recently heard from a few winemakers that have tasting rooms that attendance is down pretty sharply. There seems to be less discretionary income sloshing around. One of them even said “I think we’re heading for a depression we’ve never seen”. Maybe he’s the overly pessimistic type (and I also realize that winery owners might not divulge specifics here and risk of losing face), but is this something you’ve also experienced/seen signs of?

Adam, could be but without a bit more info on where your fellow winemakers are seeing this it doesn’t mean much. Strictly anecdotal from 1 person but I haven’t seen a decline in parts of Sonoma County where I have visited. Speaking about Healdsburg, Windsor, RRV, Dry Creek area.

I will say that breweries, brew pubs, beer gardens and the like are busier than ever. Maybe they are taking away from wineries and tasting rooms?

Tom

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We’re up in the Russian River Valley right now. We did several scheduled tastings the last couple of days. Each was very sparsely attended. At Bacigalupi today we were the only scheduled guests all day. Now granted it’s a Wednesday immediately post harvest, but still……

Westside Road has had almost no cars on it.

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I think as in most things, it depends.
I am in western Colorado.
The winery I work at part time is having its best year ever. Within recent weeks we have had our best day, week and weekend ever. Our two day AVA wine fest sold out.
New brew pubs are opening and the current ones all seem busy. County wide sales tax revenues are up so much the county has a surplus of tax dollars it doesn’t know how to allocate yet. I am sure they’ll figure out a way to spend it.

Ask HDH how the depression is going

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This was a few Lodi wineries.

From my friends here in Napa who own/run/work in wineries, I’ve only heard stories of a record year in terms of traffic and sales. Also anecdotal, for sure, but may be location as well.

Are you talking about wineries that depend on foot traffic for sales? I would think that during the last 18 months people would have figured out how to get by without the foot traffic.