Napa Valley has steadily increased its position in the wine world over the last thirty years and the high quality and high price of the wines coming out of the appellation are indicative of the status it currently garners from within the wine world. Any wine country tour of the impressive wineries along Route 29 will suggest that these wines are rather exclusionary and Napa Valley has long been happy to distinguish itself in such a manner as to warrant those prices. But even though last year more than sixty tons of Cabernet Sauvignon was sold at more than twenty thousand dollars per ton, there is reason to believe that the Napa Valley vintners may be flying precariously close to the sun and due for a reversal.
Pricey wine sales have fallen off precipitously. The 2005 vintage for Napa Valley – and we’re talking specifically about Cabernet, the valley’s main grape – was a phenomenal harvest, yielding a remarkable vintage and many premium wines were made that year and have just recently come to market. Also coming to the market recently is the 2006 harvest, which unlike the 2005 which was universally hailed, was a year of unusual conditions which made producing good wine quite challenging so success stories were spotty. Accordingly, vintners’ talents were exposed.
And so sales of Napa Valley Cabernet from 2005 and 2006 have slowed to a trickle for their respective reasons – 2005 because it was a banner year and the prices reflect that and high-end vintners almost never come off of their prices, and the 2006 wines which were done well are also similarly priced and the less desirables just didn’t make the cut. With retailers and restaurants having stopped ordering the high-end wines as the consuming public peels back its consumption of expensive wines, Napa Valley Cabernet seems to have hit a bottleneck and there may soon be a glut on the shelves until consumers take their purchasing habits upscale once again, or Napa Valley wineries begin to cut their prices. Neither seems to be anywhere on the horizon.
