Wine 2023: Batten Down the Hatches or Just Find Your Slicker?

The 2023 Wine Market and the U.S. Economy

There were three lines in writer W. Blake Gray’s recent Wine-Searcher article concerning a presentation about the U.S. Wine marketplace in 2023 that give me pause.

1. “U.S. Wine Market Fattens Out”

2. “The Gathering Storm”

3. “But it could be worse”

It’s this last line (“It could be worse”) that, no matter where I see it written, tells me it probably already is worse.

Grey was writing about the January 10 presentation given by Jon Moromarco, a brilliant alcohol market analyst at BW166 and the current editor of the longstanding Gomberg & Fredrikson Report. Grey reports that Moromarco’s report shows essentially a flat wine market in 2022. That’s interesting and feels about right. But what’s more interesting and more important is what we learn about what’s to come in 2023. Gray relates the situation this way:

“However, his forecast for 2023 is not rosy. There might be a recession, worldwide and in the US. While wine has traditionally been fairly recession-proof, this one might be different. Usually, mostly blue-collar workers lose their jobs in economic downturns, but lately tech companies have been the ones laying off workers, and those highly paid Millennials are drinkers the wine industry wants to cultivate.”

The issue of tech laying off workers and its potential impact on the wine industry (many of those jobs are located in CA) is insightful. We’ve already seen Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Twitter, and a slew of other tech companies laying off workers in 2022 and recently it was reported that Amazon plans to lay off 18,000 workers in 2023. This is the “Gathering Storm” noted above.