With the recent banking debacles in the world, it has become quite evident that the way we collectively avoid a perceived or revealed risk can become a self-fulfilling prophecy causing dominoes to fall back onto ourselves and/or others. Those of us engaged in short shelf-life agricultural products, like grapes and their conversion to more stable forms like wine, have had to grow accustomed to varied levels of risk. Be it the threat of or actual smoke damage from nearby wildfires, hail or rain at bloom or harvest, recession or pandemic effects on sales outlets, earthquakes, etc. Trying to mitigate the existential risks seems to be a given, to the extent possible. Of course, the long lead time to ‘assemble’ a bottle of wine from the planting of vines to finally selling the bottle, makes it nearly impossible to predict the change in conditions during that entire period. For example, I’ve got red wines that were first vinified the better part of a decade ago as current releases. Think of how much the world has changed in the past 7-8 years! The library releases just increase that boom-bust roller-coaster for us. One is left to ride the roller-coaster with hands in the air, leaning to and fro attempting to find some center of mass stability through it all. We appreciate your support in helping us navigate these waters as we have striven for stability for over three decades.
Read the complete newsletter here: Boom, bust and striving for stability