This is the story of The Great White Wine Shortage of 2024, as tale that has its beginnings way, way, way back in early 2022 when I was peering into my crystal ball and trying to see how much wine we would need to make it through 2023 and into 2024. As a winemaker, I also pored over spreadsheets, consulted long-term weather forecasts, and basically crossed my fingers and took a shot in the dark and hoped that I was making the right decisions.
OK, seriously, this is almost what I actually do. As most of you probably know, we supplement the grapes from our vineyard with fruit from other sources (mainly Adams county and near Erie.) Every year in early spring, I look at our current inventory levels, take an educated guess as to how much we'll sell of each wine in the next 18 months, and try to make sure I have enough bottles on hand.
I'd like to blame all of this on you folks, our loyal wine-drinkers. If you hadn't drunk as much Sauvignon Blanc, Steel Chardonnay, and Dry Rose last year as you did, I wouldn't be in this position. It would make my job a whole lot easier if you all would just let me know exactly how many days you expect to spend on your deck drink Riesling from May to August (and any other wines), and I'll do the math from there.
I think you see my problem. My crystal ball is pretty murky. When I was trying to predict how much wine to have on hand for early 2024 in the spring of 2023, I screwed up and didn't account for as much growth as we ended up having in 2023. Maybe chalk it up to my cynical nature perhaps. Or maybe the 2022s were just better than I thought (and if that's the case, watch out for the 2023s!) But you all proved me decisively wrong.
We are starting to get some of the white wines bottled (the Steel Chard was bottled just yesterday.) But that didn't help our current wine club offerings. We unfortunately didn't have enough on hand to be able to offer the white wines to all of our wine club members. For perspective, we have over 600 members, so that means we need to have at least that many bottles for our software system to work properly. But what that also means is that we still do have Sauvignon Blanc and Steel Chardonnay available, and folks who come in to pick up their wine can still substitute those wines back in to their club selection for the month.
In any case, I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and hope you now have a better understanding of how this comes about. Now, I just hope I didn't screw up again for 2025!
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