California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

LODI, Calif. (AP) — It's harvest time in California wine country, but many growers are struggling to sell their grapes as changing drinking habits have caused demand to plunge. The decline is forcing some growers to tear out vineyards that their families have grown for generations.

Wine sales have decreased by more than 20% over a five-year period, causing prices paid for grapes to drop and prompting California growers to take roughly a quarter of the state's vineyards out of production. Many growers are having to decide whether to harvest at a loss, leave grapes on the vine or replace vineyards with crops more in demand such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios and olives.

Third-generation grower Bill Berryhill said it means another year of losing money and wasting hundreds of tons of healthy grapes.

“It’s just sickening,” said Berryhill, standing in a vineyard of unsold merlot grapes. “You raise a beautiful crop, and it’s really a nice vintage this year, and you drop it on the ground. It’s sad. All your work is just down the toilet.”

Berryhill, who owns Berryhill Family Vineyards near Lodi in the San Joaquin Valley, said he can’t find buyers for grapes grown on 200 of his 500 acres (202 hectares). He plans to remove 50 acres (20 hectares) of vineyards when the harvest season is over.

“I will lose money for sure. It’s just a matter of how much,” Berryhill, 68, said. “This has been a big loser for three years now.”

At its peak during the pandemic, California had almost 600,000 acres (242,811 hectares) of vineyards, but farmers have removed or stopped actively growing wine grapes on roughly 25% of that land, said Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, which represents about 500 farmers statewide.

This year, about half of California’s wine grape crop entered the harvest season without contracts with buyers, compared with 70 to 80% with contracts in a typical year, Bitter said.

If they’re lucky, growers can sell their uncontracted grapes at a loss to buyers making concentrated syrup.

Even as growers have abandoned or removed tens of thousands of acres of vineyards in California in recent years, too many grapes are still being produced, Bitter said.

“The market is just so depressed that it’s difficult to grow them profitably,” he said. “Demand is not going up. It’s still continuing to decline.”

Kyle Collins, a Lodi-based operations manager with Allied Grape Growers, recently examined ripe grapes in a petite verdot vineyard in Lodi, one of California’s most productive wine regions.

“Unfortunately, we do not have a buyer for these grapes,” Collins said. “That’s unfortunately a reality for not just this vineyard but a lot of us around here.”

Besides hurting vineyards, the drop in sales has hit local businesses and workers, he said.

“That’s not getting into the pockets of the people doing the field labor, the farmworkers,” Collins said. “It does have a trickle effect in the economy.”

The downturn is a dramatic shift for the wine industry in California, which produces more than 80% of U.S. wine due to its unique geography and Mediterranean climate. For decades, California’s wine industry grew steadily as Americans, particularly baby boomers, developed a taste for cabernet, zinfandel, chardonnay and other varietals.

The most famous wine regions such as Napa and Sonoma Valley produced premium vintages while the Central Valley grew grapes for less expensive labels.

Wine sales peaked during the pandemic in 2021 when restaurants were closed and social gatherings restricted. People stocked up on wine and drank more at home.

But over the past five years, wine sales have declined sharply, and they’re expected to fall further this year.

In the U.S., sales of wine cases declined 23% from 427 million in 2020 to 329 million in 2025, while total wine spending fell 22% from $94 billion to $74 billion, according to First Citizens Bank, formerly Silicon Valley Bank, which produces an annual State of the Wine Industry Report.

California can’t export its excess inventory because wine consumption is down globally and it’s more expensive to produce in the U.S. than countries such as Argentina and Australia, Bitter said. In 2025, global wine consumption declined 2.7% from 2024 and 14% from 2018, with sharp declines in Europe and China, according to the International Organization of Vine and Wine.

There are a variety of forces driving the decline in wine sales. Baby boomers are aging out of the market while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns. Wine faces competition from craft beer, liquor and canned cocktails as well as cannabis.

“The kids just aren’t drinking as much,” Berryhill said. “And it’s not just wine, it’s whiskey and beer and everything. And then you’ve also got the competition with all the seltzers.”

Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.

“The next step in the healing process is not only balancing supply and demand, but now actually figuring out what it is that the other consumers want,” said Rob McMillan, chief wine strategist at First Citizens Bank.

The industry hopes the market will bottom out soon. Meanwhile, growers are absorbing heavy losses trying to hang on.

Berryhill, whose grandfather started growing grapes nearly 100 years ago, doesn’t plan to give up on wine even though it’s costing him.

“I love growing grapes. It’s in the blood,” Berryhill said. “Because I love them, I can weather this and I’ll fight through it.”

Workers operate farm machines at night to harvest wine grapes at Berryhill Family Vineyards in Clements, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

Merlot grapes hang on a vine at Berryhill Family Vineyards in Clements, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

Kyle Collins, a manager at Allied Grape Growers, looks at wine grapes in an abandoned vineyard in Lodi, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

Unsold wine grapes line a vineyard at Berryhill Family Vineyards in Clements, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

Freshly harvested grapes are piled in a storage container at Berryhill Family Vineyards in Clements, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is pleading for “a world built on interdependence” as he makes his final address to the General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

The U.N. leader has long implored leaders not to give up on cooperation and shared decision-making in the face of accelerating global challenges and increasing great-powers competition. Tuesday’s message took on additional urgency because he leaves office at the end of this year.

“The fault lines in our world are widening,” he said, citing geopolitical divides, wars, climate change and artificial intelligence. But instead of letting the future continue to veer toward fragmentation, transactionalism and mistrust, he called for “a world built on interdependence – and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social and technological connections.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

With wars raging,temperatures rising and artificial intelligence encroaching, leaders from across the planet converge at the United Nations on Tuesday to address each other and the world, airing their hopes, plans and grievances as the world body’s chief addresses them for the final time.

The annual high-level gathering at the U.N. General Assembly will be consumed with wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine,Sudan, Congo and Myanmar and a persisting question: Can the leaders do anything to end them?

And what can they do about the relentless rise of global warming threatening the future of the planet, the growing inequalities within and among nations, and shocks to the global economy as blocked shipping routes and supply chains increase the cost of living and slow growth?

The future of the United Nations will also definitely be on the agenda. At 81, its powers are still the victorious nations from World War II, not the 21st century’s major global players. The U.N.’s 193 member nations have agreed to a wide-ranging reform package that includes updating key institutions such as the powerful U.N. Security Council, where the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France hold inordinate sway because of their veto power. Reform, however, is easier said than implemented.

Behind the scenes, there will be speculation about who will lead the United Nations next. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ second five-year term ends Dec. 31 and no clear successor has emerged.

There is still no question that the U.N. remains the key gathering place for its 193 member nations and their leaders. Some 130 heads of state and government are expected to speak at the General Assembly starting Tuesday along with dozens of ministers.

Among the headliners: U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emanuel Macron. Both will speak Tuesday after Guterres’ opening “state of the world” address. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian speak Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whom New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani wanted arrested for his treatment of Palestinians in Gaza until he learned he has no such authority — will address the assembly on Thursday. For a second year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas won’t be coming to the U.N. because the U.S. has refused to give him a visa. He will nonetheless address the assembly by video the same day.

The United States, under its agreement with the U.N. to host the organization, is required to allow diplomats from all member nations to attend meetings.

Equally telling is who else isn’t coming. China’s President Xi Jinping is meeting Trump in Washington on Wednesday, yet he is skipping — some diplomats say snubbing — the U.N. gathering and sending a vice president instead. Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t coming either, and Indian President Narendra Modi has backed out.

France's U.N. ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, said it is “extremely critical” for world leaders this week to support the U.N. as the place where the world’s nations meet — especially at a time of such polarization.

“We believe in multilateralism," he said, "and we believe that the high-level week is the occasion for countries in the world to reaffirm that they prefer cooperation and dialogue to confrontation.”

There is no doubt it’s been a tough year for the world body. It has been pushed to the sidelines when it comes to its key responsibility of ensuring international peace and security and trying to end major conflicts in the Mideast and Ukraine. The U.S. failure to pay billions of dollars in outstanding arrears has left the organization’s finances in rocky shape.

Former U.N. deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch-Brown, a United Nations Foundation board member, said, “While the world still trusts the U.N., the global public is eager for change."

The future of artificial intelligence has pushed to the forefront of global concerns, with its speeding advances and the dawning recognition that there are no industry controls, let alone any global guardrails for a technology that has many advantages but also many disadvantages and unknowns.

Days before the global gathering, leaders of three major AI companies warned about the technology getting out of human control and called for a pause, but Trump dismissed their concerns as “a hoax,” and urged continued advances to keep the U.S. ahead of China.

The U.N. Security Council added a high-level meeting on AI to its agenda on Wednesday afternoon, a sign of the growing apprehension and need to address the issue. It was already slated to hold a high-level meeting on Ukraine with Zelenskyy on Wednesday morning.

For the U.N. chief, this will be his last assembly meeting with global leaders. He previewed his speech last week, telling U.N. reporters that power is shifting in “an era of deep uncertainty."

“At a time when the world faces three existential threats," he said, “international cooperation is more necessary than ever.”

Edith M. Lederer has covered international affairs for The Associated Press for more than a half century.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attends the Partnership for Multilateralism Summit on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

The flag of the United Nations flies during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

People pose as they arrive for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/David R Martin)