‘A lot of people don’t want to speak out on this because it’s become such a politicized issue,’ a winemaker says.
LOS ANGELES—Amid the clamor surrounding President Donald Trump’s whirlwind tariff announcements over the past week, some in California’s wine industry are taking a sanguine view.
Stuart Spencer, a winemaker and executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission, based in the state’s Central Valley, said recent media coverage has mostly focused on the perspective of restaurants and retailers that rely on imports, and ignored that of growers and winemakers.
“Speaking for many California grape growers, I think many of them would feel [the tariffs are] supportive and feel it’s necessary to level the playing field,” Spencer said. “Because they’re not competing on a level playing field.”
Growers and producers in the California wine industry have in recent years taken a beating amid waning global demand and a flood of cheap, subsidized imports, leading many farmers no choice but to let thousands of acres of grapes die on the vine.
Since the pandemic, small, family-owned operations in the Central Valley, where around two-thirds of the state’s total output is produced, have been especially hard hit.
Jeff Bitter, a fourth-generation farmer and president of Allied Grape Growers, an industry organization based in Fresno, said grape growers and winemakers are tired of hearing about how bad tariffs are.
“In the wine industry, they’re not bad across the board. They’re not bad for everyone involved, particularly on the production side. If you’re a California grape grower or winemaker that doesn’t import, then tariffs are not bad for you. They’re perfectly fine,” Bitter said.
Recent media coverage of California’s wine industry has highlighted unease about Trump’s threat to impose a 200-percent tariff on all wine, Champagne, and alcohol products from the European Union.
