California Wine Is Spending Again, But on What Exactly? || California Wine || Wine Business

There was a time when “let’s go to wine country” didn’t need much planning. You’d just go. Drive out, taste a few wines, maybe join a club, come home with a boot full of bottles and a mild headache you didn’t regret.

Lately, that rhythm feels off.

Tasting rooms are quieter. Weekends aren’t what they used to be. And the energy that once felt automatic now feels… negotiated. Not gone, just thinner. More fragile.

So when California wine regions started floating the idea of adding a barely noticeable fee to every bottle sold—one or two percent, pocket change really—it didn’t feel radical. It felt inevitable.

The idea is simple enough: collect a little from everyone, pool it together, and finally give regional wine organizations the kind of budget that lets them plan instead of panic. Marketing. Education. Visibility. Stability. The kind of things that quietly disappeared when sales slowed and pandemic adrenaline wore off.

Temecula tried it first. Santa Barbara followed. Others are lining up or at least watching closely. Early numbers look good. More visits. More coverage. More noise. Enough to make you think, maybe this is the fix.

But the more you sit with it, the more uncomfortable questions creep in.

Because if a few extra cents really can save wine country, what does that say about how close it was to the edge in the first place?

The assumption behind these improvement districts is that people still want wine country—just not enough reminders. That if we nudge them a bit harder, tell the story a bit louder, they’ll come back the way they always did.

That may be true in places. For some producers, it already is. But it also feels like fighting the last war.

Look at how other drinks have handled downturns. When whiskey lost its shine years ago, nobody tried to save it by convincing people to visit more distilleries. The focus shifted. Drinking occasions changed. Formats changed. The culture around it evolved. Demand came first; tourism followed.

Wine, on the other hand, keeps returning to the map. The region. The place. As if geography alone can restart a habit.

That’s why the pushback in places like Sonoma feels less reactionary than it might seem on the surface. The argument isn’t really about the money. It’s about sequence. About whether we’re funding answers before agreeing on the question.

Because more marketing only works if the message lands. And lately, wine’s message has been… familiar. Comfortably familiar. Maybe too comfortable.

One producer called it putting the cart before the horse. Another suggested thinking bigger—state-wide, even. Not dozens of regions competing for attention, but one clear voice reminding people why California wine matters at all.

That idea lingers longer than the success metrics.

Because if every region adds a fee, ramps up promotion, and pushes harder for the same audience, what happens then? More noise. More pressure. Slightly higher prices everywhere. And still the same underlying reality: fewer people building their lives around wine.

None of this means improvement districts are a bad idea. In fact, they might be the only thing keeping some regional organizations alive. And that matters. Without them, the silence would be worse.

But they feel like scaffolding, not architecture.

What wine seems to be grappling with isn’t funding—it’s friction. The friction between how wine sees itself and how people actually drink today. Shorter evenings. Smaller groups. Different priorities. Less patience for ritual, more interest in flexibility.

You can’t solve that with impressions alone.

So maybe those extra cents buy time. Time to experiment. Time to rethink. Time to stop assuming that getting people back to wine country automatically means they’ll fall back in love with wine.

Because love, like demand, doesn’t come from reminders. It comes from relevance.

And that’s the part no fee can quietly fix.

Is the Michelin Man ready to arrive into wine country and take parking spot? || Michelin in Wine || Wine News

The announcement that Michelin, the gold standard of restaurant ratings, is moving into winery evaluations has surely created interest in the food and drink media. Some people are afraid, some are unclear, but the majority of us are just fascinated. When an institution that has changed how the world eats for over 125 years shifts its focus to wine, it is sure to cause debate.

Naturally, several questions arise. Will Michelin dominate wine criticism as it has restaurants? Is the iconic 100-point score finally on its way out? What about long-time, on-the-ground reviewers like me? Will we be replaced by a super-panel of jet-setting wine experts?

At the present, it's difficult to say. Details are still few, and this uncertainty is exacerbated by the fact that the wine business is going through a difficult period. A recent news release offered some basics: Michelin will assess vineyards on a scale of one, two, or three grapes: "very good," "excellent," and "exceptional." There will also be a "Selected" category for dependable, consistent-quality wineries, comparable to Michelin's Bib Gourmand for restaurants.

The evaluations will be based on five major criteria: agricultural quality, winemaking technique, expression of uniqueness (which appears to mean terroir), balance in finished wines, and consistency between vintages, with an emphasis on wines that age gracefully. Tastings will be conducted by panels comprised of former sommeliers, specialised reviewers, and former winemakers.

That's really all we know about the "how." According to the San Francisco Chronicle, winery inspectors will not be anonymous, as Michelin's famously secretive restaurant reviewers are. Given that many top-tier estates do not encourage drop-in visitors, this strategy makes sense.

In terms of "where," Michelin will begin operations in Bordeaux and Burgundy in 2026, which should come as no surprise to anybody familiar with the wine industry.

The more intriguing question is, "why?"

On the surface, wineries appear to be a natural extension of Michelin's hospitality universe, which includes restaurants since 1900 and hotels since the 1920s. Michelin introduced "Keys" to assess hotels last year, replicating its Star system. Wine seems like the natural next step.

Still, there is a significant difference. When Michelin began assessing restaurants and hotels, it was striking new ground. For decades, however, wine criticism has been a crowded field. So, will Michelin focus only on well-known brands, or will it utilise its power to discover new producers and stories?

Plenty of open questions.

This change might alternatively be interpreted as a clever rearrangement of existing components. Six years ago, Michelin purchased Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, the newspaper that popularised the now-common 100-point system. Whether you like it or not, that approach still reigns supreme in the wine market; I personally assign hundreds of such ratings through blind tastings each month. Michelin now appears to be ready to provide an alternative.

Restaurant and wine reviews are not the same sport. Restaurants use a variety of ingredients, processes, and styles that are at least somewhat objective. Wine, on the other hand, lives and dies according to perception and palate. That is why blind tasting is so important—it keeps things fair and frequently surprising.

I can't tell you how many times blind tastings have changed my assumptions, both ways. Legendary growers occasionally fall short, and lesser-known wines quietly outperform. Those times are precisely why wine criticism is so intriguing.

So yet, Michelin hasn't said much about what this implies for the Wine Advocate, other than to emphasise that the Michelin name has immense worldwide weight. Many insiders believe that elements of the Advocate—such as its knowledge, data, or tasting resources—will be included into the new system. After all, why reinvent the wheel when you have a perfectly fine one?

It's also feasible that both techniques can coexist: Wine Advocate will continue to score bottles by bottle, while Michelin would provide a larger, producer-level stamp of approval.

And, surely, there is the commercial aspect to consider. Michelin's restaurant guidelines are partially funded by tourism organisations looking for exposure. A similar paradigm may arise in wine, with regional wine groups contributing to the bill—though traditionally, those budgets have been a bit tight.

Whatever shape this all takes, one thing is certain: Michelin's entry will bring a greater focus to wine. That's a nice thing. I've always felt that more reputable voices lead to better-informed customers.

Wine could use all of the good attention it can get right now. If an internationally acknowledged authority reminds people that wine is part of a healthy lifestyle, it benefits everyone—from vineyard workers and winemakers to reviewers like myself who get to taste and tell the tale.

Welcome to the tasting bar, Michelin Man.