Imagine your VP of Sales announcing they’ve ditched CRM for a Rolodex. Or your finance director saying Excel is too modern, so they’re switching to chalkboard. And yet, here we are — 2025 — squinting at billbacks for hours on end and sending reps to visit every retail account like the entire...

What Does Centralized Pricing and Promotions Management Actually Look Like? See Now! If a global pandemic and material scarcity in the supply chain weren’t already a factor, the recently released State of the Wine Industry Report 2022 (SVB) clearly shows that changing industry trends are putting...

The old cliché goes something like “wine is the only art you can drink,” but there should be a saying for those working inside the industry “selling wine is an art you can perfect with science.” For anyone in operations, finance, or sales in the three-tier wine industry, you know just how...

Green shoots: Is this a “transitional moment”? With spring getting underway, this month’s California Report assesses vineyard conditions, grape demand, and whether the bulk wine and grape markets are seeing the first tentative green shoots of recovery: Is the industry in a “transitional moment”...

Market rich in strategic buying opportunities With 2026 already six weeks old, this month’s California Report relays the bulk wine and grape activity levels that we have seen since the turn of the year: What has been receiving buyer interest, and at what kind of pricing? As well as updating our...

2025 in review; looking ahead to 2026 This month’s California Report looks back at 2025 on the bulk wine and grape markets and ahead to what we might expect to see in 2026. Bulk inventory charts for a number of 12-month ranges – and updated for January – are included, so too SipSource US wholesaler...

The wizard behind the curtain. That has always been the image that comes to mind when I ask wine people about data from their distributors. We’ve made headway on pulling back the curtain on distributor data, thanks to our relationship with VIP (Vermont Information Processing) and our ability to...

"In the dark": Wine industry crying out for certainty October rainfall complicated harvest at the end of an already challenging growing season, characterized by cooler-than-normal weather and slower ripening. Growers held on for as long as possible in an attempt to attain requisite Brix levels, and...

Harvest fairly smooth; bulk activity ticks up California’s 2025 winegrape harvest is moving into its latter stages. Timing, particularly in Coastal areas, is at the later end of normal parameters due to an accumulation of minor weather events, including a three-week stretch of lower-than-normal...