California wine grape growers are burning their vines, and disease isn’t the reason

California growers have removed more than 100,000 acres of healthy vineyards in recent years, according to industry estimates. In the last two, 1.2 million tons of wine grapes have reportedly been left to rot on the vine. This may seem counterintuitive, especially with wildfires recently threatening wine-producing regions elsewhere, including the Okanagan Valley and France’s famed Bordeaux area . The reason for the “ explosion ” of removal isn’t disease but demand, and the issue isn’t unique to California.

Facing low sales and a “historic drop in wine consumption,” the industry is experiencing a reset, experts told National Post. In California, which produces roughly 80 per cent of U.S. wine , the Canada-United States trade war and the resulting provincial bans on American alcohol have exacerbated the situation.

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“The lack of the Canadian market isn’t responsible for 100,000 acres of California wine grapes disappearing in the last five years, but it makes things worse,” says Mike Veseth, an economist who specializes in global wine markets and author of The Wine Economist .

Vineyards are disappearing around the world, including France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Chile and Argentina, adds Veseth. “It’s not just California.” The supply adjustment is relatively recent, but the decline in consumption is not — though not every year and not everywhere. “As we look back at the numbers, it’s clear that globally, this has been going on for 20 years.”

Canada was the largest foreign export market for California wine before retaliatory boycotts began in early 2025. Provincial bans on U.S. alcohol are having “a big effect,” says Robin Goldstein, deputy director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics at UC Davis. “ Canada also makes great wine , but it’s a limited amount of wine from a limited number of places because of climate, so we export a huge amount to Canada, not just from California, but the Pacific Northwest and some from the East Coast.”

Identity plays a major role in influencing our choices as consumers, says Antonia Mantonakis, a professor of marketing and consumer psychology and a fellow at the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont. “The whole trade war has really highlighted our identity as Canadians, but it’s not just our identity as Canadians that influences our choices. It’s what we call a dissociative identity. So America, more than ever, has become a dissociative identity for us as Canadians.”