Post Lock-Down Opportunity for Wineries

The above chart from the USDA is a little cluttered, but the dotted lines show how US consumers have been moving from eating at home, and somewhere around 2011 shifted to eating away from home. Not earth-shattering observations that two-income families with complex schedules moved away from traditional family meals. But why should we care? We should care because an interesting thing has happened with wine demand in the last 7 weeks.

How Will We Recover from the Fires?

    Was That Just Last Week?

Without full containment yet, many are already looking forward to begin the recovery, even with still blurry and red eyes.

When I think about the wildfires that scoured the North Coast of California this past week, I come up with a hodgepodge of visuals – waking up to the red glow out of my bedroom window on Sunday night when it all started, a bulldozer cutting a firebreak a half mile from my home Tuesday night and saving my block, watching the heartbreaking sight of a neighbor’s home burn to the ground on a ridge Monday morning, seeing blood red sunsets, the feeling of relief when power finally came back on, and being unable to sleep listening to my cellphone screaming out Nixle Alerts every half hour telling me about a new evacuation, wondering when it would be my turn.

There are so many stressful points from the past week from which I have a lot of new stories to tell, and lots of pictures that I’ve shared on social media. It was a week that seemed more like a month, reinforced by a blur of numbingly shocking scenes.