What is in this article?:
- 2013 restaurant wine price forecast: Stability
- On tap: More profit from wine
- State of the wine industry 2013
U.S. wine producers want to boost per-bottle prices this year. Not going to happen, their banker says.
A good-news, bad-news forecast for the domestic wine industry from wine lending giant Silicon Valley Bank contains mainly good news for restaurants. Flat prices, good quality and a flood of bulk wine imports should enable operators to hold wine prices steady across most price points in 2013, keeping restaurant wine program profits intact.
That’s the gist of the Silicon Valley Bank’s annual State of the Wine Industry report, as viewed from the restaurant operator’s perspective. The bank bases its analysis on “its in-house expertise as one of the largest bankers to the West Coast wine industry for nearly 20 years, a proprietary database of more than a decade of wine industry financials, ongoing research and a survey of 450 West Coast wineries.”
It’s a unique data set that only a lender could compile. The report’s author, Rob McMillan, founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s wine division, sees the results as a mixed bag for wine producers.
“While we are quite optimistic about the future prospects in the U.S. wine business, a combination of events will continue to hold back robust growth in 2013,” he says. “Economic uncertainty, slowing domestic GDP, lack of economic leadership worldwide, aging boomers, and a heavy 2012 harvest provide headwinds against forecasting higher growth.”
Here are some the top-line conclusions from the SVB report.
