That's the conclusion of Chris Bitter, writing in Terrain. This means "less improvement in the wine inventory glut than hoped for, and grape demand isn’t likely to see any improvement in 2026.

The crush wasn’t uniformly small, he writes. Demand for white grapes held up better than that for red grapes, and the 2025 Sauvignon Blanc harvest was a record. Moreover, the North Coast has seen essentially no reduction in total grape output over the past two years.

Prices were down again in 2025, though the prices are backward-looking and not indicative of where the market stands today. Grape prices have lagged inflation in almost all districts over the past decade and are down in absolute terms in three. Napa is the exception.

Growers who were fortunate enough to have sold their fruit in 2025 received lower prices. The overall weighted average price per ton declined by 4% to $987, and the average price for sales between unrelated parties fell by 8%. Unrelated-party prices fell in 16 of 17 districts.

"Because wine sales are still deteriorating, I’m not expecting any improvement in the inventory-to-sales ratio under my base-case scenario." XX writes. "Based on my projection that around 200 million cases of California wine will be sold between July 2025 and June 2026, I expect there to be about 18 months’ supply at the end of June 2026 — the same as where we were heading into the 2025 harvest.

I believe a supply of approximately 14 months would represent a balanced inventory position. So, unless there is a turnaround in wine sales, or a substantial quantity of inventory is transitioned to non-wine uses, we are likely to still be very long on inventory heading into the 2026."