Left coast wine bidness

[hotwine]

Interesting article in bloomberg.com this morning about the wine business in Napa: •Vineyard Defaults Surge as Lost California Land Values Undermine Napa Wine".

Must confess to a touch of Schadenfreud at that. The writer says that consumers are trading down, going for lower-priced juice from other areas, leaving highly-leveraged Napa growers in the lurch; nothing is said about the impact on the European trade, but it may well be that some of them are also mortgaged to the hilt.

I don't buy high-end Napa juice, so I don't really care. But I'm seeing a leveling-off in the recent trend of price escalation for European wines, and I'm grateful for that.