Good news for wine drinkers. Because growers planted too many grapes in California, prices are expected to drop to their lowest levels in five years.

Local wineries like Mazza Vineyards say that grape glut won't affect them, because they make their wines with local or regional grapes. “As a producer it really doesn’t have that much significance on us, because we’re not purchasing grapes from the west coast,” Bob Mazza said.  “Most of our grapes are grown locally or regionally at least so it’s not going to have that much of an impact in terms of our supply chain.”

Mazza admitted though that the over-planting of vines out west is significant. "California has a tendency to plant acres of grapes in the thousands. So when they’ve planted 2-3 thousand acres of grapes 3 to 4 years ago, that’s fairly significant," he said.  "Just to give you an impact, that’s the amount of wine grape acreage that’s located in Erie County, so they plant in one year what we grow totally in this area."  And he said that's strictly wine grapes, and not counting juice grapes.

That means the price drop nationally will hit local wineries through price competition on store shelves. “Where it will impact us though is on the wholesale sector of our business,” Mazza said.  “We’ll be competing against these perhaps lower priced wines on the shelves at Wegmans, and Tops and Country Fairs and Sheetz, so all that will have a certain effect on us,  but it’s kind of cyclical.”

Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores will continue to offer a broad selection of wines from all over the world at a range of prices to meet the different interests of Pennsylvania wine drinkers. 

Shawn Kelly, Press Secretary for the PLCB issued this statement when asked when the price drop may reach the Pennsylvania Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores:

Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores will continue to offer a broad selection of wines from all over the world at a range of prices to meet the different interests of Pennsylvania wine drinkers. 

The grape supply isn't the only issue for wine prices though. While baby boomers have been the mainstay of the wine industry, millennials are enjoying many more choices from craft beers to canned ready to drink cocktails, so wine consumption has dropped for the first time in 25 years.

"A lot of the distillers and even the brewers have products in cans that are cocktails if you will ready to drink, they’re already mixed for you and that seems to be the rage right now," Mazza said, adding, "...not sure it’s a trend, more of a fad, I’m not sure in 2 to 3 years you’ll see any of those products on the shelves."

In all that choice, Mazza sees a silver lining with the pending wine price drop.  "So I think the fact that wines will perhaps be a little better priced will serve one benefit for the wine industry, it will get millennials to start drinking wine because of the price point.”