The tenets of an industry many centuries old have already been laid out for us as a road map to deal with industrial down cycles. Like a brilliant colleague of mine recently said, “Everyone loves capitalism until they see this side of it.”

When any product commoditizes, the businesses that successfully diversify their models will likely be the survivors of this contraction period.

The wine industry and grape growing industry have long been supported by distillation, vinegar production, and phenolic extractions that could be used by the cosmetic industry.

Nearly all of the mature wine industries from California throughout the globe use distillation as a relief valve in times of over supply. Distillation creates the option to respond to the low/no alcohol segments that are seeing significant growth, by percentage. Vinegar too can be distilled. There remain options to appellate and classify both vinegars and spirits products if they are distilled within the same state in which they were vinified. The spirits nor vinegar markets are saturated with products that use evocative wine place names as marketing tools.

Wine industry legend Joe Ciatti told me last year how he started Four Monks Vinegar during a time of oversupply that grew into a huge success before he started the Ciatti Company, brokering bulk wines and wine grapes throughout the globe.

Mr. Torey Arvik, former head of R&D for Jackson Family Wines, is a wealth of knowledge on anthocyanin and resveratrol extraction for multiple purposes.

The future of the grape growing business depends upon our creativity and willingness to step outside of our recent traditions, perhaps to look further into the past so we can see the future.