After more than a quarter century tracking the seemingly endless growth of the wine industry, Rob McMillan was finally vindicated last year as California’s vigneron of doom.

McMillan is the author of Silicon Valley Bank’s annual state of the US wine industry report, and the 2025 edition was a doozy. Since 2018, the bank has warned the industry that a correction in demand would shake the wine world. That reality is now here, with 2025 revenue down, the volume of wine produced dropping and a “bumpy bottom” in demand forecast in 2027 and 2028.

“I was very direct when the industry was going fine, but nobody ever likes it when you say things are disastrous,” McMillan said. “Now, everybody understands what I’m talking about.”

In the 1990s, McMillan said, options among beer and spirits “really sucked” and an entire generation of baby boomers gravitated towards wine. The industry responded, particularly on the premium side of things where wines start in the $20-$40 range, and areas like Napa Valley and Sonoma county rose to the occasion.

“My generation really enjoyed learning about wine,” he said, noting the major addendum that many boomers lived through some “particularly generous times from an economic standpoint”, which helped the surge in the premium wine category. “We would go and geek out about how many days of sunlight the vines would get, what the sugar was like at harvest.”