Every time I get onto Quicken to pay bills, I am unfortunately reminded of the troubles we are experiencing in this current economic slide (no, I didn’t say the R-word). Everyone tells me “don’t look at your 401k”, but with today’s technology and the fact that I am a techno-geek anyway, I have everything automatically updated and downloaded when I open our accounting software and I can’t help be see the damage. The sight makes me cringe more than tasting a corked bottle. Combine this with all the bailout talks, the recent gas prices (though, those have come down nicely finally), a forum question posed by a Bloomberg writer and the California harvest concerns I recently blogged about, it made me wonder how we were all modifying our wine purchasing behavior, if at all. Please, jump in and let us know!
As for us, I’d say our behavior has changed just a little bit. We’re always looking for that special bottle for less than $15, so that hasn’t changed much. However, we have reduced the number of trips to the wine aisle in the grocery store, to the wine merchants down the street and our general consumption of wine is down too. Possibly due to an unconscious feeling of “let’s drink a little less to stretch the cellar contents a bit.” However, we have not cancelled any of our cellar club memberships yet and we are certainly planning to drink some luxury premiums wines this holiday season. But, who knows if that changes soon too.
So, how will the wine industry be affected? Will we see demand reduced overall and have a drop off like the late 80′s and early 90′s? And what affect will this have on the quality of wines that enter the market as a result? It is said that during tough times, people will tend to stay home more and there is also evidence that alcohol intake stays the same or goes up, but will folks continue to choose vino as their beverage of choice or will this mean a stimulus for less expensive drinks like Beer?
Maybe Wine needs to get in line for a handout from the Government, too? 
Ed-
My buying habits have changed radically over the past few months, but really only on the cult/semi-cult mailer side. I can’t count how many mailers I’ve dropped off of, and I am now suddenly getting sizable allocations from wineries that I thought still had multi-year waiting lists.
Though dropping off mailers, I’m buying far more from my local merchants, and I’m focussing on closeouts, and bottles that are radically discounted. There are tons of bargains on the street now, and especially if you drink Burgundy (and can taste before you buy), there are insane deals to be had.
Just talked with the buyer at S.N.O.B and he says the distributors are experiencing a downswing in demand from restaurants, so he is taking advantage of some real deals and passing them onto customers like me!