Wine Institute of California to close London office

By Erin Smith

Published: 18 August, 2016

Despite the recent success of California wines in the UK, The Wine Institute of California UK announced today it will be closing its doors.

The office is closing due to severe budgets cuts to the Market Access Programme, which was supported by the Department of Agriculture in Washington DC. The office is set to close on Friday 30th September, 2016.

Wine Institute of California's John McLaren Wine Institute of California's John McLaren

John McLaren, the UK director of the Wine Institute of California sent out an announcement via email and stated: "Venla Freeman and I have greatly enjoyed working with you all, and look forward to our paths crossing again in other circumstances in the future."

California wines have been doing a particular well in recent times. McLaren said in a interview last year at the Golden State Tasting, that Californian wines were having the strongest performance they had in 20 years.

McLaren said at the time: "California is in a better place than it has been in 20 years."

Since then California wines have continued to shine and it was obvious how much the work The Wine Institute of California's work was paying off. The most recent Go West! tasting had more than 300 wines from Oregon, Washington and California and attendance was high.

The Wine Institute of California has offices in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, People's Republic of China, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The European Union's 28-member countries were the largest exporting markets valued at $518 million.

Both McLaren and Freeman will be reachable until the end of September.

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