The wine business is in trouble, sure. I won’t repeat the stats that spell too much vino chasing fewer drinkers.
But at the root of the problem is that wine’s hit a low not just in consumption but in the excitement cycle.
The paradox is that wine is arguably at its all-time apex of quality, education and consumer choice. There’s more great and good wines now. But wine culture has become menhhh: meaning less compelling compared to not that long ago.
It shouldn’t be this way. There are now more educated somms, MWs, and wine ambassadors, and way more wine writers, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, storytellers, Substackers, TikTokers and podcasters. And yet…the whole vinosphere has a deficit of juice.
Price of course is a big factor. Extortive restaurant wine prices, particularly in the U.S., take away the fun. When your once favorite edgy, cool wine tops $500 RETAIL, your main mission is no longer pleasure but the avoidance of getting fleeced.
Yet, the problem is wider and more general than affordability. As the western world wine market has matured, the vibe has splintered. On highway internet it’s borderline schizophrenia.
At the wine writer/nerd end, look our debates over technical details like “minerality,” alcohol levels, acidity and V.A. This is all important stuff to some but face it: no one falls in love with a pH.
At the other “lifestyle” end of social media, it may once have been novel to post photos online of a great bottle with lunch. Now is there anybody with an Instagram account who doesn’t do it (showing off hair, makeup and beachfront optional)? It’s become a tsunami—best not even go there lest you drown.
I’m very wary of nostalgia, but there was a time when drinking this or that bottle felt more exciting, edgy, awakening, mind-blowing or even soul-opening. There was urgency: You just had to drink this or that juice.
It was a function of a history. Wine awoke from its slumber in waves: in the 1970s after the “Judgement of Paris” and the birth of Super Tuscans, in the 1980s after Italy’s Methanol scandal, and in the 2000’s which began the explosion of obscure terroirs, heirloom grapes and even stinky no-sulfur wines. (Just to name a few points on the timeline.)
In simpler days when we weren’t so worried about frying in a changing climate, winemakers felt like revolutionaries: garagistes overturned the Bordeaux status quo, artisan farmer-producers the world over upped the idea of quality, challenged orthodoxies, and dared to produce their local wines for the world.
“You gotta try this!” was what I heard over and over. Of course we did. We were told and believed that wine was actually good for us—not some guilty pleasure. Pass the resveratrol.
Battles were fought for the soul of wine. Robert Parker vs. Jancis Robinson over Chateau Pavie’s 2003 vintage Saint-Emilion: Was it a hedonistic 99-point stroke of genius or a flop of a faux port? Or the scandal of Elio Altare taking a chainsaw to his father’s old wine casks to replace them with new barriques at the beginning of the Barolo wars. Or the debates over the sanctity of Pinot Noir or the purity among organic, biodynamic, cosmic or regenerative agriculture.
The earth seemed to be shaking beneath us and you just had to drink these wines: whether it was from Altare or Beppe Rinaldi in Barolo, Angelo Gaja in Barbaresco, Pavie or Valandraud in Saint-Emilion, Coulée de Serrant or Didier Dagueneau in France’s Loire, Biondi-Santi or Soldera in Montalcino, Selosse in Champagne or Ganevat in the Jura. And on and on. Of course the vigneron star system had its limits. Winemakers sometimes disappointed us by selling out to multinational corporations or Russian billionaires.
I was living in southern France for 00s and my cellar felt sad if it didn’t have bottles of Marcel Richaud’s Cairanne, Didier Barral’s Faugères, Domaine de las Grange des Peres red or a stock of Burgundy Chambole-Mussigny, Côte Rôtie or Nebbiolo-like Chatus produced by a wine cooperative in France’s Ardèche.
Then towards the end of that decade Etna erupted while I was researching my book Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey and Etna rosso became like Pokemon cards to a kid: I had to have ‘em all (though I had no idea how well they would or wouldn’t age).
Things boomed right up into Covid. In the states, wine consumption which was at two gallons per capita in 2000 hit three gallons in 2018-2021 and things have been edging downward since. Sure, Americans are drinking the same amount today as in 2009, but it sure feels different when the curve is on the way down.
Today at the high end, air has been let out of the bubble as some collectors and drinkers have been screwed by fraudsters. Award winning wine lists still have a dull platinum card sameness--displaying their vintages like stocks in an investment portfolio.
At the funky younger end, some of the proponents of “natural wines,” though much cleaner, (the wines I’m talking about) are still flogging arguments adjacent to conspiracy theories. There’s also a new generation of more reasoned, less dogmatic “post-natural” wines. In the middle of all that there’s a lot of way-marked-up Prosecco bubbling around.
For me the only way forward is to double down on place: on real wine scenes and terroirs—not stars or brands—from tiny Mamoiada in the mountains of Sardinia to France’s Loire or Jura to California field blenders. Great winemakers aren’t artists, but guides who point us to the possibilities of place. There is still a lot of work to be done just mapping and valorizing old world terroirs like, for example, Italy’s relatively young appellation system.
The bright side is that in Europe while many wineries sell out, there is a an uptick in small independent ones from a new generation seeking proximity to nature. Their clientele include those who want to know a winemaker by name. They are aided by a boom in wine tourism, which when done right can give wine drinkers a real connection to terroir. That is exciting.
Restaurants too can help show the way with focus. Overly broad lists—even great ones—often fail in in this era of information saturation.
On a recent trip to New York, my favorite meals were at restaurants I call “elemental” for fusing few ingredients prepared well without embellishment. To me a great wine list now should show a restaurant’s hand—it’s commitment to tell a story about a winegrowing part of the world whether its Austria, Alsace, Anjou, Alto-Adige, orÁlava, or Alexander Valley.
It should make us say, “Now this—baby Jesus in velvet knickers-- you gotta try.”
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I quote from the recent New York Times article on the Pinot Noir crisis.
“Nationwide, wine sales are at their lowest level in more than two decades, as people drink less amid growing public health warnings that alcohol is unhealthy. Sales have also suffered as many younger drinkers have found traditional wines stodgy and difficult to understand, and preferred canned cocktails, seltzers and nonalcoholic beers and spirits.”
So I don’t believe this is subjective. Everything is cyclical and wine has had its ups and downs for a long time. It will find its groove again and a new scene Will emerge from the ashes.
Dear Robert,
Without doubt, wine is lacking energy today and has become boring. This happened because we thought it had to belong to the luxury world, just like a pair of shoes or an expensive watch. But it is not like that: wine is a cultural, emotional product, with an ancient and universal value.
As you say, the right way is to focus on the place. Today, wine must be a way of traveling; it must take us to its places of origin and let us discover different cultures, flavors, and people. By rediscovering the human, cultural, and ancient value of being together and feeling new emotions, we will also rediscover wine.
We all need to understand that wine cannot follow the stock market logic of endless growth. It can also have adjustments in volume, and an artisan must understand that there are years where you need to reduce production—maybe even uprooting some vineyards to plant olive trees or fruit trees, reducing the total quantity.
The big mistake was that even quality wine moved from an artisanal logic to an industrial logic. Still, wine remains something unique and irreplaceable; there is not, and never will be, a real alternative. The King is dead, long live the King!