Wine Marketing: Isn’t It Obvious?

It seems like every conversation in the wine industry today begins and ends with the same topic—what to do about the fact that younger people are not drinking wine with the same frequency as the baby boomers who are aging out of the market.

Sales are down in most categories and the neo-prohibitionists are on the warpath about alleged (and unproven) adverse health effects. The future does not look promising.

But I found this article by Eric Asimov in the NY Times to be quite interesting. (It’s behind a paywall)

Over the last couple of years, as I’ve traveled around North America and Europe, I’ve tried to keep my eyes on what young adults were drinking. Almost everywhere I’ve been, the sorts of restaurants and wine bars like Frog that attract a younger clientele are filled with people who are drinking natural wine.

This observation is of course impressionistic. He provides no hard figures to support the impression. But I have to say I’ve observed the same thing, although these days I’m much less traveled than Asimov. The “hot” wine bars have extensive natural wines on their list.

As Asimov points out, this might well be because of the “healthy” image of natural wines, although the premise is absurd. Whatever its health effects might be, alcohol is alcohol whether it was topped off with sulfur or not. The more likely explanation is cultural. As one commenter cited by Asimov reports:

“They’re excited about wine, but they come in with preconceived ideas of what certain grapes are,” said Alexandra McCown, 35, an owner of Frog. “It’s kind of hard to sell a chardonnay. Everybody has their idea of what it is because their moms were drinking it.”

Isn’t this the obvious inference to make. Do you listen to the same music as your parents? You might respect their listening habits and have fond memories of dancing around the living room to the sound of Fleetwood Mac but that is likely not what’s on your daily playlist. I don’t listen to Lawrence Welk and Perry Como, my son doesn’t listen the Beatles or Bowie, and his kids don’t listen to Nirvana or Green Day.

So why would we expect young adults today to drink Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon?

I know these are considered to be “noble grapes” inherently more interesting than the thousands of other varieties that people make wine from. But this idea of a “noble grape” is absurd, especially given modern viticultural practices and winemaking techniques that allow winemakers to make good wine from hundreds of other varietals.

Cultural values change—literature, film, music, video games, and especially food preferences undergo significant shifts as the result of generational change. Why would we expect wine preferences to stay the same?

Wine culture has always taken traditions very seriously in part because everything about wine is slow. It takes years to grow a vine that can produce quality fruit, it takes years to develop a productive  vineyard, and it takes years to age a wine so it shows depth and interest. The rhythms of the wine world are most conducive to stasis and stability.

This is what has to change. The wine industry has to be more nimble in projecting an image of vitality. Complain all you want about natural wine; it has been successful at projecting such an image. Change happens quickly these days and although we can’t do much about the physiology of grapes we can do something about cultural expectations. We oldsters might not be happy about it but the future is not ours.