Every day, it seems a new article is published in the mainstream wine press: “Younger generations are not falling in love with wine”. These inevitably are followed by suggestions from someone explaining how and why this is happening and suggesting ways for wineries to target these potential customers and get them to fall in love with wine. Every time I see one of these I hope and hope that I will find something insightful or innovative or different, and so far 95% of them fail miserably.
Now, I’m not here to say I have the answer; I do have opinions, as anyone who knows me would assume, but I’m not writing this to solve the problem, no. Instead, I want to point out a VERY obvious and simple issue with the solutions that are currently being presented.
For a very long time, the wine industry has relied on a very cookie-cutter approach to wine. Make wine memorable, demand that people learn about it, and avoid allowing people to drink it how they want, but rather educate them to how the industry wants them to drink it. They tell you not to slurp it through a straw, don’t add ice to it, or mix it with other beverages. Ok, I get it, but even as a new generation begins to discover people consuming wine in more traditional ways, but “less traditional” wines like “natural wine,” the industry continues to complain inevitably that people are fooling themselves about what tastes good. (Imagine if that happened in food?)
Every debate today about how to get more wine drinkers drinking seems to start with “How to make learning about wine more fun for new consumers.” Now, as my 10-year-old son illustrates every day, when I tell him let’s go learn about anything before doing it, his eyes glaze over, and he tries to hide. Imagine asking him to first learn football history and strategy before watching a game or kicking a ball. Or wait, sorry son we need to learn Python before we can play Mario Brothers. I’d lose him in seconds.
Why can’t we just ask people to choose a glass of wine based on what they like, not what we think they should like? Or pick their next wine by finding a label they connect with? Why can’t we let a generation of Coca-Cola drinkers feel valid in their preference for, wait for it…. off-dry red wines? Que horror!
Today, we don’t have an issue with people wanting to taste, drink, and explore. We have a problem with the industry letting go of what once worked well in marketing their bottles in place of a new style of communication for these bottles. As you can see from the ballooning N/A drinks category, curiosity for flavor is not lacking.
So for the sake of making this article more interesting and giving the wine industry something to mock and ignore, here are X ways, I believe, you can sell more wine:
- Packaging: Mix it up, new labels, formats, sizes, and closures. Why aren’t all wines as easy to open as beer? Why is the only standard format for a wine based on a size so large that if you drink it by yourself you end up drunk? And if you save half of it for later it might oxidize and be wasted.
- Service: Wine on tap, why the hell not? I don’t need to physically see a bottle to enjoy a glass of wine. Why can’t I rock up a wine bar and buy bubbles on tap? Stays fresh, tastes great, and I can drink what I want, without having to buy a bottle. Not to mention the fortified and dessert wine categories, this is IDEAL for them; we don’t all need to drink 50-year-old port wine opened by fire and finished in one night, so we are left with a hangover for the ages. What about a nice small glass for a nightcap at the end of a meal from the tap or personal-sized bottles? Tawny ports would benefit highly from this.
- Education: Drop it. Fuck it. Just get over it, WE DO NOT NEED TO BE EDUCATED to enjoy a beverage. No other category of food, drink, or consumables has us so worried that we might get it wrong. Wine education is to help regions sell more wine, not for consumers to enjoy wine more. I DO NOT NEED TO KNOW THE soil types of the Mosel to enjoy a nice glass of Riesling. I MAY enjoy learning this as a personal endeavor, but it is not necessary to enjoy the wine.
- Embrace Sustainable: The next generation looks at a world that is very different from the one we live in today. If you do not prioritize sustainability, don’t be surprised when a younger drinker won’t give you the time of day. Consumers today are buying unfamiliar products when they see that the product is working to do something to make the world a better place. They are willing to explore new categories and products if they know you are helping to make the world a little bit better place. They are asking you for this, and you are ignoring them. Oh, and DROP YOUR HEAVY BOTTLES NOW — They do a poor job of compensating for your lack of awareness of the consumer’s needs.
- Join the Drinks World: The wine industry has to stop thinking it’s the center of the universe. The industry has to realize that it is part of a drinking landscape and not necessarily the most important or most relevant. Any wine professional knows at the end of a wine event the only things being poured are tall cold beers. Consumers today are drinking less for health and other reasons and this is NOT BAD. It’s great; more and more customers come to my shop not looking for the cheapest wine but upgrading to a better bottle to share with friends or to have less wine but better quality. Yes, this does mean we need to rethink our products and price points, but that is ok; it’s something called “Change,” a concept that continues to occur no matter how much an industry tries to stop it.
- And Finally, SHUT UP and LISTEN: Stop leading with your wine knowledge and personal history and start leading with your ears. What is the consumer asking, saying, or requesting? From time to time I lead tours, both for wine geeks and non-wine geeks alike. Often, when guiding a group, I’ll notice someone drifting away, focused on something else. Rather than force them back to the script I like to drift with them, find out what interests them, and give value to their interests. The person will never forget that moment when you cared about them and they likely won’t forget who you are. Follow the conversation, don’t lead it, share, engage, and invest.
I said it before, and I sadly have to repeat it: The consumers are not looking for new wines, the wineries and the wine press are looking for new consumers, but sadly, not with new stories.
