Relationship with Wine: It's Complicated!

How can wine ever hope to compete with drinkers under 30 in some of the most dynamic markets globally? Across Europe, consumers hitting adulthood around the turn of the millennium (aka Generation Y) are choosing beer, cocktails and mixers over wine. Maybe the traditional image of wine is playing against itself. It seems like wine marketers are just failing to connect with the new generation of guzzlers.

French, Italian and Spanish wines for years have been loosing traction with younger drinkers and lagging in the race against beer and spirits. Surprisingly, this is especially true in those traditional, wine producing countries with long established traditions of wine at the dinner table.

Accessibility, risk loving and fun are a few of the sentiments evoked by competing giant brands Red Bull, Coca Cola, Absolute, Bacardi, Budweiser and Dos Equis. They often express humour, friendship, sharing, travel and care free moments. More personalities than brands, these are friends that Gen-Y can identify with. Brands that reflect the values these drinkers recognise and respect. This includes overcoming social boundaries and conventional ways of thinking: ‘Brand Wine’ doesn’t come close. If top brand beers are the friend waiting at the school gates after the final bell sounds, then wine might be the lecturer calling for hush and order as the class heads in the other direction.

Social media can provide some anecdotal insights into values the masses hold dear. For a brand to exist on social media, it must have personality. Browsing some of the most popular You Tube videos of the past years gives some valuable insights into the values we need to nurture as wine communicators.’ Gangnam Style’ Psy, ‘That Really Hurt’ Charlie, The Evolution of Dance mover and shaker, the Don’t Taze Me Bro activist, The Harlem Shake crews and the ‘I Like Turtles’ zombie. These personalities bring spontaneity, originality, novelty, authenticity and a challenge to the status quo. Often this is done with catchy music, cute visuals, humanity and ridicule. Most commonly it’s all about fun.

Relationships grow on shared location, shared time and shared interests. Relationships thrive on shared attitudes and shared humour. Craft Beer in the USA and beyond has seen inspiring growth over the past decade. But Craft Beer isn’t popular as the cool kid at school. It’s the 21 year old dot com millionaire with vision, attitude and direction: The kind of personality that’s welcome at a party of social revolutionaries. So when the world of vine has so many personality wines of poise, attitude and wit, why do we still have issues in telling others about this?

We’d appreciate your thoughts: Which wines evoke that freshness, quirkiness and attitude we need to take us into the next decade?

NOT-SO-CHEAP THRILLS

When one of the most experienced Wine Masters in the world is teaching you the finer nuances of tasting wine, you do tend to listen. Over time, with enough listening, you even begin to learn a thing or two.

Something a lot of us struggle with is “how do you teach someone to taste??” I mean, we were all born with a tongue and a nose – we can smell, we can taste. What else is there?

What we’re learning in fact is not tasting or smelling; but differentiating! I have tasted my fair share of wine in the past, and in all that time I have enjoyed it without any problems. Going through all these systematic tastings however, I am suddenly learning to single out unique smells and tastes from the obvious “wine” flavor that I so love.

It’s a lot like looking at a work of art. You have the option of looking at something, appreciating it, and moving on; or you can step a little closer and take a look at the individual streaks of paint and the impressions made my the tiny hairs of the paintbrush as the artist once caressed his vision to life.

You could of course decide that you couldn’t really care for such details, but at this stage of my wine naissance, just the thrill of discovering that hint of pineapple or the massive slap of oak propels me further along this adventure.

A small part of me is worried though about losing my wine-innocence. I like being able to enjoy wine for what it is without really thinking about it much. I hope I can still continue to do so since fine wine is a pleasure I most certainly can’t afford as often as I like to drink.

Learning to taste is brilliant no doubt, but I only wish to still be able to appreciate the stroke-less beauty of the cheap prints that adorn the walls of my own room at the end of the day.