What Wine can learn from history

I have to reflect on the wave of New Wave Wine experts, the new kids on the block that pro-port to have all the answers, they want us to tear down the walls, break down anything of tradition or historical value so as to make way for what they call their new Transformational Thinking.

What they have failed to do is to pay both significant respect for the past but also the insights that others have been passing for many years.

Now Dr Mike Veseth is likened to the a Wine Nostradamus staring into the abyss in his book " Wine Wars" where in 2011 he calmly proclaimed " many enthusiasts are anxious about the future of wine. The good news we find in our wineglasses and on the supermarkets shelves is often accompanied by disturbing rumours, feelings and forecast ...everything you read about wine is wrong for you. .....Consumption is falling, squeezing your market share and import competition has increased."

This could easily be written today but this was written in 2011 but was anyone listening and paying attention as here we are nearly 15 years down the track and these events are as real as they were then.

Our new wave transformationalists appeal to our emotions tugging at our heart strings , the world of wine is broken, old thinking is not working. our sense that we have to change but what they forget are the strong influences that both political and economic headwinds drive upon our industry many of these remain outside our control.

They quote Uber, they quote Toyota , they quote BitCoin, Ryan Air, Trump etc etc as examples of successful disturbance , you cannot simply transfer this to the wine industry.

They believe that like the dinosaurs we will be made extinct, sadly they have overlooked the fact that fact that the poor old dinosaur was dealt a bad hand especially when the meteors all crashed in the primeval slime they did not have a chance to adapt or change

You cannot reasonabally deny the impact of heath regulations/policy, interest rates, tariffs ,inflation, general cost of living and the impact on the wine makers bottom line and in turn the physical cost of wine, economics and emotion are twin levers one drives the other.

You need to remember that most of the wine made today is not top shelf, its bulk held in 100,000 hectolitres tank farms , its pretty poor quality, period no trophy winners here, look at South Australia bulk wine is the largest source of wine made there , the same for Spain and Italy its a big business, fine wine is a much smaller component of the market in real terms.

Like or not Sauvignon Blanc and especially Kiwi SB continues to dominate the world of white wine sales, many predicted it would be a best a short term trend but we are over 25 years down the track and the old Savvy B is still going strong. Today it holds 12.5% of all wine sold in Australia with over 50% of wine drinkers in Australia say that they drink SB on a regular basis, Kiwi SB hold 58% of all SB sold in Australia.

Now its not the most fashionable wine (not my cup of tea)to drink but it defies trends, social media, generations et al so are the new kids on the block going to say to them that they should be looking to transform, maybe not each to their own I say but you can't say what they are doing is wrong.

You cannot ask for a fundamental overhaul of an industry like wine without understanding the fundamental building blocks that it has been built upon.

Of late wine critics and wine reviews have been under attack as lacking relevance or importance, the wine critic has no future role in the industry they are to make way for a new wave of influencers many of which have little or no real knowledge of wine. No one cares about what someone over the age of 50 has to say about wine, what would they know.

The world of wine is neither homogeneous nor aligned , it is at the end of the day made up of a group of artisan makers and farmers all of whom have their own self interest about the collective needs of the industry, its a dog eat dog world and that's food coming off my table approach. There is no cookie cutter, taking what is working well, removing what is not , building on what needs to be created and learning from history so as to not make the same mistakes is important to the industry's future.

There is much to be learned from history, there is much to appreciate and respect but I do worry that some of Gen Z and Gen Alpha feel that we need to be saved from ourselves as we have really fucked things up and we are killing the industry. I ask you where are your solutions, all you do it seems is to pose hanging questions with no answers, where is your research, where is your proof please stop drinking your Kool Aide as its a long and slippery slope once you believe in what you only believe in.

My final takeaway that there is not a typical wine drinker or buyer " wine drinkers come in all sizes, shapes and colours...it possible to identify six wine segments named Enthusiasts, Image Seekers, Savvy Shoppers , Tradtionalists, Satisfied Sippers and Overwhelmed " (Veseth 2011) , I would add one more to the list that being the Transformationalist.

Have a great day