When will we start listening?

Front and center of Silicon Valley Bank’s latest State of the Wine Industry Report website is a quote under “Key Takeaways.” It reads, “While the premium wine business showed continued success in 2022, overall wine consumption showed a second year of negative growth. Future sales weigh on the industry’s ability to appeal to a new generation of consumers.” My emphasis here is added.

What follows in the report is an elegant diagnosis of the challenges that have been ailing the wine industry since long before 2018. That year the SVB authors cautioned that younger consumers weren’t preparing to take over for Baby Boomers in either their consumption volume, let alone sustain the price points or “premiumization” trend buying the industry as a whole.?

The only good news in the report this year is that Baby Boomers are spending more on what they drink as their health starts to drive them to drink less. As businesses chase this market higher and higher in price, you can feel the tipping point approaching, where premium wine prices collapse against the reality that no one is left to buy these expensive wines. This trend, however,?will help fund winery owners that refuse to engage, let alone appeal to younger, more price-conscious consumers.

The ultimate fait accompli.

But what happens next?

I think we know the answer to that. It will be a reconning, and the old guard will be ushered into the history books as an example of how not to lead an entire industry into the future. For the rest of us, however, we know the way to avoid the coming reconning: talk with and listen to your consumers.?

Your customers will tell you what they want if you give them a chance.

To an old hand in this industry, that is a no-brainer. The winery tasting room was the center of a winery’s world for the longest time. It was the nerve center where consumers and winemakers interacted, experimented, learned, laughed, and fell in love with wine. If it wasn’t a winery tasting room, it was a local restaurant where a sommelier, or even the winemaker themselves, would have a chance to engage their consumers, regale them with stories, be a teacher of wine, and entertain customers directly.?

Today, physical locations have added on digital storefronts such that, in many cases, especially with younger consumers, they walk through one of your many digital “front doors” or digital “window-shop” long before they consider approaching your physical space. We aren’t even addressing younger consumers’ willingness to put down their phones in favor of interpersonal conversation, let alone an honest and frank one.

Yet the very rosy, unrealistic, but too often standard version of how the wine industry used to work remains at the forefront of how we approach modern consumers. It’s no surprise, then, that too many wine professionals believe that they know their customers. If you talk to consumers today, you hear the classic “they talked at me,” or “they talked over my head,” reasoning for why they weren’t satisfied, and even on occasion, “put off.”?

Worse yet, while anecdotes are compelling in this area, once real data becomes involved the notion that the wine industry “gets it” breaks down completely.?

Moreover, in the monoculture of business in the heyday of this model of wine engagement, wealthy white men made up the bulk of customers. Even if they weren’t the dominant constituency in the tasting room or restaurant, it was all but guaranteed that the professional at the front of the room was. I hazard to guess that, even then, they still talked at or over guests’ heads.?

Cue an appropriately large eye roll.

Worse yet. Because of this monoculture, wine professionals were negatively impacted by the false notions of what their customers wanted. Consider this: think of the number of times a server at a restaurant has helped you make a choice, only to discover, upon service, that their description of what you would experience was anything but accurate.?

With that in mind, how many of your friends and colleagues would have raised the issue? Maybe one out of four. In your business today, what are you doing about the other three if you only hear about one issue in every four? And, why aren’t you providing mechanisms to encourage more consumers to give feedback?

I’ll hazard a guess that pride and ego play a major, deleterious role in a broad lack of openness to solutions. Too much pride and ego have dominated the collective wine industry’s approach to younger consumers. Pride and ego are, after all, the enemies of curiosity and the innovation that comes with it.

It’s time we started listening to wine consumers.

So now that the problem is apparent, we know we need to engage customers and actively listen.

In this newsletter, I’ll explore the industry's challenges, reveal my understanding of best industry practices, and endeavor to listen and learn from those who wish to comment and engage in debate to solve these challenges. My ultimate goal is to create a wine industry that, at its core, listens to and addresses customers' needs.?

There is a place for the art of winemaking, and that can make you uncomfortable, challenge your perceptions of wine, and potentially cause you to turn your nose up at a glass. But, without the ability of winemakers at artisanal producers and industrial juice giants alike to integrate the voice of their consumers in the wine room, we will fail both our consumers and our peers. I’m excited to explore and engage with readers. Please share this as you see fit and invite your friends to subscribe as we explore the world of wine.

If you'd like to know more about our free wine tasting game platform, check out our website which contains demo videos of both our cutting-edge consumer and wine business experiences: https://www.sommsays.co