Category:Wine trends

Wine trends 2024

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

man guzzling boxed wine
Yes, this behavior appears linked to genetics. Who knew?

Three stand out — the continuing decline in demand, even more consolidation, and the Neo-Prohibitionist assault on moderate drinking

This is the second of two parts looking at wine prices and wine trends in 2024. Part II: Wine trends 2024. Part I: Wine prices 2024.

Writing this post was easy; in fact, almost anyone paying attention to the wine business could write it. Which doesn’t mean there is any good news — far from it, in fact.

In 2024, wine will revolve around three things:

• The continuing decline in demand. How bad do the numbers look? Even those who have used rose colored glasses are becoming more glum, and those who see clearly pull no punches: “I do not anticipate a return to outright growth in wine consumption anytime soon because of longer-term shifts in consumer behavior and demographics.” Throw in a larger than expected 2023 California harvest, and we have more wine chasing ever fewer wine drinkers.

• Even more consolidation, as producers big — and not quite so big — try to gain a bigger share of a pie that keeps getting smaller. One analyst told me that middle-tier companies, those who rank among the middle 50 of the 100 biggest U.S. producers, are mostly likely to make acquisitions. Currently, the 100 biggest producers account for 90 percent of the wine made in the U.S.; how much bigger will their share get?

• The Neo-Prohibitionist assault on moderate drinking. Prohibition didn’t work; nevertheless, we’re going to see repeated calls, more “scientific” studies, and all the rest. The latest? That certain traits for what’s called “problematic alcohol use” are linked to genetics. Though, of course, I wasn’t aware this was an especially new finding, and it’s also fascinating that the story in the link doesn’t define “problematic alcohol use.” Could that mean any alcohol use?

Wine prices 2024

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

three men laughing while looking in the laptop inside room
“Can it be? Finally? Lower wine prices?”

Did the WC get it right last year?

This is the first of two parts looking at wine prices and wine trends in 2024. Part I: Wine prices 2024. Part II: Wine trends 2024.

So, in 2023, wine prices remain high. Wine sits on store shelves. Back vintages pile up. And, at some point, either later this year or early next, the fizzing and sputtering turns into an explosion and prices finally start to obey the law of supply and demand.

I wrote that a year ago, in the 2023 wine prices post. And you know what? I may have been correct. Prices did pretty much stay high — or go higher — for most of last year. And yes, wine sat on store shelves, waiting for buyers, while back vintages piled up (as almost every sales report confirmed).

And then, around the holidays, I saw some almost unprecedented discounting. Wine.com offered free shipping for almost a month, something it almost never does. My local Kroger offered not a 10 percent discount on a case during that period, but a 25 percent discount on six wines (and yes, I bought quite a bit of $8 vinho verde for $6).  Discounting elsewhere in town wasn’t quite that steep, but even retailers that don’t usually do much price cutting found a way to cut prices in the run-up to Christmas. How does $2 off a $15 wine for buying a mixed case sound?

Now, the caveats. Dallas may not be representative of the rest of the country. Wine.com’s free shipping may have been more about Wine.com than the wine business in general; I didn’t notice the same sort of discounting (though there was some) at other on-line retailers. But the Kroger discounting, to my mind, speaks volumes. That it sold the wine so cheaply means it paid less for it, which means its wholesalers had wine stacked up in warehouses that they needed to sell. So they made Kroger an offer it didn’t refuse, and I got lots of $6 wine. And it’s worth noting that it was sold out of the La Vieille Ferme rose, which was $6.75 a bottle with the discount. So, yes, wine was selling at lower prices.

Does this mean we’ll see “the fizzing and sputtering” from late last year turn into a price-cutting explosion sooner rather than later in 2024? As I have written many times, predicting wine pricing is not for the faint of heart. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll see that explosion this year.

Photo: Priscilla Du Preez, three men laughing while looking in the laptop inside room via Unsplash

 

16 years on the blog, part II

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

reporter at desk
Who knew this guy wold morph into the WC?

These nine posts weren’t necessarily the most popular in the blog’s history, but they were among the best and most important

This is the second of two parts looking at some of the best posts that appeared during the blog’s 16-year history. Today, the best of the best. Part I: The posts no one appreciated, even though they should have.

Picking the best posts I wrote over the blog’s past 16 years and 4,700 entries was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Chalk that up to lots of quality content, right?

Or just a bad memory.

Nevertheless, these nine posts were among the best — as well as some of the most important, offering a perspective rarely found elsewhere and about as far from toasty and oaky as wine writing gets.

In no particular order:

• Wine writing accreditation. Yes, only people with “credentials” should be allowed to write about wine. You can imagine how I felt about that proposal. This 2011 post was one of the most popular in blog history; in those days, I could have written about wine writing every week and made myself a star.

• The red wine bias study, in which Neal Chaudhary and I showed — using math, even — that the Winestream Media and its 100-point scoring system favored red wine over white, regardless of quality.

• Convenience store wine. Yes, people buy wine at convenience stores. Shocking, isn’t it?

• Cooking shows and wine’s fall from grace. The Baby Boomers’ cooking shows — Julia Child, et al — featured wine with their recipes. Today’s video chefs — Alison Roman, Frankie Celenza, and so forth — rarely do. As I wrote: “Hence, the youngest generations have never learned that wine is just as much a part of dinner as plates and letting the pots soak.”

• Arty, the first AI wine writer. Quite brilliant, actually, foreshadowing the uproar over artificial intelligence five years before it happened — and quite funny, too.

• Welcome back, restaurants. This post spurred one of the most important members of the Winestream Media to write a not-so-nice rebuttal, taking me to task for suggesting that restaurants lower prices, offer BYOB, and write more interesting lists to lure diners back after the pandemic. How dare I?

• Cheap wine vs. wine made cheaply made. This concept plagued the blog for years, since most people assumed they were the same thing. I never really understood it until New Orleans’ Tim McNally explained it to me in 2014. So I wrote that cheap wine should be more than “Two Jack in the Box tacos for 99 cents. … [which] are both cheap and a value, but why would you eat them unless it’s 2 a.m. and you’ve been drinking all night?” Because the best cheap wine is more than fast food, as I like to think we’ve shown over the years.

• Ingredient labels. We’ve almost won this one — the first labels should appear in the next 18 months or so. The first mention of ingredient labels on the blog came in 2008, about six months into its existence.

• Iran and the neo-Prohibitionists. Want to know what Prohibition is like? Look to Iran, where alcoholism is rampant and there are AA chapters — even though booze is illegal and you can be flogged if you drink it. Ask the next Neo you meet if that’s what they have in mind.

16 years on the blog, part I

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Dog on blanket
“I don’t understand why no one appreciated my talents.”

Some posts worked out, but some — surprisingly — didn’t

This is the first of of two parts looking at some of the best posts that appeared during the blog’s 16-year history. Today, Part I: The posts no one appreciated, even though they should have. Part II: The most important posts in blog history.

I wrote almost 4,700 blog posts over the past 16 years, and the one thing I was never able to make sense of: Why some posts didn’t do well with readers.

I knew that the technical and business stories, the things that needed to be written, wouldn’t necessarily have a wide audience. Instead, it was the posts that should have garnered thousands and thousands of views, but never did.

Such as:

• Giving away money. I gave away Wine.com gift cards during Birthday Week on the old blog ($100 cards the last several years). But, even though the blog went to more than 1,500 people each day, I never got more than five or six dozen entries — and sometimes less. What did you have against free money?

• The film and TV parodies. The WC as Shaft? Bruce Lee kicking the crap out of wine judges who don’t respect Drink Local? And, most depressing, the Planet of the Apes takeoff, which had actual dialog (the great John Bratcher as Charlton Heston). I mentioned this to a friend, and she said, “Wine drinkers have no sense of humor.”

• Churro, the blog’s associate editor. The wine business complains that young people and Hispanics aren’t interested in wine. So I appoint my dog, a Chihuahua mix, as the blog’s associate editor and do a podcast with him, and no one got it. No one. Several people — and I’m not making this up — said, “He’s a dog.”

• The podcasts. Apple has an entire universe devoted to podcasts, so they must be popular with someone. But the blog’s interviews — usually with damned interesting people, often recommending quality cheap wine — never garnered much of an audience.

• Rose reviews, especially in the blog’s early days. I’d like to think my readers were past that old and stupid aphorism, “Friends don’t let friends drink pink.” You are, aren’t you?

Ask the WC 41: Final edition

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Fans Wearing Yellow T-Shirts Watching a Match
“He’s really going to do it, isn’t he?”

This, the final edition, of Ask the WC: What to do after the blog ends

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers.

Dear Jeff:
Is there anything we can do to get you to reconsider ending the blog? I understand your reasons, but there is an audience for what you do.
Loyal reader

Dear Loyal:
Thank you for the kind words, but no, not really. I checked with some very smart people, and we considered a variety of ways to keep the blog going (including asking Churro, the blog’s associate editor, to take my place). But, in the end, there just seems to be little reason to write about quality, affordable wine when the wine business has very little interest in making any.

•

Say it ain’t so, WC:
Who do you suggest we read instead of you?
Need suggestions

Dear Need:
My pal Dave McIntyre at the Washington Post is one of the best. Joe Roberts, the 1 Wine Dude, has the proper perspective on the wine business. And, perhaps surprisingly, there are still plenty of local newspaper types who write about the sorts of wines most of us drink..

•

Hey, Wine Curmudgeon:
Can’t believe you’re leaving. What will you miss the most?
Gobsmacked

Dear Gobsmacked:
You, and the rest of the blog’s readers. Yes, I long ago tired of the arguments about availability, but other than that, you’re the reason I did this for so long. You love wine as much as I do, and you want to find something to drink that doesn’t taste like it came from an industrial spigot.  How could I not appreciate that? And, though you didn’t ask, I won’t miss writing tasting notes. I’m almost giddy with the thought that I will never have to do it again.

More Ask the WC:
• Ask the WC 40: Gallup poll, premiumization, RTDs
• Ask the WC 39: Drinking less, affordable wine, cheap wine
• Ask the WC 38: More about negative reviews, inflation, availability

Photo: Juliano Ferreira via Pexels

Once again, wine and chatbots

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Microsoft Copilot search page
Hey, Copilot, don’t forget the ads with your answer.

Because the wine business keeps telling us AI will save wine from itself

A recent news release heralding the arrival of a third-party chatbot to sell wine was about as breathless as something digital can get — emojis, even: “Are you ready to revolutionize the world of wine and accelerate your sales like never before? Look no further because [this company’s wine chatbot] is here to transform how consumers discover and appreciate your exceptional wines! 🍷🚀”

The WC has written about wine and artificial intelligence many times, most recently when I asked one how to market wine to young people. To which it replied: “Wine should focus on any savory flavors not normally associated with daily life consumption well outside of fruity alcohols for pitch similar ages.”

So this new bot, despite its pitch — even with the emojis — didn’t impress me. Nevertheless, because I go to great lengths to check this stuff out, I asked another AI if an AI could sell wine. In this case, it was the Microsoft Copilot chatbot; not my first choice, but the only one I could find that would answer the questions. Several froze when I asked.

Not surprisingly, Copilot was, well, useless — though, to be fair, not as useless as the first chatbot.

I asked, “Can a chatbot successfully recommend wine?” Its answer (edited for length): “Yes, chatbots can recommend wine based on a customer’s preferences and provide them with information about wine and wineries. The rise of AI and chatbots like ChatGPT is transforming the direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine industry by providing a new level of convenience, accuracy, and personalization.”

Why am I not surprised that a Microsoft product found a way to talk about how wonderful it was?

Then I asked: “What’s a good $15 wine for the holidays?” and it recommended four bottles from the Wine Enthusiast, none of which were $15 or less. And it ended with “I hope this helps you find the perfect wine for your holiday celebrations! 🍷🎉.”

Yes, more emojis.

In other words, not much different from a traditional, typed-in Google search (because I figure Copilot, whatever its failings, is too smart to use Bing). And did I mention that its answer included ads for wine and wine products?

So no, chatbots still aren’t ready to replace people when it comes to selling wine. Only the wine business would think so, yes?

Can the wine business sell moderation?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Man with headache
“As deadly as cigarette smoking? Seriously?”

Or, more importantly, does it want to?

I wrote a trade piece a couple of weeks ago as a follow up to October’s Lifestyle, Diet, Wine & Health congress in Toledo, Spain — more or less the first time that wine business has acknowledged the threat from the neo-Prohibitionists.

This includes a report earlier this year by the World Health Organization that said any drinking, even in moderation, was deadly. In addition, Irish regulators have linked drinking with cancer, and there is a Canadian proposal to cut safe alcohol limits from two drinks a day to two a week.

The story quoted a half dozen or so smart people about what wine could do to make moderation its mantra and to remind consumers that there really isn’t any legitimate scientific evidence that says alcohol is as bad as cigarette smoking — and that a glass or two with dinner can actually be not so bad.

But, as I wrote the story, I wondered: Does the wine business actually care about this, or is it just one more public relations stunt? Call it the moderation version of greenwashing.

A friend who works in the wine business — who is rarely cranky about this stuff — is convinced that the industry isn’t serious. All of this is posturing, he told me, “a bunch of wine professionals spending money making themselves feel good creating ‘programs’ and ‘projects’ so they can pretend to do something. They seem fully invested in spending money on industry-wide initiatives for the sake of doing them, and never for a real outcome.”

Which, frankly, is even more cynical than my take on it.

I do think many (if not most) understand the seriousness of the problem, and that they understand there is a real chance that the health warnings on wine bottles in the U.S. could, sooner or later, be similar to those on cigarettes.

The questions is whether those people, given the vast array of problems facing wine, can make their voices heard. If I’m a producer worrying about decreased demand and distributor consolidation that will keep me off store shelves, will I have time to worry about this?

Even if I know I should be worrying abut it.