Category:Wine trends

Old farts and craft beer

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Father and daughter on basketball court
“Daddy, we’re not going to go to that cringy beer place after practice again, are we?”

Wine isn’t the only booze with an age problem – it’s even hitting all those hipsters who drink craft beer

One of the many theories for wine’s decline among younger consumers is that they don’t want to drink what their parents and grandparents drank. Hence, the Baby Boomers embraced wine because they were rejecting their elder’s spirits, and their children and grandchildren moved to craft beer because they thought wine was for old people.

It’s not the only explanation, certainly, but it does ring true. I’ve seen it first hand; in the beverage management classes I taught, as well with the children of friends. As one of them told me, “I’m so sick of my parents drinking wine.”

Now, we may have the first evidence that the same thing is happening to Gen X’s craft beer drinkers. Or, as one of their children posted on TikTok: “MY DAD HAS THE SAME APP AND ITS TRACKED BASICALLY MY ENTIRE CHILDHOOD FROM BEHIND A BEER GLASS.”

Welcome to being irrelevant, Gen X.

The details come from some excellent reporting by Aaron Goldfarb on VinePair, who writes “But, it’s so often forgotten that craft beer is hardly a new phenomenon. It’s been around for decades, which means your typical IPA drinker these days might be some 50-something suburban dad, and he might very well have a Zoomer daughter hell bent on roasting his craft beer affectations on TikTok.”

And, in some respects, the Gen Xers may be worse off than the Boomers. We’re not tech savvy enough to use something like Untapped, a social media app that lets crafties share what they’ve been tasting (and which so offended the daughter in the aforementioned quote).

My only criticism of the story? Goldfarb writes that he thinks the TikTok posts are mostly good-natured fun; he is a craft beer drinker with a daughter of the appropriate age, and “you can see they love hanging with their dads.”

Dude, you are in for rude awakening.

Photo: draveh via Morguefile

More wackiness in the three-tier system

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Manufacturer-wholesaler lawsuit shows just how Kafkaesque the whole thing is

Portrait of Franz Kafka
“A producer suing a wholesaler? Not even I would have thought of that.”

The three-tier system, the set of rules regulating how wine is sold in the U.S., has always taken the term Kafkaesque and turned it on its head. Which is saying something, given what Kafkaesque means.

But one recent development is even more Kafkaesque than that.

The second biggest wholesaler in the country and one of the most important spirits manufacturers are locked in a lawsuit, the details of which defy explanation.

On the one hand, the producer, New Orleans’ Sazerac, says the wholesaler, RNDC, is trying to cheat it and is acting illegally. On the other, Texas’ RNDC says Sazerac is trying to cheat it and is acting illegally.

Cue Shakespeare.

Which is weird enough, given that lawsuits like this are rare if only because Sazerac is suing one of the few companies that can legally sell its products in the U.S. But it’s even more rare, as this report notes, because it shows “the acrimonious and unusually public feud between Sazerac and RNDC.”

The entire piece, though difficult to get through (even for those of us who understand what’s going on), is worth reading. The venom and vitriol are mind-boggling; RNDC claims Sazerac is trying to destroy the three-tier system, while Sazerca says RNDC is trying to put it out of business.

The one question that the story doesn’t discuss: Why is Sazerac doing this? Typically, the courts have ruled that the wholesaler is always right, given that its role in the alcohol business is protected by the Constitution. So it almost certainly can’t win.

Perhaps it expects to settle and get most of what it wants, on the theory that RNDC doesn’t want its business practices outlined in open court. There’s precedent for this, though not in booze. Art Buchwald’s 1990s lawsuit against Paramount over who wrote “Coming to America” was supposed to detail Hollywood’s biggest scam: The “net profits’ fraud, that no movie ever makes money. But Buchwald settled before that happened.

Or, perhaps, as three-tier opponent Tom Wark always hopes, Sazerac is trying to strike a blow against three-tier and sees this – as some do – as the opportune time. We, too, can only hope.

Picture: “File:Portrait of a Man sitting (Franz Kafka), Léon Weissberg.jpg” by Lydie Lachenal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

“Premiumization is elitist”

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

woman drinking coffee
“How bougie — $15 hard seltzers.”

Of course it is, but that hasn’t stopped the wine business from embracing it – to its detriment

Two recent news items show just how little the wine business understands the dilemma that it’s facing. In the first, one of the Gallo family decries premiumization and the harm it has done to wine. In the second, an Italian producer boasts about its $15 wine spritzers – which, by any measurement, is premiumization run amok.

Is it any wonder I worry about the future of the wine business?

The premiumization quote comes from Stephanie Gallo, the chief marketing officer for E&J Gallo, whose family runs the largest wine company in the world. Speaking to the North Bay Business Journal’s Women in the Wine Business Conference, she said: “I hate the word ‘premiumization’ — hate it. I think it’s elitist.” Instead, she said, wines should be priced so they’re affordable for consumers of every income level and circumstance.

Which, of course, is what the Wine Curmudgeon has been saying for years. Who knew I had such powerful forces on my side?

And, for the most part, Gallo does just that. Three of its most important brands — Barefoot, Apothic, and the Italian sparkler La Marca – not only dominate their categories, but Barefoot alone would be the third biggest producer in the U.S. by itself.

We can argue about quality, but Gallo does know how to sell cheap wine – and is one of the few producers who still wants to do it.

Because the Italian company obviously doesn’t. The marketing materials it sent me hit every current wine talking point as if they were written by a chatbot culling the Internet: Cocktail-like! Low alcohol! Lighter! And its name sounds just like this!

And all for just $15 a bottle.

Sigh. Apparently, no one in Italy has heard about canned spritzers, hard seltzers and the like, which cost about half as much and have dominated the market – but seem to be losing favor with consumers. Or, even, this pink wine, also half the price.

Which, of course, is a distinctly wine thing to do. Let’s release a product after it has already run its course and consumers have moved on to something else. And, when it fails, we can say we tried and pat ourselves on the back for making the effort but not being appreciated.

Photo: “stocks-7559” by Artem Beliaikin is marked with CC0 1.0.

Smoking, wine, and the Neo-Prohibitionists

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

per capita cigarette consumption in U.S.How equating drinking with cigarettes will save us from alcohol

The chart at the top of this post says everything we need to know about the Neo-Prohibitionist plan to end drinking in the U.S.

It details what happened to U.S. per capita cigarette consumption though 1998. Note the peak just before the 1963 Surgeon General’s report linking cigarette use to cancer. A second chart, here, shows the percentage of U.S. men and women who smoked though 1998.

The trend in both charts? Down, down, down, of course. (And, if that’s not enough, U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 30 percent since 1991.)

Their plan is to do for alcohol and wine what the anti-smoking groups did for cigarettes – use science to show that drinking will kill you. Hence, the avalanche of studies over the past couple of years showing that any amount of booze, just like any number of cigarettes, is deadly.

Which, of course, isn’t necessarily true – as even some in the scientific community have said.

Nevertheless, that’s where we are.

This is where I always mention that none of this is written to denigrate the serious problems caused by alcohol abuse. It’s something that I’ve been writing about for decades, and something that I have seen first hand. I should also add that I have never smoked, and that I completely understand the link between smoking and death – and can be quite annoying about it.

But to claim that a glass of wine with dinner is alcoholism is both foolish and fruitless. It’s not going to stop anyone from drinking, and it’s certainly not true.

One of the most fascinating parts of the Neo assault on drinking is that no one has explicitly shown that moderate wine drinking doesn’t have health benefits, the so-called French Paradox. Instead, the flood of studies just keeps piling up “evidence” that all drinking is fatal.

The other thing that’s rarely discussed? There was a direct link between smoking and lung cancer; if you smoked enough, a spot showed up on your lung. That direct link still doesn’t exist for alcohol, because it has been difficult to filter out other lifestyle factors that might cause death. Obesity or a poor diet (or both) can cause heart disease, even without drinking. So if I have a couple of beers or a glass of wine each night, but don’t exercise, weigh too much, and eat bacon the way a vegan scarfs down tofu, it’s almost certainly not the beer that will kill me.

Which, in looking at many of the Neo anti-drinking studies, is something that they have to dance around. “Well, if he hasn’t had those beers or wine, he might not have had high blood pressure or weighed too much.” Maybe. But it would be nice to see scientific evidence supporting that, instead of more dancing.

I want to live as long as possible. Don’t I deserve the best evidence of how to do that?

 

Wine history lesson 8: The evils of drinking

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

anti-drinking poster from ProhibitionHistory tends to repeat itself, and especially when it comes to booze

Consider these two quotes:

• “The fight against evil is always an uphill one, and the hill is never steeper than when you fight the liquor interests.”

• “Alcohol consumption and its associated harms are reaching a crisis point in the United States.”

The first? William Jennings Bryant in 1910, advocating for state-wide prohibition in Nebraska. The second? A 2022 study, advocating for more explicit anti-drinking warnings on wine, beer, and spirits.

Not much difference in the two statements — despite the century-plus difference in when they were made, as well as the philosophies behind the people who made them. Bryan, an ardent Prohibitionist, believed drinking was a moral weakness, while the study’s authors are respected researchers who are focused on science.

In this, I’ve always been surprised at how much the original and the current group of anti-drinking crusaders have in common. It’s the same message, but couched in just enough of a different style. That way, we won’t be quite as offended when they tell us that drinking is evil. Which, to give the Neo-Prohibitionsts their due, is damned clever. It’s still offensive, but at least they understand the morality bit is probably too dated to work any more.

More wine history lessons:
• Wine history lesson 7: When drinking alcohol was a good thing
• Wine history lesson 6: Was this California fortified wine one of the state’s first post-Prohibition efforts?
• Wine history lesson 5: Big Wine’s forebear — the infamous California Wine Association

Is it time to panic over chatbot wine reviews?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Frustrated computer user
“No. no, no.. petite sirah is not the same as sirah. Or even syrah.””

Hardly. How can it rant about wine the way the WC can?

Artificial intelligence and wine writing are nothing new on the blog. I’ve posted about it nine times since 2015 — before most of the media, wine or otherwise, even knew what it was.

So excuse me if I haven’t panicked about the latest chatbot developments.

Because lots of others have, whether the AI is penning poetry, developing software code, or creating term papers. A piece in the New York Times said AI writing could be used “to generate and spread untruths” (as if humanity hasn’t been doing that for as long as there has been humanity). Even the Linux community, which is usually too cool to be bothered with stuff like this, was more than a little concerned when a coding site called GitHub unveiled an AI called Copilot to “help” write code.

Yes, chatbots can help students cheat – as if they need any help. Yes, AI can be used to write news stories – if the news organization is willing to spend a lot of time editing out mistakes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone started using them to write the junk that’s on the back labels of wine bottles.

What AI writing can’t do is think. It can gather information and organize it, and sometimes even do a terrific job. But it can’t taste wine and write a review, and it certainly can’t decide whether a $12 wine is varietally correct or offers value. This blog post, where a tech guy described how he designed an AI to write tasting notes, was notable for two things: First, how “tasting note” they sounded, even though the information came from gathering and organizing. But that may say as much about tasting notes as they do the AI’s skills. Second, that the site mentioned in the post stopped working shortly after I wrote about it, unable to keep up with what it needed to do.

But, perhaps the most important caveat: An AI can’t decide what to write about, the way I can. Yes, it can be given an assignment, but who is going to decide what’s important enough for it to “write” about — and then decide if it can complete the assignment correctly? And it certainly can’t look at the wine business and decide what’s going on the blog for the next week.

Until that happens, we still need cranky ex-newspaper reporters.

More about AI wine writing:
• Are machine-written wine reviews closer than ever?
• Artificial intelligence and wine recommendations
• Winecast 30: Arty, the first artificial intelligence wine writer

 

Rose season 2023 preview

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

woman with wine glass
“Yes! Maybe more rose for rose season.”

This year’s rose supply still may be slightly foozled, but prices could be stable – so, all in all, not entirely bad news

The pink wine supply situation as we approach the 2023 rose season may be better than it has been the last couple of years. Prices, if nothing else, should be more or less what they were last year. The catch? That even though the shipping situation is much improved over the past couple of years, producers in Europe and the U.S. are still having difficulty finding bottles, closures, and even labels, thanks to entirely different supply chain problems.

“It’s always a wild card with importing,” says Andrew Stover of Siema Wines & Vino50 Selections, a long-time friend of the blog. “It’s getting the stock, and getting it in a timely manner that is the issue.”

The catch this year, after talking to a variety of retailers, producers, and importers, is glass for bottles. The war in Ukraine and its squeeze on Europe’s energy supply has raised prices for glass there and in the U.S., not only making bottles more expensive but harder to find. This may limit the supply of rose, since there won’t be enough bottles for all of it.

Says Stover: “Last year we saw 2021 roses coming in May, and usually it’s March. And so far this year, none of our imported 2022 roses are here yet. Maybe April.”

And prices? Probably more or less stable after a variety of increases last year. On the one hand, there is still lots and lots of rose on store shelves from the past couple of vintages, even though demand for rose is one of the few bright spots for wine sales in the U.S. For example, a host of retailers are still selling 2019 and 2020 roses; this includes the 2020 Campuget, a fine $10 pink that would have almost certainly have sold out in years past.

I’ll update this post if the situation changes. Until then, know that the blog’s 16th annual rose previews – featuring lots and lots of roses that most of us can afford to buy – will post on May 25.