Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested in Wine? (VII)

Storytelling, creative democratization, and letting go of our self-preservation panic

Before I went into the wine industry, my vocation was within another venerable old institution full of complicated rules and traditions, that was also losing its ability to attract new adherents and failing to appeal to the young: the church. Every interview I ever had involved a question about how I would get more young people to join. I lost track of how many breakout sessions and conferences I attended that attempted to help us become more relevant to “youth,” which often meant anyone under forty (or fifty).

However, one thing I noticed over my ministry career is that the more we struggled to reach a younger demographic, or to draw in anyone who wasn’t already us, the more difficult it became. I have some theories about why this is the case:

• Usually these conversations are essentially about marketing strategy, not a change in substance, and focusing all our energy on the packaging didn’t leave much energy for evaluating how we might need change at a more core level.

• It’s rare for anyone to ask the question of why we want younger people to engage, whether our motivations are good, or how younger people might feel about being the targets of our marketing. If we only want younger people around because they help us preserve us and our institutions, exactly as they’ve always been, why would any younger person want to be part of that? If we engage a new population, are we prepared to welcome the inevitable change they bring?

• Ultimately, our desire for participation from younger people often comes down to self-preservation, and our oozing desperation is not cute. It’s creepy, and despite our best intentions, they smell it a mile away and run like hell.

Which brings us to wine, the field into which I pour my own oozing desperation these days. I came into the wine industry at a challenging time, when we are all confronting a decrease in alcohol consumption and reduced wine consumption in particular among younger people. I don’t relish the idea of spending my next twenty years constantly enduring the same kinds of self-preservation discussions I had in the church. But if we’re going to have them, I’m glad we’re having them like this, as a conversation between people who think and write about the world of wine, open for all of our readers and the wider public to join in. That was a long introduction to say that this is the last installment of this first series of Wine Conversations, a feature spotlighting multiple takes on a wine-related topic.

Six other writers have already posted their own perspectives on their blogs, linked below so you can follow the whole conversation:

Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested in Wine? (I)

Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested In Wine? (II)

Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested in Wine? (III)

Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested In Wine? (IV)

Wine Conversations: How do we get more people interested in Wine (V)

Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested in Wine? (VI)

The pretentious and overly complicated image of wine has been well-covered, so I’ll just give an agreeing nod here. Those of us who get into wine often do so because it is a world of invitation, exploration, and openness, but there’s also a whole lot of gatekeeping and disdain for beginners. Wine also has some logistic issues that have come up in the above posts: it’s expensive, has a limited shelf life once opened and even before, and has to be stored in particular conditions. No one is starting a wine cellar when they share an apartment with three roommates.

These factors have led to wine being siloed from other alcohol. You can’t find it at a “regular bar,” at least not any wine you’d want to drink. Wine bars rarely feel like neighborhood hangout spots, in part because you can’t bring anyone who doesn’t want to drink wine. They function more like restaurants, closing early and encouraging guests by their design to arrive and stay with their own companions rather than mingling. Grocery-level wine, fine wine, natural wine, old world, and new world are often found in entirely different places, and people new to drinking wine may not even know that all these things exist, let alone where to find them.

And yet, people still like wine, or at least the idea of wine. Mimosa brunches, wine tasting bachelorette parties, paint and sip events, and neighborhood wine clubs abound. Judging from my time in retail, people still buy bottles of wine for holidays, host gifts, and special occasions. Connecting people’s desire for something a little fancy with their broader curiosity may be a step in the right direction, but how?

The previous posters all had great ideas for engaging people through fun, interactive, innovative, inclusive, and accessible activities. There’s nothing I disagree with in any of their posts, because all these different tactics connect with a different audience. Meeting people where they are - at the junction of wine and another interest, like food, movies, music, art, or games - is a great way to go. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of us in wine (and in this conversation) have backgrounds in entertainment, theater, music, or some other kind of performance - like, say, preaching. We are people who care about engaging an audience and making material interesting and accessible even when it’s complicated. In that vein, I want to reinforce the importance of storytelling that several of us have brought up. Wine is most appealing when it draws us in personally, either through the story of how it came about, or the story of how it affected us.

I also related strongly when Kate Reuschel reminded us all that wine is a luxury product that just isn’t accessible to everyone, and George Nordahl’s suggestions for raising quality at a lower price point. Finding ways to offer good quality wine at a cost comparable to beer, seltzer, ready to drink cocktails, and drinks at bars is crucial if we expect younger people to get on board. In the past the wine industry has taken the approach of, “They’ll find wine when they’re older, because they’ll have more money,” but while aging is a given, steadily growing income isn’t anymore. This might force us to get over ourselves and embrace some objects of frequent wine snob disdain: canned and other single-serve wine options, bag-in-box wines, wine cocktails, etc. that make it easier for people to try out wine with less risk, and bars and restaurants to carry wine without charging for the entire bottle every time a customer orders a glass.

The closest parallel I can think of to wine is food, but where they have diverged is that even gourmet cuisine has become increasingly democratized, while fine wine has remained the purview of the elite. What happened to food? Television. There are bazillions of cooking and restaurant shows on TV. People who know nothing about food or the service industry can learn in their homes with no risk of feeling stupid, and suddenly you have a huge sector of the public who know what a demi glace is and can follow a recipe and end up with a coq au vin. Wine still hasn’t had its Julia Child, Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, or Gordon Ramsey, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t. It just has to be more fun and less insider than SOMM TV. I love SOMM TV, but let’s be honest; like most of us in the industry, it can take itself overly seriously.

Finally, to return to some commonalities with the church, we in the wine industry could use some self-examination about what it is that we’re trying to give the younger generations, and why. Is it the same old thing in a bright new package, or are we willing to rethink what we consider good and valuable in the wine world? Are we sharing this beverage because it has such a significant and positive role in our personal, social, and cultural lives, or because we’re scared we’ll become irrelevant or unemployed? Are we willing to allow their meaningful experiences of wine to be different from ours and to lead them - and the industry - to new conclusions? Is our desire to attract younger wine drinkers about them, or is it just about us? Because I can tell you from experience, if it’s the latter, they’re going to smell our desperation a mile away and run like hell.