Wine & Soul
This is what success looks like: make and drink wines that mean something. Make and drink wines that have soul.
The sweat and the blood and the hope and the yearning and the passion that go into growing something beautiful from an identifiable and worthy place is of wine, not of any other drink.
As long as there are producers making pure versions of wine that tell a story, that convey meaning and heart, there will be wine lovers, both incipient and experienced, there to connect with them.
Wine is a sui generis thing. We only get to make it one time a year from our vineyards, we negotiate (mostly, fruitlessly) with Mother Nature each step of the way from grape to bottle, there are 50 different sets of regulations to contend with if you’re trying to sell wine in the US farther afield than your cellar door, the neo-prohibitionists and quasi-governmental organizations are egging each other on to splash the scarlet letter of “no-safe-level” as widely as possible, and now (maybe) molotov-cocktail-like tariffs seek to destroy.
There has lately been a lot of consternation in wine circles about its waning audience, especially among the Gen Z cohort. 2023 and 2024 were the first in about 20 years that wine sales had not increased year over year in the US. In this unprecedented run of success, the large wineries (at least…and maybe at most, too) had grown fat and happy. Each of the large brands has existed as a monolith, concerned solely with its own growth. None of them has ever led when it came to creating common ground with all producers so as to battle the many forces aligned against wine today with a unified vision for a wine-life well-lived. And now that those opposing forces are especially vocal and visible, the wine industry is left playing a pretty ineffectual game of grab-ass.
Wine is a sui generis thing. We only get to make it one time a year from our vineyards, we negotiate (mostly, fruitlessly) with Mother Nature each step of the way from grape to bottle
If our industry spent as much time making more truly interesting wines from less-than-well-known places from more grapes than just the handful that command all the attention, as it does fucking around with non-alcohol this and that, or alcoholic bubbly water, New and Improved! packaging and the like, we’d have to worry a lot less about the alleged lack of interest from Gen Z.
Wine is inextricably part of the fabric of human culture; the wefts and wafts (read: generational interest) are rarely pristine and without a thrown stitch. Those wines of our youth, the ones that opened us to the bottomlessness of wine, will be the same in spirit —if not producer and region—as those that ensnare (Siren-like) this current, youngest group. Nothing succeeds long-term like something truly delicious and authentic. As long as there are producers making pure versions of wine that tell a story, that convey meaning and heart, there will be wine lovers, both incipient and experienced, there to connect with them.
Wonderful reflections, Steven. Beautifully expressed, as usual!!!