The simplest and most common criticism of wine and wine culture that one hears on the regular is some form of the argument that the beverage has been allowed to become an elitist drink—a signal of social and economic status, segregated and walled off by an esoteric language created and promoted by the industry, and a product marketed, written about, and sold by a collection of gatekeeping and judgemental snobs.

This observation is very commonly advanced to explain why more wine is not sold: The industry has sacrificed the average person for the elite and, in doing so, has dug its own grave through exclusion.

This isn’t true. It’s not remotely true.

Most recently, the New York Times’ Wine Critic Eric Asimov raised this sort of argument in an article entitled “Wine: It’s The People’s Drink.” This genuinely virtuous attempt to portray wine as a symbol of community succeeds in casting it and its consumption as something everyone can celebrate.

But Asimov’s article also casts wine as having “an unfortunate reputation as a drink for snobs and elitists who guard the sanctity of the beverage with gibberish and high prices. Speak the language and show the wealth and you’re in. Otherwise, take a hike.”

It’s hard to tell if Asimov, a critically important voice in American wine, believes this is what the wine industry and wine culture have done to wine or if the beverage has unfortunately and undeservedly come to be seen this way for reasons unrelated to what the wine industry and wine drinkers have done. I suspect he means it’s a bit of both.

THE SNOBBERY TROPE IS ANCIENT
The idea that wine and its consumption is an elitist pastime is an ancient belief here in the U.S. You can go as far back as the election of 1840 to see the supporters of William Henry Harrison’s presidential campaign attempt to smear his opponent, President Martin Van Buren, with the stain of being a champagne sipper. The idea was to position the incumbent president as elite, out-of-touch, and extravagant while Harrison was positioned as a cider-drinking man of the people.

This kind of association between wine and elitism goes back to the days of Jefferson with his importation of French wines and all the way up to the present day when Senator Elizabeth Warren attacked Mayor Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Presidential primaries over a closed-door, high-dollar fundraiser he held at Hall Wines in Napa Valley, California.

This view of wine as the beverage of the elite, however, is both true for most of American history as well as being incomplete. For most of American history, two types of people drank wine on a regular basis: the wealthy patrician class and the recent European immigrants. This is how you can have the beverage demonized as the drink of the elite and as “Dago Red” at the same time. The reality is that the vast majority of Americans (the middle class in particular) had no familiarity with wine. Their drink of choice throughout American history was cider, beer, or whiskey. Wine was for the rich or the immigrant class.

The American wine industry has always understood these separate wine tracks. It was, after all, largely immigrants who built America’s wine industry, particularly its California edition. Meanwhile, the original American winemakers in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and other states east of the Mississippi, many of whom were of Anglo/Saxon stock, were selling their wines to immigrants in the cities.

IS THE INDUSTRY TO BLAME FOR WINE’S BAD REP?
So, how do people today, who are so close to and often working within the wine industry, conclude that it is the industry itself responsible for the elitification of wine to the point it is harming wine sales and must be stopped?

Dusan Jelic, a wine marketer and tourism consultant writing on LinkedIn, summed up the growing and commonly expressed belief concerning the wine industry’s complicity this way:

“For decades, the industry has relied on a culture of exclusivity. We built a cathedral of jargon, rituals, and ‘correct’ opinions. We told consumers that wine was a puzzle to be solved, a test to be passed, or a hierarchy to be climbed. But in 2026, that gatekeeping is no longer a mark of prestige; it’s just a horrible suicide note.”

Alison Luvera, the founder of the chic and popular box wine Julie, called out the problem of elitism in the industry this way:

“The wine industry leans toward snobbery. Yes, there are exceptions, but the broad perception remains: the world of wine has rules, a hierarchy, and an unspoken power dynamic that feels intimidating and impenetrable to many. There is a right and wrong, and you will be judged for not abiding by it.

Lavinia Furlani, the president of online Italian wine magazine Wine Meridian, links the industry’s elitism problem to younger generations:

“The wine industry faces a crisis: 67% of Gen Z doesn’t feel represented by wine communication, with 49% associating it with snobbishness. The problem isn’t young consumers—it’s professionals who’ve replaced accessibility with exclusionary jargon and rigid rituals, transforming a product born from earth and community into an intimidating symbol of elitism.”

First, let’s take note of this fact: During the past 60 years, when the industry has presumably been spewing elitism and snobbery in the way it markets, sells, talks about, and writes about wine, sales of it have skyrocketed. Between 1960 and 2020, per capita wine consumption increased by roughly 250%. The era of The Wine Spectator and Robert Parker, with their soaring jargon, wine travel with its increasing tasting room fees, esoteric food and wine pairings, and wine education and certifications, did not seem to diminish the sale and consumption of wine.

In fact, during this entire period, and particularly during the past 30 years, American wine marketing has consisted almost exclusively of drawing consumers’ attention to three things: The beauty of the wine’s place of origin, the quality of the wine (ratings and 3rd party endorsements), and wine’s place at the table with food and people. I know this is the case. I wrote and produced the ads. I wrote the tasting notes and built the websites. I created the collateral for tasting rooms and wholesalers. I pitched stories to the media as well as organized their press trips. And all the while, per capita consumption of wine just kept growing.

The problem is not the industry. It’s the culture.

Those who decry the elitism of the industry’s habits and vocabulary and who claim that these industry actions are turning off potential wine drinkers misunderstand the forces that have been at play for centuries. The elitism and snobbery observed by many is the product of drinkers, not the industry. But more to the point, the perception of wine as elitist (and whatever that means for sales) derives from the unique circumstances of American history and culture, not a suddenly elitist set of industry professionals manning the gates with jargon, rituals, and hierarchies at the ready.

THE ROLE OF WINE IN AMERICAN SOCIETY
Over the entire course of American history and continuing up to the present day, wine and wine drinking have performed two seemingly contradictory but also complementary roles in culture and society. It has served as social shorthand for identifying elitist snobs whose status as a real “American” might be questioned and who likely belong to the monied class. At the same time, wine consumption and possession of wine education have been used to signal class status in a country where social mobility is based on merit and not governed by heredity.

WINE AND WINE CONSUMPTION AS UNAMERICAN
Due to considerations of geography, climate, and the source of original settlers, the United States never possessed an indigenous culture of wine production and table wine as a source of daily calories as existed on the continent. Instead, it was cider, grain-derived alcohol, and eventually lager that came to define authentic “American” alcohol consumption. Wine consumption was foreign, cosmopolitan, and suspect. Wine consumption occurred among those in the ivory towers, in the upscale restaurants in Manhattan, amongst the monied class.

Despite the later efforts by European immigrants to bring viticulture and winemaking to America and the habit of those same immigrants to drink wine, the beverage and its consumption became an object of derision; a symbol of exclusivity and elitism; the drink of the rich and powerful; a practice that separated one from the common American; a foreign affectation.

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As a result, and despite the practice of German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese immigrants, wine drinking never took off in the United States and the practice of consuming table wine was viewed with suspicion all the way up to and for years after Prohibition.

The suspicion of the wine drinker began earlier on. The above anecdote about the 1840 presidential election is the tip of the iceberg. The trope of the wine drinker being elitist or snobby has long been a part of the storyteller’s, author’s, and screenwriter’s toolkit, relied upon to quickly and easily communicate that a particular character is nefarious, powerful, a member of the upper class, and likely to be the enemy of the common man.

Without an indigenous wine-growing culture to temper the trope of the haughty wine drinker, the trope goes unchallenged. Add to this the destructive power of Prohibition, which nearly wiped out completely any tradition of table wine consumption that had been building. And when Prohibition ended, the American palate, accustomed as it was to “hooch”, tended toward highly alcoholic, fortified wine that was pushed out into the market by the few wineries that survived the alcohol holocaust of the 20s. It wasn’t until 1970 that fortified “dessert wine” was outsold by dry table wine.

By then, the stereotype of the snobby, top-hat-wearing villain with a crystal decanter filled with Claret in one hand and expensive champagne in the other had taken hold. So firm was this stereotype’s hold in the United States that thirty years later Alexander Payne would treat movie-goers to an Oscar-winning film based almost entirely on the trope, while the movie version of the Judgment of Paris relied upon the main character being portrayed as an over-the-top snob in order for the movie to land realistically with American viewers.

So of course so many Americans have come to believe wine is exclusionary, elitist, and that those who enjoy it enough to talk about it are snobby. But what’s remarkable is how this view of wine stuck even while wine drinking, wine travel, and wine education began to take off in the U.S.

THE RISE OF WINE DRINKING AND THE WINE SNOB
Beginning in the 1970s, a set of circumstances combined such that a wine boom would spill over the land. The quality of American wine—particularly Californian—increased exponentially. Americans, particularly Boomers, were in the midst of an international travel extravaganza that would take them to the wine capitals of Europe, where they would witness and take part in cultures far more dedicated to food and wine. The report that American wines defeated the vaunted French wines in a competition gave Americans reason to believe their wines were worth drinking. And the report that the moderate consumption of wine prevented heart disease gave Americans further permission to add wine to their beer and spirits habits.

And this is when the wine snob arises and starts to proliferate.

In a society without dukes, lords, barons, or a segregated upper class, the society that developed in the United States after World War Two, social status had to be performed and demonstrated through action. Thorstein Veblen describes this when he noted that in capitalist democracies, conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure are the primary ways of proving social standing. Wine was perfect for this role.

With its specialized body of knowledge, its foreign origin, and its availability in very expensive form, wine allowed the rising professional class of lawyers, doctors, and C-suite executives, and others who were rising to the upper economic rungs in the late 20th century to use wine and their knowledge of it as proof of their social status. One merely had to have the money to buy expensive wine and the ability to knowledgeably discuss vintages, wine geography, and famous estates. One just had to understand how to pronounce French and German grape varieties. Acquaintance with the California cult wines helped. Tales of visiting the famous wine regions of the world were part of the proof that you had arrived and your knowledge of wine demonstrated this.

While studying and engaging with wine certainly brought so many people great pleasure, it also demonstrated the truth that a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. Enough people used their knowledge of wine and their desire to flaunt it that the trope of the wine-drinking snob has been reinforced more so in the past 30 years than at any time before.

Here’s the important point: it’s not the wine trade that is perpetuating wine snobbery and elitism. It’s largely the wine drinkers. Those in the trade have no incentive to be elitist snobs who flaunt their knowledge. Yes, they use words like “tannin,” “malolactic fermentation,” and “Côte de Nuit,” and they recommend this lesser-known wine over that more well-known wine. But they generally do this because they are highly enthusiastic. Folks in the trade love wine and want you to love wine too. And the fact is, most members of the trade are extremely good at tempering their natural tendency to speak wine geek when not around other wine geeks.

It’s the striving, obnoxious poser who wants to find a way to demonstrate their social standing that is far more likely to give the impression that wine is exclusionary and iS surrounded by snobby dolts.

But the industry gets the blame. After all, if wine lovers are such elitists, the object of their love and those who teach them how to love wine must be the source of that elitism instead of simply professionals who, like professionals in every other industry, have a unique vocabulary and a certain love of the product they produce and sell.

The wine industry does not need to use less jargon. It does not need to emphasize good times over the revelations of terroir. It does not need to apologize for the fact that some wine commands hundreds of dollars. None of these things are responsible for the current downturn in wine sales, no matter how many times members of the wine trade misunderstand the dynamics of wine drinking in American history and in American culture.

What members of the wine trade really need to do is understand that most Americans have been raised to believe wine drinking is for sophisticates and is embraced by elitists. They need to understand that most Americans incorrectly believe that wine knowledge is complicated. They need to understand that most Americans believe they will be judged for not drinking wine “correctly”. And they need to understand that it will be consumers’ peers located outside of the industry who perpetuate these ideas.

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Ted Hall is a burden. He’s a burden on my time and on my normally sunny disposition.

Ted is the publisher of “Tell The Truth And Do The Right Thing,” a cumbersomely named newsletter in which he writes about things of profound interest to me: namely, Napa Valley, wine, and baseball. Every time I get a new issue of his newsletter, I stop, set aside what I am doing, and read…slowly. Ted should burden you too because his newsletter is full of striking insights for anyone interested in baseball and—important for this post—Napa Valley wine.

Over the past few months, Hall’s newsletter has been filled with articles explaining exactly why Napa Valley and its wine industry are pretty well rogered and rogered good. At the risk of being too reductionist, Mr. Hall has used his considerable experience and analytical skills to conclude that the current downturn in Napa Valley isn’t a routine rough patch. It’s a genuine squeeze driven by identical branding across estates, runaway costs, and unsustainable inventories that, together, can only be described as a structural shift driven by reduced consumption of wine and requiring new business models, the sale or shuttering of many wineries, or worse…whatever that might be.

The quality of Hall’s detailed and lengthy arguments is very good and very convincing. But the fact is that, given his experience as a long-time Napa Valley vintner, as a successful business owner, and as a high-level McKinsey analyst, one should probably take his word for it even if his word was no more than: “Careful, Napa Valley Wine is Screwed; get out while you can.”

Nevertheless, and at the risk of looking very dumb in the process, I want to make the simplest of cases for why Napa Valley and Napa Valley wine are a very good long-term investment, despite the structural (not cyclical!) downturn in the wine industry and in the Napa Valley brand that Ted Hall has so perfectly described. My argument rests on the claim that Napa Valley is unique for being among a small group of iconic places in the most important state in America. Consider:

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Not too long ago, in late September, wineries of the European Union dodged a bullet. Had that bullet found its target, Europe’s vignerons, Vignaioli, and Vitivinicultores would have been printing up labels for every bottle they produced that exclaimed the wine inside the bottle would cause cancer.

No one is entirely sure how to calculate the impact of cancer warning labels pasted on every bottle of wine produced and sold in France, Spain, Germany, Greece and the rest of the EU, other than that the calculation involves large, negative numbers.

On September 28, the Subcommittee on Public Health of the European Parliament met to discuss proposed directives that, if adopted, would result in cancer warning labels on EU wines, changing institutional wording that accepted distinctions between “harmful” and moderate consumption to there being “no safe level” of alcohol consumption, and that recommended severe restrictions on the marketing of alcohol…including wine.

These were the initiatives that had been inserted into proposed EU directives on cancer prevention, but which first had to move through the Public Health Subcommittee before being adopted by the full EU Parliament on November 11. The Public Health Subcommittee did not accept them. A coalition of factions accepted amended language that replaced these draconian, anti-alcohol, World Health Organization-devised initiatives with a more pro-wine, pro-agriculture replacement.

That coalition of factions that ultimately pushed back on and rejected the WHO-designed attacks on wine and its future in the EU is something that everyone should take note of, including those of us in the wine industry in the United States, where we don’t quite yet have to face down the same kind of attacks.

On September 28, the European Parliament’s Public Health Subcommittee voted 27-8 with 5 abstentions to adopt alternative language that rejected the “no safe level” language and preserved the distinction between harmful and moderate alcohol consumption, rejected on-bottle cancer warning labels, and said “no” to heavy-handed restrictions on alcohol marketing and instead focused on preventing marketing to children. The vote and the subcommittee’s rejection of the WHO-inspired “No Safe Level” language was a very big win for wine. And when, on November 11, the full EU Parliament adopts this pro-wine language on cancer prevention that will form the foundation for actual EU-wide initiatives, a coalition of national and ideological factions will chalk up a win.

IDEOLOGY VS ECONOMICS
Like the United States, the EU is made up of member “states” that elect representatives to the EU Parliament in Brussels. It’s the equivalent of our House of Representatives, not our Senate. Yet representatives elected to the European Parliament do have national loyalties that lead them to support or reject initiatives, as well as ideological motivations.

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I fell in love with France because of a girl. I didn’t know too much about the country before I met her. But after meeting her, dating and marrying her, and for many years after, I spent a good deal of time in the country and culture I came to recognize as the most important repository of Western culture.

It was also the moment when wine came into my life in a very serious way.

As I watched France this weekend fall prey to thousands of opportunists who despise the West and who went about setting the country ablaze, I could not stop wondering what this kind of ideological turn means for wine.

Back in the 1980s, before I ever finished my university studies, and in a mistaken spasm of youthful confidence, I asked my French girl to marry me. She agreed. We decided we’d live in the U.S. and visit France regularly. Her mistake was believing she could leave her home and family and happily live in the U.S. My mistake was putting stock in her confidence. But that’s a different story.

Over the next 8 years, I spent a tremendous amount of time in France. I regularly stood before monuments of Western culture, explored its culinary, historical, and literary outposts, set foot in and stomped around the West’s cultural center, and consumed copious amounts of the Official Beverage of the West.

All across France this weekend, artifacts of French culture that I revere were attacked by West-hating arsonists. Symbols of the intellectual and ideological foundations of the West were defaced. I watched these events and wondered how long before the anti-Western ideology driving these goons forced their attention toward the Official Beverage of the West.

During my time with the French girl, I spent a good deal of it in Paris, despite her home being much farther east in the department of Belfort. My base of operations in the City was Le Marais, around Place des Vosges near the St. Paul metro stop. In the 80s, this area of the city still had cheap places to stay, with a concentration of boulangeries, fromageries, epiceries, and many cavistes. This was the exact location where I learned that the culinary properties of the West—including wine—were reflections of very specific and very old traditions and ideas. It was a bit of an awakening for me.

There is no chance that the attacks on Western institutions that have piggybacked on French student protests are over or won’t spread. There is no possibility that the Deconstructionist philosophies that have filtered out of the academy and into mainstream leftist politics and ideology will end before they take a whack at delegitimizing Western values completely. And there is no way that this growing movement to undermine Western values will adopt wine as its Official Beverage. None of this occurred to me during my years visiting France.

For several years, I preceded my French girl from the Bay Area to France by two weeks while she finished her time teaching before the winter break. Then, she’d arrive, and we’d spend time with her family. It was during those two weeks alone in Paris in the winter and at other times with my French girl spent in the country that I learned how to incorporate wine into my daily life.

The lunchtime wine in the bistros and brasseries was an opportunity for me to taste and explore different wines and to enjoy that familiar little buzz as I followed the meal with walks around the city. Oftentimes, I would find myself in the small park attached to Notre Dame des Blancs-Manteaux, a beautiful church in the Marais. It was in that little park where I had an important encounter.

I sat on a bench one afternoon following a meal with wine when one of those old, bundled-up French grandmothers plopped down beside me with a small sack that had some daily essentials in it. She’d been shopping. We sat in silence until she turned to me and said, “Ça sent le vin sur votre haleine” (I smell wine on your breath.)

It took me a while to understand what she was saying, but when she repeated herself for me, I told her, “I just had lunch.” This old woman wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing in France. I told her about my French girl back in San Francisco, that she would be here as soon as her school let out for winter and that we would then head off for Belfort. Then she said, “Les Belfortains n’aiment pas autant le vin que nous.”

When she compared the wine-drinking habits of the folks living in Belfort to “Nous” or Us, and noted they don’t like wine as much, I was flattered. I was part of “nous”…us.

If I close my eyes, I can see this little old French woman, bundled up and sitting next to me in the garden park attached to the Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux. It was nearly 40 years ago. But I always think about her when I contemplate how relationships to wine are often a defining quality of communities across the West. Of course, as soon as she got herself up and said goodbye, I realized I wasn’t who she was including when she referred to “Nous”. She was talking about Parisians in comparison to Belfortains. And she was right.

There is a danger that those wanting to accommodate the demands of people who are somewhat less committed to the values of the West will be willing to parrot their anti-Western slogans and even agree to abandon many traditions that define the culture of Western Civilization. When you watch places like Paris, Brussels, Milan, and other great cities absorb attacks by people waving the flags of Palestine or Hamas or Antifa and celebrating riots, it’s very easy to say yes to demands that advance anti-Western projects.

My argument, however, is that wine, so clearly the Official Beverage of the West, does not necessarily survive an assault on Western values. When attacks on Western institutions and thought are undertaken, there is no reason to believe the West’s symbols will be ignored and left alone. It would be prudent if you love wine and if, for whatever reason, you choose not to push back against obvious attacks on Western culture, to at least be warned that if Marianne can be defaced and destroyed, so can the places where the Official Beverage of the West is produced.

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I can picture it with great clarity: sitting in our living room or at our dining room table, watching and listening to my parents talk with the visitors who were invited over for a meal or for drinks. It wasn’t Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving. It was a Friday night. Not every Friday night. But the occasional Friday night.

It happened every month or two. People who my sister and I barely knew showed up at our house to eat with us or have drinks. Karen and I were always expected to be at the dinner table. We were expected to have manners. We were expected to respond to inquiries from these guests.

My sister and I were bored stiff during these visits.

The visitors were acquaintances of our parents. Some were people my father worked with. Some were couples my parents had met at this or that club. Occasionally they’d show up with their own kids in tow who my sister and I did not know, but entertained nonetheless.

We were not excited about these gatherings. We were kids who wanted to do kid things.

But something important was happening and I didn’t know it at the time. I was learning how to entertain and that entertaining was a part of adulthood. I was learning how friendship was cultivated. I was learning the protocols that made socializing pleasant and possible.

I was reminded of this time in my life when I read Kate Dingwall’s article in Wine Enthusiast that reported on a recent survey carried out by the folks behind Come Over October and Local Wine Events concerning wine and gatherings: “People Still Want Wine at Their Gatherings—but Gathering Is the Challenge”.

The gist of Dingwall’s as-always fine article was that most folks still associate wine with gatherings, but the problem is getting them to gather:

“As the survey of over 1,500, both non-drinkers and wine drinkers showed, people are still interested in wine—even if their spending behaviors don’t always reflect that. The majority of respondents (61%) say that wine is almost always part of their social get-togethers, and 41% of respondents cited “occasions” as their main impetus for drinking wine: birthdays, promotions, milestones, break-ups, girl’s nights, even Vanderpump Rules premieres….

“Getting together, however, isn’t always so easy. 77% of respondents cited busy schedules as the main reason they weren’t gathering, and 40% cited the distance between friends and loved ones. It can feel too expensive, time-consuming, and physically taxing to gather.”

Come Over October, the initiative founded to encourage people to gather, enjoy each other’s company, and create the setting for uncorking a bottle of wine, was developed specifically to address the problem that Dingwall describes. That problem is also described in this chart created from data taken from the American Time Use Survey:

If you want to understand why there is a decline in wine consumption, and particularly a decline in consumption among Gen Z, just study and think about this chart. The “Why” of it all is almost surely connected to the rise of the Internet, the smartphone, and social media. (By the way, that -13% relatively small decline….That’s me. And yes…I’m proud to be part of the cohort that has dismissed social events the least.)

The above chart comes from Derek Thompson’s recent article, “Why Americans Stopped Falling In Love”. The article is about the significant decline in coupling over the past 40 years. Thompson points out that “The share of 40-year-olds who have never been hitched has quadrupled since 1980, as Americans get married later, or not at all.”

But it’s not merely coupling:

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Through my advocacy for wine consumers and in my role as Executive Director of the National Association of Wine Retailers, I have long been involved with lawsuits that challenge discriminatory state alcohol laws. These lawsuits challenge bans on wine shipments from out-of-state retailers as well as bans on wine retailers purchasing inventory from out-of-state sources.

This means that for a couple of decades I’ve listened to defenders of these discriminatory and protectionist laws make the case that to enforce important alcohol laws, states and the federal government must be able to threaten revocation of permits to operate. The claim is that without the ability to threaten to revoke a winery’s or wholesaler’s or retailer’s permit to operate, the regulators of the alcohol industry can’t induce the licensees to do the right thing and follow the law.

The laws of every state include the creation of oversight boards and agencies that have the power to suspend and revoke the operating permit of their producers, wholesalers, and retailers for offenses that harm or jeopardize the proper operation of the alcohol beverage market.

Yet, I can’t think of a single instance in which a permit to operate as a producer or wholesaler or retailer has been revoked due to the wrongdoing of the permittee. It makes one ask: what does a company have to do to justify its permit to operate being revoked?

In every single lawsuit that has challenged a state law that bans out-of-state wine retailers from shipping wine to consumers in the state, the state alcohol beverage commission, state attorneys general, or state wholesalers defending the laws claim that since authorities don’t have the power or jurisdiction to revoke an out-of-state retailer’s license to operate, that retailer can’t be adequately punished if they violate the laws of the state and therefore can’t be persuaded to do the right thing and follow the laws.

With this long history of states claiming they need the ability to revoke the permit of companies to persuade them to operate within the law, will they finally pull the trigger when a case of outrageous lawbreaking occurs?

The San Francisco Chronicle recently revealed that the state of California is investigating wholesaler Southern Glazer’s in the wake of federal authorities concluding that the largest wholesaler in the United States had engaged in a multi-year scheme to bribe grocery stores to carry certain products they distribute. This comes after Southern Glazer’s had previously been found to have carried out similar schemes in New York and Pennsylvania.

Does bribing one of the largest grocery stores in California rise to the level that would justify revoking the license to operate in the state? And if it doesn’t, what exactly would? Is permit revocation something that might only apply to cases of extorting or coercing a company to buy their wine and spirits? Or is permit revocation only applied in cases of a truly serious nature, such as when an out-of-state retailer fails to ensure that a signature of an adult is obtained when they ship a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to their door?

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Folks who are paying less than $10 for a bottle of wine don’t give a shit about the grape varietals used, the vessel it was aged in, or the appellation of the grapes. They care about what the wine tastes like, and that should be the focus of marketing for wine at this price point.

So says Paul Schaafsma, CEO of Benchmark Drinks, the newish wine company that is making a killing off of cheaply made celebrity wines that in many cases are wildly popular. Schaafsma’s point is a simple one: Folks spending at the bottom of the price scale won’t be moved by wine jargon surrounding terroir, variety, winemaking technique, etc.

He’s right. But the point is so obvious that one wonders why his statement is not just covered in the media, and especially the wine trade media, but emphasized. It’s a bit like writing an article entitled, “Consumers Expect Wine To Be Wet” and following that headline with the following:

Speaking at a recent industry Conference, Tom Wark told an audience of wine industry executives that their marketing efforts for all types of wine must take account of the fact that consumers expect wine to be liquid. Moreover, Wark encouraged marketers to “embrace consumers’ expectations that wine, as a liquid, will slide down the throat with relative ease.”

I don’t mean to take anything away from Mr. Schaafsma. He’s built an impressive wine company by focusing almost entirely on marketing first and product second, which is the crux of his message about sub-$10 wines. It’s just that his message really ought to go without saying.

Rather than ponder why he decided this obvious thing needed saying out loud, I started making a mental list of other axioms connected to the wine business. There are many:

1. Consumers Claim to Like Dry Wine, But Buy Sweet Wine.

2. The Average Wine Purchased Is Consumed within 48 Hours of Purchase

3. Wine Package/Label Design Is Far More Likely To Influence Purchases Than Information

4. Consumers Use Critic Ratings Not As a Source of Information About a Wine, But as Permission to Spend Money Without Fear of Picking a Bad Bottle

5. For Consumers, Price is a Proxy For Quality

6. Wine and Food Pairing is of Zero Concern to Those Spending $15 or Less on Bottles

7. For Those Spending $15 or Less on Wine, the Vintage on the Bottle Has No Meaning

8. Even Without Access to Pricing Information, Consumers Believe Higher Placement on a Shelf Signals Better Quality Wine.

9. Consumers Unconsciously Associate Greater Bottle Weight with Greater Wine Quality

10. The Success of a Celebrity Wine Brand Has Almost Nothing To Do With Wine Quality

Just as the knowledge that consumers of $10 bottles of wine have no interest in terroir and prefer information about flavors is spectacularly obvious, these 10 axioms above should also be too obvious to warrant contemplation. Instead, they should guide wine producers, retailers, restaurateurs, and marketers in the same way that producers of toothpaste are guided by the obvious knowledge that consumers associate mint flavors with cleanliness.

However, while the 10 axioms listed above and Mr. Schaafsma’s insight concerning most consumers’ interest in flavor over terroir belong to the inventory of Captain Obvious, there is still good reason to occasionally remind ourselves of these pieces of common knowledge since there are almost always important and useful, but less obvious, corollaries to these axioms. And in the case of Mr. Schaafsma’s observation, the corollary is actually very important. And it’s this:

While consumers who buy $10 or less bottles of wine don’t care about terroir or varietal and instead primarily want flavor information to aid their purchase decisions, the Inclusion on the bottle of information about terroir and varietal Isn’t harmful—and might just be helpful to some consumers of cheap wine.

This is “The Benign Is Rarely Harmful” rule that is too rarely emphasized. And where wine is concerned, the rule should motivate us to ask, “How can information of a more sophisticated nature be included on a cheap bottle of wine that primarily communicates a taste profile?”

The answer to this question probably belongs in the inventory of Captain Obvious’ second cousin, Major Probable—who is a much better guest at a dinner party or industry conference.

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Words matter.

Words matter so much that it is worth fighting over them. In fact, it’s worth fighting over a single word. A single five-letter word is worth fighting over. Consider these sets of words:

Abuse of alcohol is harmful to your health

Alcohol is harmful to your health

The difference between these two sentences is considerable. One of them is true. The other is false. One of them will decrease the revenue of beer producers despite being false. One of them accurately describes the impact of an action. One of them is so poorly written and conceived that it implies an inanimate object can and will harm a human being simply by its existence.

Belgian beer producers understand this.

A proposal currently under consideration in the Belgian Parliament would change the required health warning label on advertisements from the first set of words above to the second set of words above. It is essentially a one-word change that describes an action as dangerous to one that describes an entire product category as dangerous. The change goes from delivering a very specific message to delivering a very vague message.

Here’s the important thing to appreciate about the kind of seemingly inconsequential change the Belgian brewers are pushing back against. If abuse of alcohol is harmful, then society needs to try to reduce the abuse of alcohol. But if Alcohol alone is harmful to your health, then society needs to prevent any use of that product.

And this is exactly what the “health authorities” in Belgium want to see happen:

But for some health experts in the country, the government’s latest move doesn’t go far enough. Belgium’s Superior Health Council, which gives independent advice to the authorities, has been calling for years for a total ban on alcohol advertising. It also wants to see health warnings on bottles and cans, accusing the government of being too timid. “Slogans used by the industry do not emphasise the dangers inherent in alcohol consumption sufficiently and even contribute to confusion,” the council wrote in 2024, quoting the World Health Organization as saying that there is no level of alcohol consumption that is safe for one’s health.”

It’s also what the health community in the U.S. wants to see.

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Remember those “Where to Buy Our Wine” (WTBOW) or “Find Our Wine (FOW) links that used to show up at the bottom of every winery website? You’d click them and find a static list of retailers from across the country, sometimes even restaurants. The really sophisticated ones would ask for your ZIP code before returning a “we are sorry, no stores in your area currently carry our wines” message.

I saw the latest iteration of this service and it does something the past iterations never did: it assumes someone really does want to buy wine.

What I mean is that the latest iteration of the FOW link actually provides one-click access for purchasing the wine near the buyer or buying the wine from an online retailer who will ship to the buyer, and even shows where to find the best price on the wine.

Wente Vineyards is one of the best examples of this latest iteration of the FOW link. Put in your zip code and you get a series of one-click links for where to buy each of the producer’s wines.

The source of the new technology is PourNow, which is driving millions of dollars in sales for retailers and (therefore) wineries that integrate PourNow’s tech into their website and their online campaigns.

PourNow is the brainchild of Paul Mabray, a serial wine entrepreneur responsible for PiX and for Inertia Beverage Group—a wine e-commerce and logistics company that eventually spawned WineDirect. Paul founded PourNow together with Andrew Levy, Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Provi, the premier B2B marketplace and ordering platform for the three-tier beverage alcohol industry. Both Paul and Andrew are concerned with better ways for consumers to find and buy wine with the least amount of friction. This is not an easy challenge to overcome in a business more regulated than any other on earth save, perhaps, for nuclear-generated energy.

One of the most interesting and consequential things about the PourNow tech being deployed by hundreds of wineries is that it asks them to center the retailer sales of their wines instead of just direct-from-winery sales. For years, wineries have focused on steering consumers into their own sales environment, be it online, via a wine club, or at the winery. PourNow tech asks the winery to recenter retailer-located sales of their wines and this is very smart.

Any winery operating within the three-tier system today must find more and new ways to generate or accelerate pull from the shelves upon which their wines are placed. Those shelf slots are more valuable today than they ever were, given the downturn in wine sales and as more and more producers are beginning to pay more attention to three-tier sales. Keeping your place on the retail shelf means demonstrating your wines’ moves. PourNow is one way producers can help make that happen.

But one of the coolest things about PourNow tech taking over wineries’ “find our wines” link and giving consumers access to the most convenient way to purchase is that wineries can track how and where consumers purchased and then show this information to their wholesalers as well as retailers. It’s the kind of proof of effort and proof of concept that leads wholesalers to consider centering a winery’s products and gives retailers confidence that the brand is helping pull the wine off their shelves.

The old “find our wines” static page never had a chance to provide this kind of value.

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Let’s take account:

• -On September 11, the Federal government announced it had entered into a Non-Prosecution agreement with Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits and had assessed the largest wine and spirits distributor with a $12.5 million fine. According to the agreement, Southern Glazer's staff were engaged in a scheme to bribe grocery store buyers.

• In December 2017, the New York State Liquor Authority assessed Southern $3.5 million in civil penalties for a bribery scheme in that state.

• Also in 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office assessed a fee of $5 million against Southern for bribing officials at the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

Translation: Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, the largest alcohol wholesaler in America and which controls 1/3 of the wine and spirits distribution market, is a serial offender and a serial briber.

But here’s the thing. Not only does no one care who should, but those who should be working to dissuade Southern from breaking the law are actually incentivizing Southern to offer more bribes.

For its admitted crimes, Southern was assessed a $12.5 million fine. Southern Glazer’s annual revenue is estimated to be at least $26 billion. So, this fine amounts to one-tenth of one-half of one percent of Southern’s annual revenue

In accounting terms, this $12.5 million fine is considered a “rounding error”. In the world of corporate governance, this $12.5 million fine would be considered far below the threshold of "materiality"—meaning on its own, it is not enough to impact the overall financial health or viability of the company.

I’ve spoken to a number of people who have read the details of the bribery scheme Southern Glazer’s undertook in California, and not one of them believed the $12.5 million fine amounted to the revenue that the bribery scheme generated. Another way to put this is the Fed’s $12.5 million fine was an endorsement of bribery as a business strategy.

But not to worry. As part of its non-prosecution agreement with the Feds, Southern Glazer’s promised to “implement robust steps to enhance compliance with federal and state laws prohibiting bribery and other improper payments”.

This should be comforting since back in 2017, as part of its non-prosecution agreement with the federal government after bribing the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, Southern Glazer’s promised to “implement compliance measures and refrain from engaging in similar activities in the future.”

Given Southern Glazer’s clear devotion to bribery as a sales strategy, I think if I were the owner of one of the 7,000 brands they represent, I’d want to know if they were using this strategy to move my wines. Unfortunately, I think if I have to ask that question, then the answer would certainly be “no.” Previous indictments demonstrate that certain producers and brand owners were also closely involved in this bribery scheme.

Southern Glazer’s holds federal and state permits. That is, in order to wholesale wine and spirits, it must obtain special permits from the federal government and the states where it operates (which is nearly all of them). What this latest bribery scandal indicates is that the holding of a federal permit is not the source of deterrence that the wholesalers themselves say it is.

Having spent some time working on lawsuits meant to liberalize wine distribution laws, one of the things I’ve witnessed over and over is the wholesaler and the state arguing in front of federal courts that retailers are more difficult to regulate and should, therefore, not be given the same kind of wine shipping privileges as the federal permit-holding wineries because retailers do not have to hold a federal permit. They only have to hold state permits. Not being threatened with losing a federally issued permit will, the argument goes, lead retailers to violate the law more readily.

It’s a facile argument that is theoretical in nature, while experience proves otherwise.

But more importantly, this latest bribery scandal with Southern-Glazer’s demonstrates that holding a federal permit does not deter anything. Three times now, the feds have caught Southern red-handed bribing retailers and representatives of state agencies. Three times there has been no revocation of their federal permit. Just meager fines that actually incentivise a future bribing strategy instead of deterring it.

There is every reason to believe that the same bribery sales strategy is ongoing in other states and that we will see future federal investigations. It looks more and more like Southern can’t help itself.

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It has been my view for a very long time that obtaining a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college in a reasonable amount of time doesn’t mean much more than a person can follow through on a plan. I recognize that’s a low bar.

But what does it mean that a person can obtain certification from a trade school…a school that seeks to transmit a very specific body of knowledge meant to be used in a very narrow set of occupations? Put more succinctly, what does it mean that a person can obtain certification from a school that transmits wine knowledge? If I’m an employer, should I care? If I’m looking to advance my career in a field that involves wine, should I care what the certification says about me?

Michelle Massie cares.

Ms. Massie, it was recently announced, is the first recipient of the Habibi Sommelier Scholarship Program, a scholarship supported by the Wine School of Philadelphia and The Hue Society. The scholarship program is meant to “expand access to professional wine education and build pathways into the wine industry for people who have historically been underrepresented in the field.”

Right before this announcement was made, the founder of the Philly Wine School, Keith Wallace, and I were trading emails, discussing the meaning and utility of a “wine education”. I’ve long questioned the need for any formal “wine education” in order to build a successful career in the wine industry. Keith, naturally, sees greater utility in a formal wine education.

But his real concern is that the credentialing system surrounding wine education is incoherent. Wallace told me:

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As far as I can tell, only one set of awards for wine writing and communication is currently running: The 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards. I’m not sure the genre deserves more than one award, but that’s an entirely different article.

The 2026 edition of the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards was recently announced. Six different categories of communication are honored.

One of the six awards has been widely identified by individuals and by AI Detectors as generated almost entirely by AI.

This affair has generated moderate discussion in various corners of the Internet. What’s interesting about this discussion is the air of resignation that pervades the comments. I think, however, that this kind of embarrassing turn of events should generate far more interest and attention. Why hasn’t it?

Henry Jeffreys has written the best (only?) account of this wine version of “L’Affair d’AI” in his Drinking Culture newsletter. I urge you to read it.

To summarize, the Best Global Wine Communicator in Short-Form Writing award was given to Fikayo Ifaturoti for her entry “The Stradivarius Violin × 1969 Bollinger VVF”. I think it is a facile piece of writing that should not be in the proximity of a writing award. How the panel of well-known communicators who judged these awards ended up honoring this piece of “writing” is very difficult for me to understand, if the goal was simply to highlight the best writing. The writing is not as bad as some of the stuff I’ve published in my 20+ years of writing for public consumption, but it comes very close. That’s not good.

More importantly, the piece is highly likely to be AI-generated. In fact, Pangram, perhaps the best-known and most widely used AI-detection tool with a spectacularly low false positive rate, identified the piece as “100 AI-Generated”. ChatGPT identified it as 80% likely to be AI-generated. Google Gemini came to a similar conclusion. The piece was not apparently written by a human being. It was, however, passed off by Ms. Ifaturoti as an original work of writing. But, hey, maybe the AI-Detector is entirely wrong. Maybe the extensive tests that have shown Pangram’s ability to detect AI-generated prose are overstated or fraudulent. Maybe the experience of those who can identify the hallmarks of AI-generated prose is not enough to be trusted. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Jeffreys is wrong. Maybe it was written entirely by Ms. Ifaturoti (eye roll).

The ability of our new AI tools to help people who, for whatever reason, have difficulty putting their ideas and thoughts into a coherent written order is genuinely welcome…and a welcome leap in technology. But there is obviously a very dark side that needs to be explored, understood, and dissuaded.

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Even as Natural Wine enthusiasts, producers, and champions argued over the role of sulfur in wine, whether some subtle filtration is ok, and whether certain characteristics that conventional winemakers consider faults are actually ok in a wine, one concept unites all these Natural Wine lovers: The exclusive use of wild yeast to produce spontaneous fermentation and the strict refusal to use cultivated, “commercial” yeast.

The reason for this certainty that natural yeasts are superior to commercial yeast fermentations and are required for authentically natural wines is due to the notion that commercial yeasts used to inoculate for fermentation strip the resulting wine of authentically reflecting the terroir in which a wine’s grapes were cultivated. Commercial yeast fermentations lead to a predictable outcome by stripping the wine of its terroir identifiers that are highlighted by letting the yeast that is on the grape at harvest lead the fermentation.

Interestingly, recent research suggests that a critical element of terroir remains intact in wines that are inoculated with the dreaded commercial yeast.

If you read through the literature and marketing materials of those who practice “natural” winemaking, you find explicit and implicit disparagement of wines that use commercial yeast for fermentation. It looks like this:

“Wild yeast ferments more slowly and less evenly than commercial strains. This draws out layers of flavor tied to our vineyard, not a formula.”

”Fermenting this way often brings out subtle, savory, and mineral notes you do not get from standardized yeast.”

“Imagine a great bar or festival where people are partying together. This is kind of like a wild yeast party. Then, imagine a futuristic bar where you find the same person cloned thousands of times. That is a commercial yeast fermentation: the other people might have been lining up at the door, but they weren’t allowed into the party. Only the clone is.”

“Those who champion spontaneous fermentation are typically those who are not making wine “in an office”, and instead make wines relying solely on what nature provides: they prefer their wines to have its terroir shine through, and by relying only on native yeasts is major contribution to this winemaking style.”

This is but a very small sampling of the dismissive tone of the natural wine community toward the use of cultivated or commercial yeast in winemaking. The message is clear: If you aren’t letting “wild” yeast start your fermentation, if you are using commercial or cultured yeast to start your fermentation, well, you just don’t care about the authenticity of the wine. You are an “office” winemaker.

This kind of dismissive and disparaging thread has run through the natural wine community from the very beginning. The very term “natural” wine is both inaccurate and used as a pitchfork against those who choose clean over mouse poop smells in their wines.

Very recently, research was published that showed something the natural wine community has spent decades denying was possible:

“Yeast and bacterial population dynamics during alcoholic fermentation play a decisive role in shaping wine characteristics, and the composition of microbial communities present on grapes at harvest is known to influence the fermentation process. In this study, fungal and bacterial community patterns associated with vineyard geography remained detectable throughout standardized inoculated fermentations, despite the dominance of a commercial starter culture. These persistent microbial signatures were associated with differences in microbial succession, chemical composition, and wine volatilome, supporting the concept that regional microbial imprints can remain detectable under commercial winemaking conditions.”

Let me translate that from Researcher Tongue to English:

Even when the dreaded commercial yeasts were used in the winemaking process, the distinct microbial elements of the terroir were maintained throughout the fermentation, influencing the final characteristics of the wine. AKA, commercial or cultivated yeast did not strip out the terroir of the grapes’ home.

When you combine this with the fact that research shows that commercial yeast often overtakes the fermentation in wineries that are making “natural” wine, you get the impression that many of the disparaging claims made by the champions of natural wine are really just marketing speak.

Whether “natural” wine is generally just a spoiled microbial explosion in a bottle with a collection of champions and fanatics who agree the king’s new clothing is just marvelous or an interesting and dynamic new sector of the winemaking world that offers a unique set of flavors and textures, is not the only issue when it comes to this category of wines. One of the most important questions that has always been part of this niche is the degree to which natural wine champions have been purveyors of Denigration Marketing; the practice of disparaging competitors in order to normalize their own efforts.

The consistent dismissiveness of wines made with commercial yeasts could rightly be noted as part of the denigration marketing campaign that I think has been an ongoing practice by natural wine advocates for nearly two decades. It should go away. But not natural wine. It should stay.

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If you are a wine writer with aspirations for building a large, loyal audience that doesn’t just hang on your words and recommendations, but interacts with you and your ideas, then what you really want to see is a proliferation of AI-generated wine writing. You want to be an Authentic among the Slop Mongers.

The general attitude toward AI-generated prose—in the wine-writing realm and every other literary genre—is disgust. AI-generated articles and social media posts about the difference between corks and screw caps to close wine, about the future of municipal bonds, about the impact of the increased use of roundabouts in cities, and about any other subject are called “slop” for a reason.

Even more despised than the “slop” appellation is being pegged as one who has misrepresented AI-written prose as their own. These folks are known as cheaters and liars…because they are. If you aspire to be a wine writer of note, don’t do this.

The point is that among those who still read, the authentic writers will be rewarded as AI-Slop proliferates.

But…what about the average readers? What about those who simply want to be entertained and educated about wine as they progress on their wine journey? Do they care if their guide is an AI or a genuine person? Some clearly do:

“I care about the slopification of the written word…The act of writing is an act of thinking, and to automate our paragraphs is to populate our screens with words without filling our minds with the ideas necessary to conceive of them. Finally, I do not enjoy the idea of a technology that severs the connection between composition and knowledge, such that I cannot know if an author actually knows anything about what they have published under their name.”

This is Derek Thompson, a very talented writer and cultural observer writing on Substack about the meaning of the “slopification” of the Internet in advance of his interview with Pangram founder and chief executive Max Spero. Pangram is an AI-detecting service that has been integrated into the Substack community, allowing readers to determine if a particular post or note is AI-generated. Pangram is essentially the creativity police.

Thompson is the author of Abundance, with Ezra Klein, and a long-time writer at The Atlantic. His credentials are impeccable. His talent for thinking and thinking well is on display constantly. So, I’m confused why he so completely misunderstands the act of reading.

Does he really care that much about how knowledge intersects with composition? If an author’s name is on an article, isn’t that author communicating that the thoughts and ideas in the article represent what he thinks? And assuming he indicates that AI assisted him in writing the article, isn’t the author avoiding issues of mistrust and misrepresentation? But most importantly, if the article delivers useful, desired or entertaining information to Mr. Thompson, why does he care if there is a disconnect between the composition of the article and the knowledge of the author whose name on the article indicates the content below it represents his views on the subject?

He doesn’t. Or at least he shouldn’t.

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Media coverage is starting to accelerate around the publication of a new study out of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicinethat has been published and looks at the total number of “alcohol-attributable” cancer deaths between 1990 and 2023. The study finds that the raw number of such cancer deaths doubled from 1990 to 2023—going from 11,400 in 1990 to 23,100 in 2023.

The media coverage around this study is a classic example of how institutional PR communications around medical research and media coverage around health is irresponsible.

If you read the press release touting the “doubling” of “alcohol-attributable” cancer deaths between 1990 and 2023, you will see that there is no explanation as to why this might be. Without the explanation, the reader is left with the impression that alcohol consumption has become more deadly over time; that something has changed around alcohol that makes it more deadly. But nothing is further from the truth.

Still, we get the following headlines based on this press release:

Alcohol-related cancer deaths have doubled, and 1 drink could increase risk
—USA Today

Alcohol-related cancer deaths in US have more than doubled over three decades
-The Guardian

Just one drink a day may increase the risk of dying from numerous cancers
-CNN

But again, we get no explanation in the study, let alone the press release, why the number of “alcohol-attributable” deaths doubled between 1990 and 2023. What is never mentioned is the following:

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Shutting down The Spill (my second publishing project, which curated the best consumer wine content daily) doesn’t even come close to cracking the top ten most disappointing things in my professional life. However, it does crack my top ten most interesting learning experiences in my career.

For those of you who are unaware, I’ve always admired the work of Wine Industry Insight, Wine Business Daily News, and Wine Industry Advisor’s Afternoon Brief. These three daily email newsletters track the most important wine trade news of the day. They serve as the vascular system of the wine industry, keeping the information we all need flowing.

But despite there being FAR more consumer-based wine content published daily than trade-related, there had never been a similar daily newsletter capturing the best of that consumer wine content. That was The Spill. I began publishing it precisely a year ago to the day. Today, I shut it down.

For those wondering, The Spill is suspended because the effort it would take me to acquire the number of subscribers (subscriptions were free) to make it a viable advertising product for advertisers and the publisher (me) is more than I have to give.

The time to curate The Spill on a daily basis was not the issue. Technology was such that determining from the hundreds of new pieces of content published daily which would make it into The Spill and actually building the newsletter was manageable. However, building the subscriber number up to what they needed to be would take more time than I had to give.

ANYONE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING THE SPILL AND GIVING IT A GO OR SIMPLY TAKING OWNERSHIP OF THE INTELLECTUAL ASSETS IS WELCOME TO REACH OUT TO ME. I’M HAPPY TO CHAT.

But in the wake of putting The Spill to bed, I thought I’d share some of the things I learned from intensely imbibing wine content for a full year. I think it is safe to say that no one in the past year has so thoroughly examined consumer-aimed wine content as I have. Add to this that I have been closely watching the wine media for three decades in my work as a wine publicist and media relations consultant. And finally, I have been able to see precisely what kind of content people appear to be interested in based on knowing which links in The Spill they have most and least frequently clicked over the past 12 months. So what have I learned?

The Product Determines the Content
The vast majority (95%) of wine-related content is based on the fundamental thing that wine is: An ancient alcoholic beverage produced from different varieties of grapes grown in a relatively small latitudinal band where certain small geographic regions produce higher quality raw materials that can be crafted into wine based on the direction and efforts of individuals. Winemaking everywhere is both a craft and an industry. This basic description of wine is not only accurate, but also the basis of articles that describe and interpret the people, places, and products that surround wine. Whether the content is about what to drink, why to drink it, who made the drink, the details of where the drink was made, how the drink was made, or how to visit the places it was made, the content is almost always derived from what wine is.

Thoughtful Content is Rare
What is extraordinarily rare in wine content is an exploration of what wine means. When these kinds of thoughtful articles are attempted, they are almost always mediocre. However, they are occasionally very good. But even when they are very good, they are not well read by consumers. If you think this is odd, consider that 90 of all the wine produced and purchased for consumption is very inexpensive and very average.

Six Words Placed In Headlines Are the Key to Attracting Readers
Biggest, First Ever, Best, and their opposites in headlines attract the most attention. Without exception, articles with superlatives in the headline draw the most interest from readers. Whether having to do with size or quality, or timeliness, superlatives grab potential media consumers and lead them down paths both silly and substantial. The quality of the content, the reputation of the publisher, and the time of publication have nothing to do with the appetite that draws consumers in most easily. It has to do with the use of a superlative.

Substack Has Captured the Most Interesting New Wine Content
Substack is the source of the most interesting wine content being published today. Like blogs before, Substack is a publishing platform that provides writers and content creators with an uncomplicated and inexpensive route to market. What’s different about Substack is that it made monetization of the content easily accomplished, something the blogging platforms did not. Over the past year, there has been an explosion in the number of wine-related Substacks, many authored by really great wine minds, including many not considered traditional media. One of the most important things I did in publishing The Spill was keeping up with the rise of new wine newsletters published on Substack. Ironically, I used a competing platform, Beehiiv, to publish The Spill.

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Legacy Wine Publications Are The Best At Spotting and Commissioning Great Wine Content
For those who want to diss the legacy wine publications, you don’t know what you are talking about and should shut right up. The Wine Spectator, the Wine Enthusiast, Food & Wine Magazine, The World of Fine Wine, and Decanter all continue to deliver the most entertaining and most in-depth wine content available. They do this by hiring and keeping great editors who know wine and wine people and the wine industry and paying the best writers who tend to know the same. Barely a day went by that an article from a legacy wine publication did not find its way to the featured place in The Spill.

AI Could Curate Daily Wine News, Just Not as Well As I Can
It is entirely possible to train an AI to seek out newly published wine content. It is possible to train an AI to do this and to place the results in a database that ranks the content by quality or length or subject matter or creator or some other criteria. All this would take some work, but I think it could be done and probably done even easier six months from now. However, what AI cannot do is curate this content on a daily basis with the same discerning eye that I bring to it, nor with the same judgment of what is important, nor with the editorial determination of which content vehicle deserves elevation. The key words in all that are “discernment” and “judgment”.

Too Much Trade-Directed Content
The primary reason an otherwise really well-done piece of content was excluded from The Spill was due to it being trade-focused. That is to say, the content assumed a level and quality of interest in wine that is most often reserved to those concerned with the business side of wine. You would be surprised how common these kinds of articles are. Moreover, many content creators and writers who think they are creating and writing for consumers and enthusiasts are actually producing something that is best suited for a trade-level acquaintance with the information presented. My own judgment is that content produced for consumers and enthusiasts that creeps up toward being something of interest to the trade but falls slightly short is the sweet spot for really useful consumer wine content.

There Is Always A Hierarchy of Talent, and It’s Usually Obvious
It should be clear to anyone who follows the wine media even moderately closely that where publications, editors and writers are concerned, there is an easily recognized hierarchy of talent. I’ve followed it for quite some time. However, after bathing in this niche for a year, what is equally clear is that the space between the top publications and writers and the next rung is fairly wide.

It was suggested by a number of subscribers that I turn The Spill into a paid subscriber publication rather than simply suspend publication. I appreciate that. Moreover, priced correctly, I think a paid daily, curated newsletter filled with links to the top wine content would attract more paying subscribers than Fermentation. And maybe that will happen. For now, however, it’s best to just shut it down and take some time to think it over.

If you are a subscriber to The Spill, thank you. I hope it was of use.

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My son Henry, who recently turned 12, ran into the house and presented himself in front of me as I sat in a chair downstairs working. The smile on his face was one of those genuine kid-smiles that can’t be faked. He proudly announced that “a girl hit on me” when he was at the Urban Air Trampoline Park his grandfather had just taken him to.

I’m not entirely sure if the proud smile on his face had more to do with actually being hit on by a girl for the first time or because he got to stand in front of his dad and announce he’d been hit on. The two things are very different. The first is an excitement that comes from being the center of attention. The second is the excitement of being able to show your father that you are growing up.

To Henry’s father, this felt like an important moment in his boy’s life; something to take note of and that he would catalog in his memory and refer back to throughout his life. I was genuinely happy for him and a little bemused. But what really interested me was the 11-year-old girl who walked up to my son, declared she liked him, and said she’d like his number (he doesn’t have a number).

My own experience tells me that this little girl possessed a tremendous amount of courage. And this is where my mind turned toward the wine industry—as it inevitably does when seemingly disconnected information passes through my mind.

The wine industry needs to muster the level of courage exhibited by this 11-year-old girl who walked up to a boy she did not know and declared herself interested.

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I monitor scientific research concerning alcohol. I do this because I’m curious. I also monitor this kind of research because in my role as the executive director of the National Association of Wine Retailers, I have been tasked with staying alert to the changes and the evolution in the narrative concerning alcohol and health.

Sometimes I come across significant findings that I know will be covered in mainstream media once they filter down from research journals to science journals and finally to popular media. For example, this story noted that wine drinkers were the only alcohol consumers who experienced significantly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease as well as all-cause mortality when their alcohol of choice was consumed moderately. There was no doubt this study’s findings would eventually make it to the mainstream media.

Sometimes I come across research that is absolutely hilarious, but which I’m absolutely sure will also find its way to the popular press once the medical literature gets done with it. I came across such research today.

Here’s the headline from the actual research journal (Nature Neuroscience) this new study appeared in:

Social isolation recruits amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex projections to escalate alcohol drinking in male mice

It’s as though these journals publish research below headlines that are written with the intent to prompt us to just move along. Here’s the headline about the same study as it appears in a medical publication at Northwestern University that is meant for wider readership:

Loneliness Rewires the Brain to Drive Alcohol Consumption, Mouse Study Finds

The findings from this study have not quite made it into the mainstream press. But they will. I give it 3 to 7 days before the New York Post or The Daily Mirror publishes a story under the headline: “Men Descend Into Alcoholism When Lonely, Study Shows”.

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There’s nothing else like a sure thing; that feeling where you know for a fact that something will come to pass before it happens. However, a “sure thing” isn’t always a good thing.

Take, for example, regulating the sale and distribution of hemp-derived beverages using the three-tier system. It is a sure thing that producers and retailers of these beverages will regret agreeing to be regulated under this system.

“Hemp-derived beverage products” are exactly what they sound like: THC delivered via liquids. The “three-tier system” is a form of product regulation that puts all power in the hands of middlemen by requiring producers to sell to wholesalers and requiring retailers to buy from wholesalers.

Hemp beverages, which had been produced and sold under something of a loophole in federal law, were set to be prohibited by federal legislation, and there has been a push to pass a bill that would keep these beverages regulated and legal. Well, that bill has been introduced. Reps. Beth Van Duyne, (R-Texas), and Greg Landsman, (D-Ohio) introduced The Beverage Regulatory Parity Act on Aug. 10. Among other things, the bill requires these beverages to be sold and distributed via a three-tier system that has been more or less a staple of the alcoholic beverage industry since 1933.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that alcohol wholesalers and their trade association, The Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America (WSWA), has been lobbying for exactly this for a very long time.

But the sure thing here is not that WSWA got its way. The sure thing is that the producers and retailers of THC-derived beverages will be both disappointed and screwed by their wholesaler partners who, under this legislation, have been given complete control of distribution and margins within this niche industry.

What can the THC drink producers expect? It’s a sure thing that…

-Small producers will have a very difficult time finding a wholesaler to distribute their product.

-Small and medium-sized producers will see excessive margin extracted from them by wholesalers who have complete control over whether they can bring their products to market

-Small producers who seek the ability to self-distribute their products will be opposed by WSWA and local alcohol wholesalers who will tell legislators that children will die and tax payments will be avoided if producers are allowed to bypass wholesalers and sell directly to retailers.

-The THC Beverage industry will consolidate quickly around a very small number of huge wholesalers and a small number of huge manufacturers.

-Small producers will find their existence will come to depend on selling direct to consumers. Still, when they suggest legislation allowing this, they will be met by a collection of wholesalers, large producers, and retailers who will claim in the media and in one-on-one meetings when “campaign contributions” are delivered to lawmakers that allowing direct-to-consumer sales will lead to catastrophe and should be avoided.

The word “Parity” in the name of this legislation refers to parity with the way alcoholic beverages are regulated and sold. Producers of THC beverages are going to wish the name of the legislation actually carried some meaning. The alcohol beverage industry is moving away from a strict three-tier system as consumers, producers, and retailers attempt to overcome the damage this system and its wholesalers have done to the alcohol beverage industry.

The Sure Thing coming down the line is disappointment. Producers of THC-derived beverages will have a market when this legislation passes. They just won’t be in control of their products or their margins. That control is being given over to the wholesale tier. More than 30 years of experience working in an industry governed by the three-tier system has taught me that wholesalers care nothing for producers. The fewer, the better.

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I have met thousands of people in my life. They range from very casually acquainted to friendly acquaintances to close friends. Most of these people drink wine. Among them, I can count on one hand the number of those people who don’t care about the cost of a wine before they buy it. Nearly every single person I’ve ever known who buys and brings wine home has a limit on what they will spend, even when they are in their most splurgiest mood.

The people who review wines and publish those reviews must understand that 99.999% of people interested enough in wine to read their reviews have an upper limit of what they will spend on wine—even for those wines that most enthrall them for one reason or another.

It is because of this reality that I am constantly flummoxed by wine reviewers who do not include the price of the wine in their published reviews.

I won’t call out these reviewers and wine publishers by name (You know who you are!!). But I will say this: Not attaching a price or price range to a wine review is akin to listing a house for sale without revealing its price: The home becomes a curiosity rather than a possibility.

I’ve tried to figure out for myself why some engage in this practice of publishing reviews without prices. The only possible explanation I’m willing to accept is that the philosophy of the wine reviewer informs them that a wine’s intrinsic quality and character are separate from its value.

This is true…undoubtedly so. Problematically, however, this distinction is relevant to the tiniest slice of wine drinkers; that slice that is so flush with resources that the price of a wine simply does not matter. These folks are unicorns and I can't imagine designing a reviewing style around this group of people when 99.99% of those interested enough in wine to read a review of a wine have hard ceilings on how much they will pay for any wine.

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