Current state of wine market

By point A I just mean between higher end choices in beer and spirits plus THC products a younger person can choose differently. When I was starting my journey in the 80’s wine was kind of it if you wanted a premium product.

Point C to me is a function of economics. Younger folk are carrying much higher debt burdens than when I was in my 20’s. It’s forcing people to be more frugal.

D. They certainly can. I meant more I wonder if the act of collecting will be as prominent . Doesn’t mean people won’t enjoy wine on vacations.

Entry into wine is pricier. I got into wine via free tastings at wineries.

Seems like BTG wine prices have went up more than restaurant food prices (I don’t have any data).

Wine is what your parents drink. Younger ones don’t like our furniture either.

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To the question about debt-

Do the future collectors we are talking about have debt? I’m wondering if there is more metrics around this.

A wine collector likely didn’t have to take out loans for their kid to go to college, so what kind of debt would they have?

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Apparently Taylor Swift is a fan of Sancerre and her followers are tagging along. I learned this from my sister-in-law who has a bunch of that AOC…

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What is “debt”?

It most likely will. We are talking about a generation that was raised on hoarding sports cards, Pokémon, MtG, etc.(raises hand as I’m certainly in that cohort).

That spark to cellar wine will most likely come through travel and those destinations will be what ends up at auction in 10 years time.

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Before that, it was postcards and matchbooks.

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Isn’t cellaring partly driven by desire to drink mature wine?

Seems to me there’s several factors in having a cellar

  • ‘collecting’
  • having mature wine
  • Snagging rare bottles (not quite the same as collecting)
  • Having a selection on hand for different uses, tastes
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That can be a reason. But also many people collect wine to tell a personal story. Everyone’s wine collection no matter how big or small is a reflection of their tastes and personality

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http://archive.today/pSflR

the future is here

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the emperor with no clothes.

Good lord.

I can’t help but think horrible things when I see people fetishizing water. Are there differences?
I’m sure there are but I’ve never found one that I couldn’t drink with a meal, unless it was adulterated by chlorine ect.

I’d be for nationalizing the resource tbh because what is any bottler adding to the equation? Water should be available to all and to create a brand around it when so many don’t have clean access drives me nuts.

At the very least, the government should come up with a plain brown bottle, like Madeira, where there can be no branding visible and keep the social postering out of the equation. Let’s see how many bottles they sell after that.

and before postcards and matchbooks, it was “stamps”

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I seem to remember this was a thing in the halcyon days circa late aughts/early teens? and in the subsequent downturns it was a kind of a relic of a brief period of excess. I remember being passed a water list by a sommelier at some pretentious restaurant that I don’t remember anything else about.

of course, it kind of hits different now in these dark times.

I think there are vast differences in taste between water sourced from different places. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t market the differences. Natural springs have been part of human culture for thousands of years.

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There are other factors, as well. As Victor Hong memorably posted several years back:

“Wine collecting is defined as the interactive confluence of Obsessive-Compulsive, Hoarding, and Affluenza disorders.”

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They have a huge water list with dozens of different waters at Enoteca Pinchiori in Florence. It would be cool if it didn’t feel like the only reason was to fleece you out of as many dollars as possible at the end of the night. 30-40€ per bottle is just asinine and strips any potential fun out of trying different waters throughout the evening.

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Judging by the quality of hard seltzers that seem to fly off shelves, the “drink less but better” argument doesn’t hold much White Claw water.

The “can’t afford wine” argument is consistent with lots of evidence that Gen Zers are (a) less likely to be able to afford to buy a home, (b) have less retirement savings, (c) are more in debt, than boomers at their age. The cost of living relative to earnings disparity is backed up by lots of quantitative evidence.

Wine is a luxury, nowadays seen with a slightly musty, oak cabinets and Tuscan chic oldy poldiness.

My guess is that it’s a mix of can’t afford the fancy stuff gramps drink, White Claw is has more sweet fizzy goodness than Trader Joe’s plonk, and I just can’t get into Pet Nat like the cool kids.

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We don’t even have clean drinking water in many places through the country, so I think this is a pipe dream (no pun intended)

I touched on this debt thing above, but I’m curious as to how this affects the people likely to be buying the type of wine we are discussing?

Case in point today. Got stuck behind a guy driving a Range Rover SVR today (not the current one, but still a 6 figure model new), and it had 4 stickers on the back wind shield. Delbarton HS (super prestigious and expensive private HS in NJ), Colgate, Villanova and Providence. Figure they had 3 boys go to Delbarton (possibly since 7th grade), then each went to a pricey private school. That’s easily over $1 million in education possibly paid out. Did that family amass debt? Did they pass that debt on to their kids? High chance the answer is no to #1, and zero chance to #2.

I think we need to detach the general public from the next generation of wine collectors.

I bet that guy’s kids are probably set for life with their careers, given the educational history and the father’s success.