I’m with Dan (edit: and Doug!) on this one. While mass produced super market wine may be boring to us wine geeks, it is rarely, if ever, faulty. “Natural wine,” on the other hand, is a roll of the dice many times, or at least it has been for me.
I’m sure a ton of younger folks have gone to a hip wine bar and been served some “interesting” natural wine by a hipster somm and that experience kind of colored their whole view of what wine is to many of them; a novelty - not something you crave or even really want to learn more about.
Somms who want to get people interested in wine should be pouring Germant Riesling, Loire Chenin, Langhe Nebbiolo, Oregon Pinot, and stuff like that. Well made, quaffable, and utterly inoffensive gold standard stuff. Nothing too big, too dry, or too sour for people who admit they are new to wine and don’t know much.
I guess that depends on where you live. As I mentioned above, then the scene has certainly matured here in Copenhagen, and most places has a good amount of non-faulty “natural wine” on their lists. I guess a lot of areas are just years behind. At the end of the day people are not rebuying stuff that are awful, which is bad for business, so they have to evolve.
Just noting that there are some ambiguities on what “natural” wine means. I’ve noticed that most European/UK posters include organic and biodynamic wines in that category, which isn’t normally how “natural wine” is used in the US. For instance, Chateau Latour is certified organic and Chateau Palmer is certified biodynamic. Those are great wines, but they are not ordinarily referred to in the US as “natural” wines.
Have younger consumers ever been as interested in wine as older consumers? Is this really a new trend? I’m curious.
Inflation and the current market puts good wine (or the chance to explore good wine) out of the reach of most folks right now, vs getting other forms of alcohol that are known good. At the same time, there’s never been more options for liquor, spirits, and beer. It’s not hard to see why genz/millennials aren’t into wine - hell, I wasn’t until last year at 32 and I liked wine, have disposable money, and have a tendency towards geeky interests. No one else I know in my age range drinks wine regularly, if at all. (Edit - I did think of one person, oops. Also someone with geeky predilections).
The few times I would try for a wine by the glass at a restaurant, I’d almost never be blown away. It’s really a hobby that has required research, intention, and money to pursue.
This is because the best wines in the world are almost always “natural wines,” but because the wine is actually good they don’t feel the need to market themselves as such. If a wine’s only selling point is that it is “natural wine,” that usually means it’s a pass for me.
Yeah, you bring up a great point Amanda. In this particular piece we’re looking at static data. What were the breakdowns 3,5,10, 20 years ago? From there we could look at trends, I think that would tell us a lot more. Though I agree with (and have even posed some of) the challenges to interest in wine raised in this thread.
I’ve found that very much true for ‘organic’ wines - anything labelled as such is relying on that labelling to sell a product that might otherwise struggle.
Natural wines I see as something distinctively different, not merely following existing winemaking principles (but with an organic approach in the vineyard). Instead they’re challenging the winemaking norms, from pushing minimal intervention to the limit, to being actively happy with elements such as cloudiness, that more traditional winemaking will not accept. It is more radical, hence perhaps the interest amongst younger drinkers, buying into this ‘back to basics’ radicalism.
For myself, I’ve grown up with winemaking as most of us know it, and that’s where I feel most comfortable. However I do want radicalism, even if many of the radical approaches don’t appeal to me. IMO a healthy wine scene has space for mavericks, innovators, lunatics and provocateurs.
As a person who is in the millennial group and surrounded mostly by younger millennials and gen Zers, this marketing silliness of “authenticity” kills me.
Authenticity is a marketing recipe distributed through targeted social media… and the correlation is as close to -1 as could possibly exis. Basically if the Gen Z crowd thinks of something as authentic it is the most likely thing to be inauthentic. They have no interest in the veracity of the story, discovering facts and basic info.
Universally the least informed people seemingly bc they have spent their whole lives with curated info… no curiosity or desire to know basic stuff about anything. So a story about a distillery is more important than basic facts of how shit works, and wine is too difficult bc you might need to learn something.
So yeah, add silly bullshit stories to delicious cheap wine and you will gain a million followers who pass on this “inside info” to all of their clueless friends, some of whom might eventually try to learn something.
I get the point. But I don’t think most people in Europe include organic or biodynamic wines as natural wines, just based on the certification. We have a ton of organic wines in supermarkets which would never be viewed as natural.
While there are no rules, then I think most here expect no added sulfites and native yeast as part of the definition. Actually there is a lot of non-certified wines that are seen as natural wines around here.
Dan, that’s fair. As LasseK notes below, it is dependent on where one lives, and I forget that. In no small part because I have the incredible fortune of London and top cities in Europe, and when I’m back in the US I split my time primarily between New Orleans and Chicago, where there are just so many great options (for wines of any kind). My rejection rate is like 5%, and again, I’m not even that into the scene, just happy to keep trying new things.
Doug, I get that supermarket wines are technically sound. Miller Lite is also technically sound. So we’re talking about two different things here. Sure, the wine is correct. But is it ever going to make someone want to say “wow, that’s interesting, I’d really like to know more about this thing”? No, and neither are far too many restaurant lists (everywhere, not just a US problem. While London is a food and wine mecca, a typical neighborhood restaurant that may have delicious food typically has an atrocious wine list. At least it’s often reasonably priced).
I was shopping one of my favorite local independent shops here in Chicago (Vin) and I found it really interesting that they added a section of the store for natural wines to target a new demographic, but what was really interesting was that they put a scale up from 1 to 5 with 1 reading “clean as a whistle” to 5 being “welcome to funky town” (with a 70s dance pose to tag along). I laughed and appreciated the scale which basically equated, to me, how much of a gamble are you taking here…is this just a minimal SO2 producer (1), or is this full on dirty cellar, total hands off stuff (4-5).
All that said, I don’t see any reason why a younger person should be drawn to the extreme natural wine side…as far as I can tell, it’s some combination of 1) fun artistic labels 2) a rejection of all things corporatism and pretentiousness and 3) not doing what their parents did…(which is a hallmark of effectively every generation).
We all know the reality that most (great) wine comes from small, artisanal producers, often with family farms (or family growers), and while they may have investors, it’s rarely a corporation involved (returns are far too small for most savvy investors, let’s be honest!). I think the big challenge the industry has in front of it is getting the truth out to people and ensuring that there’s still good quality wines in the portfolio that are affordable to younger people starting out in their careers. I think Bedrock does a spectacular job of all of this with their content and wines like the OVZ and Ode to Lulu. Younger people want to know where their products come from and who makes them, in fact, much more so than previous generations (in my experience). This is an opportunity for the quality minded producers to fully lean into.
If by “interesting” you’re trying to nicely say “flawed”, that’s one thing, and I agree. Though I’d suggest that’s a somm that is either misguided or who is bad at their job for any number of reasons (they love esoteric wine and don’t understand how to qualify their customers, or they simply don’t care).
But, and again, I’m a conventional wine guy, there’s some really fantastic natural wine out there. It’s a world I knew nothing about until some friends in New Orleans got into that scene. And before I got into that scene, I’d been burned a number of times, just as some in this thread have (and for sure, have been burned since).
When I’m around them I’m just a ‘when in Rome’ type of guy, and what they, their friends, and the wine bars they frequent are pouring is often tremendously interesting and delicious.
So much so that we all did a natural wine tour together in the Laungedoc a couple years ago, and I was blown away that I loved everything. Nothing mousy, shrill, even remotely overly-funky, otherwise flawed. It’s definitely out there.
It’s fine if people don’t like the wine or don’t want to invest in understanding it (especially after having a few consecutive bad hits). But I don’t think it’s fair to paint with such a broad brush (and I’m not suggesting you are Troy, but there has been some of that in this thread.
Totally. Though, not sure about Loire Chenin. That herbal note turns off a lot of people (not me, I love it).
I truly wish that organic wine demand and pricing are increasing, but that is apparently not the case.
Ciatti is the world’s largest broker of bulk wine. Here is a quote from their global market report of 1/24:
“By May, red wine and rosé prices were softening, ditto pricing on organic wine which – with output larger every year, just as overall wine demand has fallen back – struggled to command a premium.”
As a younger millennial, this problem is very visible to me. My wife and I regularly joke as we make friends at events with people twice our age because while we have plenty of friends who are our age, none of those friends appreciate wine the way we do. There are two big barriers that I’m not sure I have an answer as to how we overcome them:
Time - I think one of the biggest reasons the average age of people who are wine enthusiasts are older is because it’s an acquired hobby that transforms over many years and there’s A LOT to learn. Unless you work in the wine industry it’s unlikely you have the spare time to study it, so it can take years to understand what to buy other than common grocery store picks that are not as satisfying as others in the same price range.
Cost - My wife and I are fortunate that we’re able to keep up with our hobby, but we’re still very limited in what we’re able to buy vs what we want to buy. However, I’ve met numerous people who are 60+years old who share stories about starting cellars when they were our age and some of them share stories of prices per bottle in the sub $100 range for 1st growth Bordeaux’s! I’ve been fortunate to try several very expensive and very good wines now and just being exposed to some of them made me want to learn more, seek out interesting new ones and if I didn’t have the opportunity to try some of them, I probably wouldn’t be as curious to learn as much as I have today.
IMO it’s 70% price and 30% difficulty with entry. With grocery store wine, you are likely to pay $15-20 for a wine that is simply not very good. At that price point, you can get some extremely tasty beers or almost a fifth of titos. Same goes for the corner liquor store. People are generally way more familiar with liquor and you can always pop in a mixer into lower tier liquor. As a millennial, I do not agree with the commentary on the “natural” wine obsession and it seems more like older people trying to figure out why the “kids” do what they do. I do not know anyone into “natural” wines.
Ultimately, people are shocked to pay even 30 bucks for an alcoholic beverage and that is the main issue to me. It’s equally shocking to pay 3-4x at a restaurant for a bottle available at the liquor store or the swill BTG found all too common on restaurant lists. To compound things, easily obtainable decent beer is easy to get. Decent wine at a decent price simply isn’t. Inflation is definitely a factor but I do not think it’s the main factor, but the price of a quality wine definitely adds to the “bourgeois” vibe which is definitely there.
With regard to the discussion above about “natural wines”, I’ve said this before but IMO what people seem to seek from natural wines are actually all the things that naturally occur through wine aging. Through aging, wines spontaneously develop to be complex, funky, intriguing, and unpredictable, and they are also “natural” in that wine aging is one of the most mysterious, uncontrollable, and deeply “natural” processes there is. Aging in many ways also inherently creates narrative and story – both at a personal level (your own personal story of aging and waiting for the wine) and also the inherent connection to history. Finally, wines tend not to age in an interesting way unless they are made in an authentic craft manner in a traditional region.
However, aged wines are simply not widely available so people don’t even know what they’re missing. Young people have no clue about older wines unless they have somehow become immersed in the hobby, which very rarely happens. Instead they pre-spoil young wines to get an inferior version of what aging could bring. It’s the damndest thing,
The economic picture can’t be overstated, IMO. I’m interested to know… what are the expensive hobbies that aren’t at risk of being something only Boomers like?
We created the 40 hour work week last century for men, assuming there is a woman at home to raise the kids. Then, we somehow morphed into two people working 40+ hours, potentially also raising kids, and over the last 50 years, the US Consumer Price Index increased 500% while wages increased only 80%. Homes are 2x as expensive adjusted for inflation, and rent isn’t much better (or is worse). As noted, college education is at an all-time high cost.
Millenials in America were raised by a generation who championed convenience and cheapness as a substitute for “quality” (fast food/chain restaurants, McMansions, fast fashion, park-in-eyesight-or-don’t-go-at-all, big box stores, having it cheap is more important than not having it, patience is for suckers).
IMO, the young adult generations in the US find wine to be the antitheses of their lived and learned experiences… It feels elite, as more people feel removed from the elite… Some of my friends literally feel uncomfortable when I open a more expensive bottle of wine for them… and there is no cultural basis in most of the US for even a basic understanding of wine. That said, wine “culture” in the US is very intimidating, and even if it doesn’t mean to, shames or embarrasses those who don’t know very basic things about wine. I have a pretty big passion for wine, and I still have constant interactions with “wine people” at stores and restaurants who are really just trying to flex over me… I can’t imagine what a complete beginner feels like.
THIS!!! I’m in my early 40’s, I’m very fortunate that I can afford this hobby at a relatively high level. That said, I can’t stand “wine people”. Most produces are some of the nicest most humble people I’ve ever met - drinkers, not so much. What I enjoy so much about this hobby is sharing with others and take away the intimidation.
for any natural wine discussion
