Linked In is particularly rife with their dreadful prognostications about the future (or lack thereof) of wine. They cite the economy, the tariffs, the sober movement, the competition from cannabis, the lack of DEI, the preponderance of DEI. Even cultural appropriation is getting blamed for what appears to be a backslide into one of the levels of a Dantean Hell. If it bleeds…
I’m not sensing all this doom and gloom. Yes, many folks are drinking less. All the better to have laid a better foundation, way back when, to gather more into the wine drinking community and culture. But the cultists argue with the natties, the “New Worlders” with the “Old Worlders,” you name it. Someone has a beef and someone else has a counter beef. And the endless internal bickering and fighting looks like a civil war in the wine world. And the end-user, who could give a rat’s ass about natural indigenous yeast, vs. a scientifically precise strain, is just looking for a wine to take home for tonight.
This all came to me in a strikingly direct manner. I’m walking through a nearby (and sumptuous) Italian food emporium, and amidst the cheese aisle, a woman says to the man next to her, “Don’t we need some wine for tonight?”
A not entirely abnormal request. What was out of the norm, was the little voice inside of me saying, “What, they don’t already have wine stocked away at home?” And then, reality struck. They are not wine geeks, wine writers or in the wine trade. They don’t post the umpteenth fabulous dinner they just had with their friends in London, Shanghai, Rome or New York, with the required and commensurate specimens from France, Italy, Germany and California. You, know, the fabulous bottles that if bought today, would cost thousands of US dollars?
No, they were regular folks picking up some lasagne and needing a bottle of red to go with it. Period. No fuss.
But fuss it up the wine writing community has done. And inside an insulated sphere of wine writers, there is a self -perpetuating mechanism to spread the word. There used to be a site, called Terrroirist. It started in 2010 when “wine blogging was having a moment — its moment — in the collective wine consciousness.” But as David White said in his farewell column in 2023, “…that moment has passed.”
Yes and no. Good writing won’t go out of style. But much of what is being propagated these days seems déclassé. Handwringing, bitter infighting, them vs. us, me vs. the world, yadda-yadda-yadda. In other words, boring.
But, but, but, the voice whispers, there must be light at the end of the tunnel, n’est-ce pas?
One of the brightest lights is Terry Theise, and this recent installment on his blog was first published in World Of Fine Wines late in 2024. Called “We were six for dinner at home,” it’s chapter length, so find a corner and set yourself down and read it – all of it. You’re not that busy!
In wine, as in all passions, there is a moment, or moments, when something clicks. For me it could have been the 1970 Vino Nobile riserva from Melini, the 1964 Montfortino, the 1968 San Martin Petit Sirah or the 1976 Johnson’s Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.
But what lit the fire was something more simple. It was a Vouvray that I bought at Trader Joe’s in South Pasadena for $1.99 in 1975. I’d never had anything like it, and it set me on a path to wanting to know more about wine from all over the world, not just French or Italian of my native Californian.
As Theise emphasizes, “We are drawn in by love first, and then by curiosity. If you only remember a single thing I’m saying here, remember this: love will guide you to knowledge, but knowledge alone won’t guide you to love.”
Love is the secret sauce to wine enjoyment, you ask?
Think about it for a while. Again, Theise: “Wine doesn’t care how much you know about it.”
So simple. So direct. So easy. Not all this esoteric dialectic and mumbo-jumbo. Love is all it is, fueled by the desire to know more.
I see this in my pursuit of images in the photographic path I’m on. Very similar, in my experience.
But there needs to be this passion, this fire, going forward. Not just polemics and endless debates.
One last excerpt from Theise: “Wine wants you to love it. It’s people who get in the way.”
Worth keeping in mind as one sails through these choppy waters we’re in.
