Because if that's what's happening—if wine no longer fits into how people define pleasure, connection, the good life—then the fixes Eric proposes are like treating symptoms while the disease progresses underneath. You can adjust pricing and tone all you want, but if the fundamental relationship between wine and culture has frayed, we're dealing with something deeper than pricing or presentation.
Eric's piece might be evidence of this drift. Look at the tangles: He champions small producers making meaningful wine from real places—I'm right there with him—then says the industry needs to dramatically lower prices. But sustainable farming and artisanal production cost more. His examples like Matthiasson still run $30-50, yet he notes elsewhere that "few younger people are willing to spend more than $20 for a glass of wine in a restaurant or $50 to $100 a bottle in a wine shop." It suggests someone wrestling with incompatible goals because the actual problem is elusive.
Or consider his "drinking less but drinking better" observation. That's been happening for decades, driven partly by economics—tighter budgets mean fewer bottles but better ones. If this pattern has been steady all along, what's different now? Eric acknowledges the long trend but frames the current moment as crisis. Maybe what's changed isn't consumption patterns but the culture itself - different priorities, different values - and wine hasn't figured out how to speak to that.
He's right about the gatekeeping, though. As he puts it, "Nobody explains how an electric guitar works before a concert." Wine bars that lecture folks who just want to relax embody the elitism under siege in our moment of cultural convulsion. And his diagnosis of the fragmentation—getting this fractured community to act in unison is impossible, like herding very opinionated, terroir-obsessed cats.
But here's what nags at me: Eric divides wine drinkers into deeply committed geeks and those who "mostly want an inexpensive alcohol delivery system that tastes good." What about everyone in between? People who might care about wine if it connected to something they value. They're not looking for education or cheap alcohol - just something that meets them where they are. Not above them, not below them. And maybe that's not just a wine problem - we're living through a moment where people feel dismissed, talked past, left out of the conversation. Has wine become just one more place where that's happening?
From where I stand in Middle America — up on that rickety ladder reorganizing shelves at my local Italian store, or in my office reporting on wine — the interest is still there. People are curious. They want to explore.
But they're doing it in a wine world that mostly talks to itself, that fights internally while most folks just want something that lands where they are, here and now.
Maybe the crisis isn't about pricing or snobbery. Maybe it's about whether wine still has a story that matters to anyone outside the wine world. Eric's at least swinging at the problem. I just wonder if the pitcher is throwing curves or change-ups.
