Barolo's Trophy Pricing - Called it. The Burgundization of the Langhe is now a fait accompli. Top producers command hundreds of dollars per bottle now. Kiss affordable Barolo goodbye. Those alternative Nebbiolo zones I mentioned - Carema, Boca, Ghemme - they're the only game left for those without offshore accounts.
Private Labels - From national chains to one-man pizzerias, I said. It got even crazier. Captured labels are massive business. Those Italian wineries making bank on this? Still spending August on the beach.
The Sommelier Love Affair - After years of tastevin-wielding abuse about French superiority, those young lions won their battles. Italian wine is essential sommelier knowledge now. Have they gotten normal people beyond the Big Four? Not really. But they've made headway. Of course, if you ask them, they “discovered” Italian wine for the rest of us.
Red Blends - Still camping on wine lists everywhere. Sicily, Puglia, the Marche - all found their footing with blends as the entry point, just like I said.
The Faceplants
Seven Fifty Daily - I put all my money on this baby. Called it brilliant, said I was all in. It's still around, but it never became the game-changer I thought it would be. The bridge between three-tier and newer communication? Not as revolutionary as I hoped.
Delectable - "I get no kick from (pics of) Champagne." Called it narcissistic wine selfies and predicted it would morph or die. It's limping along, but Vivino won. Right diagnosis, wrong survivor.
Franciacorta's Time - "It's time," I said. It wasn't. No breakthrough. No $12.99 bottles at Trader Joe's. Prosecco kept winning.
Etna's Fetishization - "We're going to beat this one with a stick," I wrote. We didn't. The rustic, hard-to-navigate Sicilian cultural crust actually protected it from trend followers. It had its moment without becoming the overexposed mess I feared.
What Blindsided Me
Natural Wine - Mentioned it in passing but "misunderestimated" how it would become the darling of the eno-warrior set. Still niche, but low-intervention and organic Italian wines gave certain producers serious cachet.
AI and Wine - Here's what I couldn't see: AI sommelier apps, ChatGPT writing tasting notes, algorithms recommending wines based on your dinner photo. Machine learning curating lists, generating content faster than any blogger. Whether it helps or hurts wine education is debatable, but it's here. And it might be writing better tasting notes than half the people who got paid to do it.
Social Media's Evolution - Instagram mattered more than I thought, then TikTok arrived. Wine TikTok? YouTube wine education? I was driving around in a Model T waiting for the next model. Turns out there were several daily drivers.
The Pandemic - Recalibrated DTC and dented the three-tier system I was watching crumble. Mid-size distributors still can't get critical mass or capital. They come and go, like I said.
The Drinking Decline - Here's the big one I missed: people aren't drinking like they used to. Older generations cutting back for health reasons. Younger ones for health and economic reasons - they can't afford rent, much less a $40 Chianti. And now we've got a medical establishment trending towards neo-prohibitionistic behavior, with every study screaming that no amount of alcohol is safe. This isn't just a headwind for Italian wine. It's a category five hurricane.
The Scorecard
I focused too much on specific platforms instead of understanding the ecosystem would keep evolving. Seven Fifty and Delectable were symptoms, not the cure.
What I got right: pricing trends, distribution dysfunction, the sommelier trajectory. That Dalla Terra model I praised? Still working. Mid-size distributors? Still dying the slow death I predicted.
Wine blogging was already post-mortem when I wrote that piece - a chicken running around after its head was cut off. What rose from the corpse? Everything from Substack to TikTok to AI that may or may not know Barolo from a hole in the ground.
What hasn't changed: I'm still keeping vigil for Italian wine's success in America. Still making sure the squirrels don't eat my eggplants.
The next ten years? Ask me in 2035. But I'm done betting on any single platform. And I'm watching those machines with one eyebrow raised.
Oh, and now there are Trump's tariffs to contend with - because apparently Italian wine needed another obstacle course. Twenty-five percent on European wines? That's going to reshape pricing, margins, and what gets imported in ways we're just starting to understand. Add that to inflation eating everyone's discretionary spending, a generation that can barely afford groceries much less wine, and a medical establishment hell-bent on telling us every glass is poison. Maybe it pushes more DTC. Maybe it kills off more mid-size importers. Maybe it finally forces that distribution paradigm shift I've been on the lookout for. Or maybe we're all just screwed.
Either way, I'll be here with a glass of Trebbiano in hand, watching it all unfold.
