Is it any surprise that not enough people in the wine business noticed the anti-drinking efforts and tried to do something about them? Probably not.
Over the last couple of years, the wine business has suffered through a drop in demand, most importantly among younger consumers; depressed grape prices, especially for key bulk varieties; and overplanting (and not just in California).
In other words, trends that are nearly existential in nature.
Meanwhile, a variety of anti-drinking campaigns popped up over that period, including the infamous “no alcohol level is safe” mantra from the World Health Organization. And which, apparently overnight, has left the wine business staring at a health abyss — almost two-thirds of respondents aged 18 to 34 told a recent Gallup poll that “alcohol consumption negatively affects one’s health.”
Is it any surprise that not enough people in the wine business noticed the anti-drinking efforts and tried to do something about them? Probably not.
“When something like the World Health Organization campaign is going on, the wine business is not necessarily paying attention,” says Michael Wangbickler, the president of Balzac Communications and Marketing in Napa. “They’re picking grapes, worrying about the payroll, trying to decide whether to replace a tank. They have businesses to run, so they depend on others to deal with the public policy issues.”
Looking the other way
Talk to industry leaders, as well as to marketers, producers, growers and retailers, and the picture they paint is one of a business that was not (has never really been, in fact) quite able to see the forest for the trees. Or, as Phil Ward, a long-time New Jersey retailer, wholesaler, and importer put it: Just because retailers saw an uptick in no- and low-alcohol products over the past decade or so doesn’t mean the information meant anything to anyone but retailers in an industry as large and as diverse as wine. How is a producer in Paso Robles going to understand what it means that a retailer in Indianapolis is selling lots of something called White Claw in the 2010s to women whose mothers drink Pinot Grigio?
“It seems like everyone who makes wine or sells wine sees it differently,” says New Orleans’ Tim McNally, a wine marketer, radio and TV host, writer and judge. “That’s the aspirational part of it. But it can also be a mirror, and the longer we don’t have to look into the glass, the better off we are.”
The reasons are many
The reasons for all this floundering are many and go back as much as 40 years (and probably apply as much to beer and spirits as wine). They include:
- The rise and fall of previous anti-drinking campaigns. Similar anti-drinking campaigns came and went. This happened first in the late 1980s and early 1990s, led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and then a decade ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control proposed higher taxes, fewer liquor licenses for stores and restaurants, an end to local wet-dry elections, and a halt to state alcohol deregulation, while the National Transportation Safety Board endorsed cutting the legal blood alcohol limit. If these measures came to naught, wouldn’t the current anti-alcohol environment come and go as well?
- The legacy of Big Tobacco. Big Tobacco engaged in a conspiracy to hook consumers on nicotine; to market their product as safe, when they knew it wasn’t, with things like “low tar” cigarettes; to fund medical research to defend smoking; and to cover up what they did. Despite disbelief from many in wine, there is a consumer assumption that Big Wine is no different from Big Tobacco. Yes, tarring with the same brush.
- Wine’s unique legal status. Wine in the United States, thanks to the three-tier system, is among the most heavily regulated products on the planet — certainly more than cigarettes. So how could wine be sold if it wasn’t safe to drink?
- Don’t say anything you can be sued for. “The challenge, then and now, is that we essentially can’t talk about alcohol and health,” says Amy Gross, the president of Women for WineSense, which was formed as a response to the anti-drinking campaigns in the late 20th century. “It’s like there’s a gag order. It’s illegal for wineries to talk about health, and then there are the product liability suits. No one wants to say anything about wine and health they can be sued for.”
- The conundrum of the French Paradox. If wine — and certainly as part of the Mediterranean diet — was supposed to offer some sort of health benefit, it seemed past amazing that reputable health organizations like WHO and the CDC could reverse course and claim otherwise. So it was easier to ignore them than to try to understand what they were doing.
- Wine’s politics are local. Traditionally, save for lobbying TTB, the U.S. wine business has had little to do with national or international politics. Yes, it knew how to talk to state legislatures and county governments, but it rarely concerned itself with larger issues like the anti-drinking campaigns. Case in point: The Trump wine tariff, where the industry seemed powerless to prevent or even find a compromise to such a grave economic threat.
- Younger consumers and health. Wangbickler, a Gen Xer, laughs when he talks about the school assemblies where he and his classmates were lectured on the evils of alcohol. Is it any wonder, he says, that the Baby Boomers who ran the wine business — who saw getting drunk the day they came of age as a rite of passage — never understood that those who were younger had different views? And would act on them?
With all these factors in play, the billion dollar question becomes: How can the wine industry combat these negative forces and create a future that stresses moderation, welcomes all consumers and emphasizes wine’s historical and meaningful social tradition?
Jeff Siegel
Jeff Siegel is an award-winning wine writer, as well as the co-founder and former president of Drink Local Wine, the first locavore wine movement. He has taught wine, beer, spirits, and beverage management at El Centro College and the Cordon Bleu in Dallas. He has written seven books, including “The Wine Curmudgeon’s Guide to Cheap Wine.”
