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Monday, August 16, 2010

Wineries have figured out young drinkers

Sometimes the world changes so gradually that we don't notice. Ten years ago, a common theme of wine business articles was that wineries didn't know how to reach young consumers.

I just spent the weekend at Outside Lands, a music festival with a strong food-and-wine program. Because of -- not despite -- the youth of the audience, the wine selection featured quite a few artisanal brands and some obscure varietals.

That was no aberration. If you hold an event for baby boomers, you might have to stock up on white Zinfandel and buttery Chardonnays. But if 20-somethings are the target, you can expect a knowledgeable crowd that's itching to do some comparative tasting.

The current generation is the smartest group of wine consumers the US has ever developed. They make this country's future as the world's largest wine market more hopeful for all concerned. Just imagine what this generation will want to drink if the economy ever recovers and they have more disposable income. I suspect they will reward iconoclasts and people making an honest effort to make great, unique wine.

Back to my main point. How did this happen? Young consumers aren't easier to reach. The newspaper industry -- supposedly communications experts -- hasn't solved that riddle yet.

Here are a few things the US wine industry has done right.

1) Banishing pretension
A huge barrier to wine appreciation for older generations was the fear of being exposed as unknowledgeable. US wineries at all levels have consistently delivered the message that your tastes are your own, and you're not wrong for having them. Compare that to France, where you still encounter sommeliers who sniff at you for mispronouncing Menetou-Salon, or not knowing the grape of Condrieu. No wonder younger French people aren't drinking as much wine as their elders. The French wine industry could learn from the US on this.

2) Holding frequent tastings in cities everywhere
It's exhausting for US winemakers to travel constantly, but the effort has paid off. It used to be that if you were in middle America you were lucky to find one restaurant in town with an overpriced but adequate wine list. Now, it's possible to find a good wine list in almost any good-sized American city. Traveling winemakers and brand ambassadors brought that enthusiasm to the provinces.

3) Creating useful websites
When I started writing about wine, I could never fact-check on a winery website because it was likely created by the owner's teenage son and hadn't been updated in months. Now, I'm disappointed if I can't immediately find the harvest information for a particular vintage. Yes, this is a step that all businesses, not just wineries, are doing better. But it's still a noteworthy improvement from even five years ago.

4) Supporting social media
Like a lot of brick-and-mortar businesses, many wineries are still befuddled by social media. But many wineries have jumped ahead of the curve with Twitter tastings and Facebook fan pages and all that sort of thing. It's all incremental, and I'm not convinced tweets sell wine, but overall it serves to make wine seem like a part of the fabric of life online.

5) Supporting young sommeliers
Enthusiastic young sommeliers are a major reason that this generation is America's greatest when it comes to wine. Wineries have done a better job this millennium of reaching out to beginners, offering visits to vineyards and vertical tastings, etc., that used to be reserved only for longtime loyalists to a particular brand.

6) Simplified labeling
Do younger drinkers need simpler labels more than older drinkers? Not at all -- in fact, baby boomers need simpler labels more, because they're the ones with the weak eyes. But simplified labels do make it easier for first-time customers to pick up a brand and try it. German wineries are just starting to figure this out.

7) Making unique wines
Younger customers are more experimental than older ones. Sure, you can sell them Yellow Tail, but you can also sell them single-vineyard Grenache if you explain what it is. And while younger consumers buy a lot of Yellow Tail, it's the single-vineyard Grenaches that get them excited enough to tweet and invite their friends for a kitchen table tasting. There's only so much that marketing can accomplish; you have to have an interesting product, and wineries deserve credit for being interesting.

It all makes me wish I was 25 again. The wine world that many of us grew up in was a class-segregated place where the best bottles were kept in a hidden cellar and nothing interesting was ever sold by the glass. And if you could get wine at a concert, Vendange varietal wine in individual plastic bottles was the high end.

This weekend, I had a glass of Wind Gap Sonoma Coast Syrah (just 12.7% alcohol!) while listening to Phoenix (crazy lead singer body surfed 50m into the audience). That's the way wine should be, and that's why 20-somethings have embraced it. Good job, wine industry. Pat yourself on the collective back.

11 comments:

  1. Good read, spot on. I think your insights apply across generations, and it's all good. I'm guessing you might have noticed more than a little gray hair at Outside Lands, for example, grateful for the wineries with the foresight to be there.

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  2. Working in a Temecula, Ca winery, I was suprised at the interest from the 20's crowd. Lots of general questions were asked frequently, leading me to write a book targeted to this crowd: "Ham From Pigs Wine From Grapes". This Anti-pretentious read is exactly the primer for this group.

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  3. Glad you got over to Wind Gap! The wines are delish.

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  4. Kudos to Peter Eastlake for pulling off the outstanding Wine Lands Tent at the Outside Lands festival this weekend. Anyone who saw it would agree it was an unabashed success.
    People were really into it. I found it much more enjoyable to pour & talk wine there than at other types of wine tastings.

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  5. Awww...For a second, I thought you were going to write the following: "It used to be that if you were in middle America you were lucky to find one restaurant in town with an overpriced but adequate wine list. Now, it's possible to find [my add-on from here] overpriced wine lists everywhere!!"

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  6. Not that I would ever argue with you anyway, Chuck, but yeah, that's kinda true. But at least said wine lists now have more than Bordeaux, California Cabernet and Chardonnay.

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  7. Morgan: Great tip, you were right, as always.

    Jim: Yes, I'd say the median age at Outside Lands was 28, but the mean was maybe 32 because there were definitely some old-timers, and not just at the Dead thing.

    Hao: It's true, the whole feel of the Winelands was fantastic: a big enough space so you didn't feel crowded, shaded so the wines stayed cool, and a very pro-wine feel, not a "woo let's par-tay!" feel. If Outside Lands' Winelands was a wine bar, I'd patronize it.

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  8. Brilliant points. Very refreshing to read an article about what the US wine market is doing right. Makes me wish I was 25 again, too...

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  9. And lets not forget that 20-30 somethings spend more dollars per bottle that 50-75 year olds. Even though they have less money.

    When someone is complaining about the price of a $20 bottle of wine, it is almost always an older person.

    Interesting situation.

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  10. The combination of just being able to hear the concerts all around you, watch the steady flow of people walking by the WineLands tent, and the more relaxed approach to wine was a pleasure to be a part of. I was surprised so many people were happy to drop 10-15 a glass and then hang out while they drank before moving onto the next winery.

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  11. My 24 year old daughter loves vodka, but she is also enjoying wine. I am so glad to have a wine buddy.

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