Hello
welcome back to my newsletter. What’s going on about wine communication? Who we’re talking for? And, at the end, what do wine lovers need listen?
I’m an old wine lover, I like to talk with winegrowers, with retailers, I like listen the buyer’s tales around the wine’s route (yes, I’m quoting Kermit Lynch). The story of a place, the past years where the grandfathers and grandmothers were young or when wine was made by ancient monks in Europe, and all those nice stories. I like to identify the smells into a glass of wine, and compare two different vintages. I like when a taster explain me their feel of a wine, and what’s happened in that year when the harvest was so difficult. In short, I like to talk and listen about wine and, like all expert wine lovers, I try to recognize one scent more than others wine lovers do.
Wine magazines (when I was young there were magazines, paper made) were my reading, even if in Italy there were not many of them; so I went to a newsstand in down town (Rome is my city) where I could find foreign reviews like Wine Spectator, and I remember how expensive it was!
Nowadays I read many wine blogs, I’ve a 20-long list of these in my feed directory and I still like to read stories, tasting notes, news from wine world.
But.
I ever read the same stories, one century ago, five decades ago, and this wine is made in organic way or our cellar master decided to do this or that during the fermentation. I mean, every story is interesting for every wine family, but every wine is different for every wine lover (no, I’m not quoting the incipit of Anna Karenina).
Is me? or are the wine tales ever the same?
Then, I ask at my Millennials sons, what they think about wine. But they don’t drink much wine: they drink cocktails with wine and beer, and they buy wine at the store (or ask me to buy a bottle for them in a online store). They do know if a wine is better than another, but are poorly interested about the story of people and places.
They are interested in trips, tourism, knowing people. If I talk them about people I’ve joined in a fair or in a visit to a vineyard, so they listen to me.
So I’ve started to think that wine is a dynamic thing, not static like an Instagram post. And Instagram posts about wine are all the same, if you change a pic with another you don’t notice a difference. But, do Instagram wine influencers know this? And do winegrowers know it, as well?
It seems to me that wine writers have a ideal wine lover in their mind, an ideal wine lover that doesn’t exist. A wine lover interested in wine tales and wine tasting, an old wine lover. And wine instagrammers post pics that got likes and comment but, what are they talking of?
I understand that explain a wine with an image is really difficult, because you cannot show scent and taste of it, but what is the matter to show beautiful landscape and beautiful people between vines, with a glass in their hand?
What interaction there is with young wine lovers, why they should drink that wine and not another?
How many X-gen or Millennials going through the vines to know winegrowers?
My feel is that all those likes need more to influencers and media agencies than to wineries and their wines. Is there a chat, on Instagram of other social, between wine lovers and wine influencers? or between winegrowers and wine lovers? I don’t think so.
Yes, this is a newsletter full of question, poor of answers. I use it to focus my mind, sharing it with you. I believe that wine communication has to change because wine drinkers are changing, and they now drink wine and cider and beer. They are younger than wine writer, and influencers are promoting their own brand using wine. Your wine.