Don’t Look Now: Some Thoughts on the Current State of the Biz
Life (in general) and this business in particular have been very good to me. I was exceptionally fortunate to have discovered at a relatively young age, an extremely gratifying métier, perfectly congruent with my own eclectic, if not slightly artsy/antic nature. I was equally fortunate to have been given generous help from my family, who helped me get established and lastly, enormously favored to have found myself borne along in a rare historical moment, astride the vinous rocket ship that was the wine business in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early aughts. Perhaps it was the unique alignment of disposable income, interest and opportunity available to that certain notorious demographic pig in the python - us Boomers, I’m talking about, of course. Or maybe it was the brilliant salesmanship of the legendary Robert Mondavi with his seductive promise of eternal Gracious Living/California Dreamin’ - ever clement skies, al fresco dining, scintillating conversation and Fumé Blanc on deck, that engendered that magical era. [1]
Whatever the case, the world came to Napa Valley and beheld a vision of picture perfect Wine Country, the vivid red autumnal foliage of gnarled old head-trained vines, [2] the no less colorful locals “punching down their caps,” “measuring Brixes,” fretting about what percentage of new oak barrels they would deploy and degree of toast seared therein. Our customers clamored to know if the celebrity auteur/winemakers were going for “full or partial malo” and where did they stand on “skin contact?”[3] They were intoxicated with everything about the viti-vinous experience - the language, tastes, smells, indeed with the unique magic that imbued the whole vin-chilada. They wanted in on this transformative opportunity and happily filled their trunks with cases of Chard, Zin, Cab, (many of which likely continue to repose to this day in their basement or wine fridge.)
In more recent times (and I am stating the obvious), we seem to have lost a fair number of our Old Guard true believers, if only due to actuarial considerations; even those still on the animate side of the ledger have reached the obvious conclusion that they may currently possess more than enough wine to “see themselves out,” as the quaintly morbid expression goes. But most significantly, by all accounts, we seem to have lost our ability to replace our sunsetting customer base, and to meaningfully speak to the younger consumer. Our magical vin-cantations (Abreu cadabra!) and fermentative formulae (A MOX on all your houses!)[4] no longer seem to have efficacy. We seem to be speaking a foreign language to our would-be emergent customer base but they can’t seem to decode us. We have become Rune Rangers.[5]
If you visit almost any of the sundry new wineries that have sprouted up in Paso Robles or Healdsburg or St. Helena, you will likely behold some brash, modernist creations or alternately, Moorish, Tuscan or Provençal fantasies, some true architectural wonders;[6] if you drive up on a weekday you will likely find their capacious parking lots to be eerily empty. The reality is that these days virtually everyone I know in the wine business is thoroughly bummed out. The wholesale business is seemingly moribund - salesmen who have been selling fine wines for decades report that they have lost their sales mojo. The direct to consumer business is still enormously challenging and with tasting rooms struggling, no one seems to know where they need to go to gather a base of new customers. [7][8]
We know that we are nowhere near bottom and have no idea when or even if the wine business will ever become healthy or vibrant again. The drumbeat is exhausting. It has seemed that every week Esther Mobley of the Chronicle would report the latest winery or tasting room closure, but we can see the depth of the problem with our own eyes. A drive down the 101 corridor or really through any so-called “wine country” will reveal acres and acres of vines that were not harvested last season nor pruned this winter. We glimpse gray mounds of incinerated stakes and grubbed up vines alongside heaped up piles of crushed metal stakes and tangled vineyard wire. We whistle past these vine graveyards, wondering who will be next; all our clever labels and marketing schticks may not be enough to save us from irrelevance and thus extinction. Cab Death for Cutie.
I confess that once upon a time I had a rather arrogant attitude toward the business, indeed fancied myself to be a genuine Master of the Wine Universe. For a good stretch of time at least, I could reliably contrive to offer reasonable value to my customers along with some pseudo-erudite entertainment.[9] My algorithm for success began with the acquisition of say some greatly undervalued grapes (Riesling, Muscat canelli, Malvasia bianca, or old-vine Carignan, for example), to which I would add some reasonably competent winemaking and a soupçon of clever packaging - a Cardinal Zin or a Cigare Volant label, for example, and voilà.[10] Once upon a time I was the Rhône Ranger; these days I seem to be Tonto.[11]
I mentioned that wine can teach us many things, and if we are lucky enough to have tasted some of the great ones, (while we were paying sufficient attention), we glimpse the depth and complexity wine can offer. It can then become rather problematic to content oneself with the simpler, solipsistic products that once adequately fit the bill.[12] Unfortunately, I have cultivated the lofty ambition to make genuinely “serious” wines, “wines of place,” if I can be slightly fancy-pants about it. [13] Truth be told, my timing really sucks; maybe this is not exactly the very best time in the business cycle to attempt to launch such an ambitious venture. But I’m determined to maintain a certain purity of intention and attempt to build upon the unique lessons I’ve learned along the way and to find my own path.[14]
My career has not exactly worked out exactly as I had imagined it to unfold. I had fantasized that at this stage of my life I would have the time and resources to be something like a gentleman farmer (with a modicum of leisure attending thereto), passing my days observing and recording the heterodox phenotypic expressions of my vitaceous charges, thinking deep viticultural thoughts, mostly about how to squeeze more “minerality” out of the grapes I was growing. I don’t quite have the robust physical stamina nor time nor financial resources to enjoy a largely contemplative life at this point. I’ve observed that wholesalers need a tremendous amount of support and hand-holding to sell even a modest amount of wine, and to be candid, schlepping to wholesaler meetings in over-heated sales rooms, negotiating airports (these days!) is not exactly my thing.[15] But wait, there’s DTC! Now, as far as the public arena, I confess to being a bit ambivalent. While I’m generally well disposed to adulation or even modest affirmation, I am at heart a rather introverted person and meeting strangers often fills me with a non-trivial amount of angst. However, I think I can see my way clear to eating and drinking al fresco at a “winemaker dinner” in my own vineyard. I’m in the company of others who are themselves greatly enjoying the convivial atmosphere and the cool night air; the drear state of the industry and the perilous state of our country, well out of our consciousness, at least for the moment.
——————————————————————————
[1] Cue the lilting strains of “Hotel California.”
[2] Ironically enough, almost certainly due to the presence of leaf-roll virus, an affliction which, depending on the particulars, can be exceptionally debilitating to the vine, or conversely, more or less benign, inhibiting the vine from achieving higher levels of sugar, capping the potential alcoholic degree of the wine at arguably a more reasonable level. The red wines that California produced in the ‘60s and ‘70s have held up far better than those of succeeding decades, possibly influenced in part by their lower alcoholic degree.
[3] Early in my career, I was told by a wise wine elder than when presenting at winemaker dinners, as one was obliged to do in the day, one would do well to minimize mention of “pHs,” “malos,” and any other technical jargon, but rather focus on one’s personal history and items of more universal interest.
[4] MOX = micro-oxygenation, a powerful winemaking tool used for managing tannins and a subject of some controversy a few years ago when people in the industry still had the time, energy and interest to actually opine (if sometimes in ignorance) on the utility of the practice.
[5] My own crackpot theory is that wine and wine culture do not readily translate to the new language of social media with its favoring of image over word, the elevation of the vicarious experience over the lived one. I believe that the actual experience of tasting wine, especially fine wine, might be more eloquently expressed through language than through image. We can deploy language (as awkward as it might be) to try to capture the kaleidoscopic nature of the phenomenon - one that is constantly on the move, always just slightly out of one’s gasp. Language has the agility to at least hint at the give and take that occurs in the tasting experience, attempting to convey something that is intensely subjective to an intelligence beyond one’s own. Watching a video, an Instagram moment of someone tasting something somewhere (that you presently are not!) creates a vast chasm between two subjectivities and thus leads inevitably to alienation. There is really nothing more nerve-wracking than observing others having a jolly good time finishing up a bottle of say, Chateau Rayas, that one will never personally taste oneself. Somehow, it seems slightly more palatable to me to read someone’s tasting notes or account of one’s visit to Rayas, than to watch a video of the same experience. The cooler medium of print, in McLuhan’s parlance, allows one to at least imaginarily insert oneself into the experience. Language, as opposed to image, allows for the dilation of time, thus the ability to savor, to review, to revise; the hidden gift of wine may be its instruction to us on the value and purpose of time. Wine, at least fine wine, demands time - time to learn about it, to observe the changes it creates and having the patience to wait for it to come into full blossom. Most significantly, it slows us down - perhaps long enough to enjoy the other elements of a well-lived life - conversation, natural beauty, to cite a few examples. Might wine’s current cultural impediment be as simple as the fact that proper wine compels us to talk to one another? If not about the wine itself, then about our ideas and about ourselves, and perhaps the intimation of this possibility is just too much for young people to even consider.
[6] Owning a winery has or at least had become a thing among the monied class and certainly among movie and rock stars or anyone who wished to put a slightly genteel polish on their hard partying ways.
[7] It was once attractive enough for tasting rooms to simply offer tastes of the winery’s product - for a modest fee (or not); the consensus is that this model is no longer particularly compelling to the jaded consumer who now has a myriad of opportunities. A more immersive or intimate experience is now believed by many to be required.
[8] Grown-ass winery owners are asking anyone who might enlighten them whether or not they need to hire a social media “influencer.” Should the good folks at Petrus or Cheval Blanc be ringing up Taylor Swift or Beyoncé?
[9] I was incredibly fortunate to have been able to work with brilliant artists and designers like Chuck House, Ralph Steadman, Bascove, Gary Taxali and others. I was also lucky to have accidentally hit upon the discovery that I could employ a modicum of wit in the presentation of the labels, an idea that somehow had largely eluded the business heretofore.
[10] The whole proposition is of course predicated on a reasonably significant number of wine curious individuals, who would be willing to give almost anything a try at least once, if the barrier to entry was not too dear. Folks were even willing to try wine in screwcaps!
[11] I think of myself these days as “Kemo Sabe,” (I Who Know Nothing.) This is not in fact a real translation of “Kemo Sabe.”
[12] While I remain proud of the wines I made for years at Bonny Doon, Le Cigare Volant, in particular, those wines were an artifact of the blender’s art. As delicious as they might have been, I don’t think that they are capable of offering the same depth of aesthetic frisson that a wine reflective of a distinctive terroir might offer.
[13] The French make the distinction between vins de terroir and vins d’effort, “wines of place” vs. “wines of effort.”
[14] While I can certainly fantasize about making the world safe for say, Ciliegiolo Rosato, Aligoté doré or even a moderately priced cool climate Syrah, (or better, Sérine), I likely no longer have the band-width, resources, or frankly, life-force to make such a thing happen in real life. These wines would, I believe, likely be well received, and represent in my febrile imagination a sort of “return to deliciousness.” One can muse interminably on how to capture the younger drinker, but beginning with a wine that is in fact delicious and not too expensive, is not a bad place to start. One thing is for certain: I will not chase after this or that fashionable wine style du jour. Orange wine or any kombucha-like alcoholic beverage is strictly off the table. A non-alcoholic or low-alcoholic wine remains intellectually intriguing (but technically a bit daunting).
[15] ICE is seldom appropriate with fine wine.
