Having grown up on 80s hair bands, worshipping the gunslinging guitarists of that era, it’s taken me decades to truly understand what those musicians must have felt like when Nirvana hit.
Almost overnight, the countless hours those rockers had spent honing their skills, perfecting their look, and waiting for their time in the spotlight were rendered meaningless, replaced by guys in thrift store clothes playing three-chord punk riffs, many of whom had learned to play just enough guitar in a matter of weeks.
Not that I dislike the 90s grunge era, mind you; it’s the music of my teenage years and I absolutely love it. Nor do I believe the decadence of the hair band era had anything left to say. It was time for a change.
I’m simply relating to the relative speed at which that divide occurred. There’s been a similar transition in the booze business that seems like it came out of nowhere, and it’s left a number of us scratching our heads, wondering what in the world is happening.
Example? Natural wine. It’s become a real force in the industry over the last two years and no one over the age of forty can understand why.
I don’t know one traditional wine retailer or sommelier that likes natural wine, or can even pretend to like natural wine—and I’ve spoken to at least fifty people about the subject over the last six months! Nevertheless, these colorful new bottles sell like hotcakes to young drinkers who truly believe this is their generation’s calling.
Bordeaux? Burgundy? Napa? That’s for geezers, bro.
They want wine without any intervention. Zero additives, no sulfur. If it tastes like a mouthful of dirt, that’s a good thing!
Most of the folks I know in the wine business have been gritting their teeth and forcing a smile each time they sell a bottle. Yet, as one of my retailer friends told me over the phone yesterday: “I don’t think I can roll with the punches for much longer.”
The issue isn’t a matter of taste, but rather a matter of quality. It’s similar to how traditional whiskey fans complained about the early days of craft whiskey: why would I pay more for something that’s not nearly as good? In those days, consumers were literally subsidizing the dreams of would-be whiskey makers who had quit their day jobs to distill rye in their basements. Today, that dream is largely subsidized by large corporations who are clearly regretting their investments.
But youthful trends are often that way. They’re idealistic and fancy-free, only coming into focus years after they’ve fizzled out. We look back and say: “What were we thinking?” That’s the perspective that time offers us. The difference today, however, is that everything moves more quickly due to the speed of the internet. There’s no time for reflection; only reaction. By the time you decide to jump aboard the next train, another one has already left the station.
Example? Hard seltzer. It’s everywhere right now, but it won’t be in a year or two. If you’re just getting into the genre today, you’re already too late (don’t tell that to Beam, Diageo, Pernod, and the other giants, however). Something else will pop up in 2022 that will start a new marketing cycle and create a new divide.
In the meantime, those of us who learned about wine and spirits from a traditional background are wondering if we’ve become obsolete. For us, the end goal of exploration was always context: we were trying to bring the regional traditions of the world to our stores, hoping that our curation of different philosophies and practices would breed a similar passion with our customers. Today, however, consumers want (and often expect) the world to meet their standards, rather than the other way around.
Every generation has its embarrassments though. When it came to food and wine, my generation would pretend something was good simply because it was authentic. Importers and retailers would use words like “terroir” or “traditional” to cover for flaws in a product’s taste profile. If you didn’t eat and drink exactly like they did in France or Italy, you were seen as ignorant or aloof.
With today’s generation, appreciation seems more like scientific investigation rather than enjoyment. The goal isn’t to discover what you like, but rather to present one’s authority over a subject matter. It’s as if the acquiring and tasting of numerous spirits itself is what’s considered admirable, rather than the distillation of actual knowledge and understanding from those experiences.
With the death of understanding and experience, curation and expertise are no longer needed. It will all be outsourced to the web soon enough. As my old co-worker said to me yesterday: “The moment Amazon gets a grip on alcohol sales, and every bottle has thousands of star-based reviews for customers to sort through, our careers are over.”
-David Driscoll
