My grown up children and their friends seldom drink wine. Lots of beer, RTDs and Bourbon, but alas, not wine. As a chef, wine importer and educator, I blame myself.
I ruined it all for them. Early on when I introduced them to wine, I'd go to the cellar, pick a wine for dinner and then tell them all about how it was made. Where it came from. What they were tasting. Why it tasted that way. What the terroir was and how it effected the flavors. In other words, I put them in a stupor and bored them.
It didn't matter to them. All they wanted to know was if they liked it or not and if they wanted to try it again ... Great Dad, please pass the bread...and if I was smarter, pass on the diatribe. I never gave them a beer class or described the nuances of White Claw. They saw, they tasted, they drank.
My Grandad was smarter. We had wine at every Sunday dinner. He'd always bring something from our restaurant: a gallon of Cribari Red that Grandmother and Aunts liked plus few other bottles (we had and have a huge family), put them on the counter and if you wanted it, you poured some. As an immigrant Italian family, we didn't use fancy wine glasses, he put out water glasses for everything. If you wanted it colder or it was too strong, there was ice to put in it. No discussion on anything unless you asked. He just wanted folks to enjoy. When I'd see Grandad and my uncles sharing a bottle on the side, I knew it may be special. I'd ask, they'd give me some and that's how I started liking wine and got more curious.
Too curious, I think, because I became part of what now is what I think is one of the biggest problem US wine consumption...I became an expert and worse, I thought all that wine knowledge was important. Maybe it was if you were working in the industry. It didn't mean diddly squat to most consumers that just wanted to enjoy a beverage.
Fast forward to the present and there are now armies of self important wine educators and sommeliers ( btw, the concise definition of sommelier is 'sommelier (noun): a waiter in a restaurant who is in charge of serving wine). They, writers and others use that wine knowledge like they are wielding a magical wizard's wand, making wine elite and above most beverages with its special rules, language and traditions.
They talk among themselves about points of knowledge regarding terroir, regions, production and tasting that are lost on 99 percent of the consuming world while ignoring the science of food, wine and flavor reactions as individual experiences and instead place themselves as judges as to what food goes with what wine. Then they price wines at a level of markup that would make Bitcoin blush. We'll dive into that in another blog post.
They have built a wall between a path of easy consumption by not focusing on what people want, but what what they think they should teach them. And it's helping to kill the business.
Not that all education, educators or Somms, of course are complicit. Some are avatars for understanding regarding how food and wine react, how your personal palate drives your likes and dislikes and focus on making sure what you want is what you like. They lead with a question...what do you like to eat and drink? And like my Grandad, they offer( and let them enjoy) whatever they want as long as they're happy.
