(Dr Maximilian Schüttky / Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / Photo: Manfred Klimek)
The wine world has now realised that it is in the midst of a crisis. What it has not yet realised is that crises do come to an end. Afterwards, however, one does not automatically find oneself back where one was before. If the current trend does indeed result in the loss of 30 or 40 per cent of Europe’s vineyard area, if thousands of estates go out of business, cellars are sold off, vineyards are grubbed up and entire regions are economically depleted, then what remains in the end will not simply be a smaller version of the old wine world. It will be a different one. Surprisingly, almost no one is talking about this.
The industry is currently focused primarily on simply holding on. Boosting sales, seeking export markets, applying for grants, maintaining prices, somehow getting another vintage into the cellar. Understandable. What is less understandable is that these same people are simultaneously acting as though, once the major shake-out is over, all that is needed is for sufficient demand to reappear so that everything can start all over again. As if thirty-year-olds were suddenly buying Bordeaux again because the stocks have run low, as if the missing red-wine drinkers were returning from a secret hiding place, and as if a generation that consumes considerably less alcohol were to decide one morning that 14.5 per cent is cool again after all.
The wine world of 2026 will still be defined by boomers, produced for boomers and consumed by boomers. That wouldn’t be so bad in itself, were it not for the fact that this generation has simultaneously developed the strange ambition to regard its own habits as laws of nature. If we look at wine fairs, award ceremonies, trade association events or the usual gala dinners, we encounter a world that desperately wants to look young, yet ends up photographing the same older gentlemen once again as they present awards to one another. Young winemakers are now allowed onto the podium – tattoos, natural wine and trainers welcome. But it’s still others who get to make the decisions.
Yet part of the future has long lain with these young wineries. There, they’re experimenting with old grape varieties, cider, Pet Nat, lighter red wines, white wines fermented on the skins, new bottle formats, grape juice, verjus, partially de-alcoholised wines and 0.5 per cent alcohol. Much of this will disappear again. Some of it will stick around. That’s exactly how culture is created. Yet a significant proportion of the established wine world continues to view these experiments with the mild contempt of a man who has been driving the same SUV model for thirty years and is certain that electric mobility is nothing more than a temporary disruption to the world order.
This attitude is particularly evident when it comes to non-alcoholic and low-alcohol wines. One still hears arguments invoking wine law, tradition or supposed authenticity to justify why a wine with 0.5 per cent alcohol should not, in fact, be allowed to belong to the cultural cosmos of wine. The customer listens briefly and then buys something else. The market has little interest in theological debates. Anyone who today samples excellent dealcoholised wines, 6.5 per cent cuvées made from wine, grape juice and verjuice, or good zero-per-cent products, will have long since realised that a new category is emerging. It does not replace a great Riesling, nor a matured Pomerol. It broadens the repertoire. Anyone who continues to treat this as sacrilege is ultimately merely defending their own loss of relevance.
The visual language of this industry also urgently needs a revamp. The wine sector wants to appeal to youth, diversity, femininity, new drinking habits and modern gastronomy, yet in public it all too often presents itself as a closed society of older men. Nobody needs to drive the baby boomers from the table. They have played a key role in building up European quality wine over the past four decades, spent a great deal of money, filled cellars and brought prosperity to winegrowers. However, no industry can base its future on its best customers dying off as slowly as possible.
We therefore need a plan for what comes next. A reduction in vineyard area will not necessarily be a disaster. For years, Europe has been producing more wine than it can sell at reasonable prices. This painful downsizing could even lay the groundwork for a fresh start – provided that it is not, of all things, the very estates that are curious, small-scale, independent and culturally interesting that disappear. In France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Germany, we should now be discussing which landscapes to preserve, which grape varieties to rediscover, which wines will be needed in future, and which estates should be supported. Instead, we are still debating how to boost sales of yesterday’s product.
The modern era following postmodernism is unlikely to look particularly futuristic when it comes to wine. It can bring back old grape varieties, use amphorae, rediscover regional culinary traditions and, at the same time, utilise state-of-the-art dealcoholisation techniques. It will have to tolerate contradictions, because consumers have long since become more contradictory themselves. The very same person might drink alcohol-free wine on a Tuesday and open a twenty-year-old Barolo on a Saturday. The industry must finally stop turning this into a question of identity.
The real problem isn’t the crisis at all. Crises force change and thus serve at least one purpose. More dangerous is the notion that one can simply weather the storm and then put the old furniture back in the same place.
Gorbachev was right when he said in Berlin in 1989: “Life punishes those who are late.” The wine industry should take this to heart. Because it applies to them. Now!