(Sebastian Höpfner / Manfred Klimek – Editorial team / animated image: Rutz & runwayml)
I’ve been thinking for a long time about whether I should even write this down. Because so much is happening right now. Because the world of wine is changing more dramatically than it has in a long time. And because much of it isn’t easy to get to grips with.
Drinking habits are changing. Young people are drinking less wine and turning to other things. At the same time, everything is getting more expensive, including wine. People are thinking more carefully about when and what they buy. Added to this are political tensions, economic pressure and a market that’s realigning itself. These are all major issues. But that’s not what I’m focusing on here. What’s on my mind is something else. What’s on my mind is a detail.
The tone has changed.
Over the last few months, I’ve increasingly had the feeling that the tone in our industry is shifting. That we’re no longer talking to one another, but almost exclusively about one another. That it’s less about understanding things and more about categorising them as quickly as possible. Or worse still: disparaging them.
People are bandying about theories that sound good, work quickly and get a lot of reactions. But they often lack depth. Or the willingness to really get to the bottom of things. And to be honest, that worries me.
Talking about wine – or belittling it
Take someone like Milton Sidney Curtis, a wine blogger and ‘wine futurist’, about whom an article was even published in the *Stuttgarter Zeitung*, in which the copywriter was held up as a sort of voice of the young wine world. Is he?
Curtis stands up and says that wine language isn’t ‘lit’, that the discourse in restaurants is dominated by old white men – and is celebrated for it. It’s easy to share, easy to ‘like’, easy to pass on.
But what’s actually going on here? Generalisations are being made; things are being oversimplified. There’s no explanation; it’s all being dismissed.
Of course, wine language has often been – and still is – difficult. And not infrequently, it’s downright daft. Of course, there are things that need to be criticised. But if the response to that is to reduce everything to a level of mere irony, then in the end there isn’t much left. Reducing everything to a purely ironic level is taking the easy way out – and not just in the sommelier scene.
And yes, you can do that. But then you should at least be honest and say that you’re consciously choosing not to go into depth.
Criticism is necessary – but it matters. And cheap irony is, and always will be, cheap.
Yet there are also voices like Eren Goemleksiz’s. And his critique of the VDP. Here, too, there is criticism; here, too, things are exaggerated. But you can tell that there’s a genuine engagement with the subject behind it. That someone is trying to understand things, to make sense of them, and perhaps even to change them.
You may or may not agree with that. But you have to engage with it.
And that is precisely what I often find lacking in the current debate: that we distinguish between criticism that aims to achieve something – and criticism that simply wants to make an impact; criticism for criticism’s sake – and for the thrill of having stepped on someone’s toes.
But we’re all in the same boat
At the end of the day, we’re all working with the same product. Winemakers, retailers, sommeliers, journalists, influencers – we’re all invested in this wine. And in ensuring it’s understood. That it’s drunk. That it remains relevant. And that’s precisely why I don’t understand why we so often work against one another. Why we divide ourselves into camps, belittle one another, and tear each other down, instead of working together towards a common goal. We don’t have to agree. Quite the opposite. But we should know why we say what we say.
And for whom.
Less posturing, more substance
It doesn’t bother me that people argue. What bothers me is how they argue. All too often, it’s no longer about the issue at hand, but about attention. About the quick fix. About one’s own position. A comment that goes down well. A provocation that generates reach. But what does that do for wine?
I don’t want to go back. No old wine world, no closed language, no elitist spaces.
But I do hope that we’ll become more precise again. That we’ll take more time. That we’ll take each other seriously. And that criticism will go back to where it belongs: to the people who can make sense of it.
Not into the void. Not at the general public. Not as an end in itself.
In the end, it’s all about the wine
We have an incredible product to represent. And we are currently facing major challenges – economic, social and cultural. The last thing we need right now is to tear ourselves apart. We need to work together. Not against one another.
And we need a discussion that does justice to the wine.
Not a discussion about ourselves. Even if that’s where most of the emotion lies.