A commentary by Claude Auguste
There is a scene on Instagram, on Facebook, even on TikTok. There, people “talk about wine” (in writing), but it is a way of speaking and writing that rarely has much to do with curiosity or discovery. What counts is the label. The more famous the bottle, the greater the attention. A 2008 Petrus? 145,638 likes. A Montrachet from the depths of the cellar – widespread jubilation. A selfie with a Klaus-Peter Keller wine? Digital canonisation. No bad vibes; dopamine through likes.
That sounds trivial – but it is not. Because this logic of prestige likes leads to a narrowing of the entire wine public sphere. Young wine enthusiasts see these posts, and what gets through to them? That wine remains a status object of the Boomer generation, a world of labels and prices, not of taste and discovery.
The result: alienation. The “old” wine system, extended into the digital realm, repels today’s curious people.
It has to be said clearly: The far from small social media bubble of wine connoisseurs (we must not look at Germany alone) is in reality speaking above all to itself. It celebrates its own achievements, it curates its own trophies. A digital hunting club. Except that the animals are bottles, and the trophies are counted in likes.
And in the meantime sommeliers and sommelières fail in everyday life to bring new wines to the guest. How often do they say that their efforts on behalf of a Franconian Silvaner, a Slovenian Karst wine, a Sicilian Catarratto founder on the ignorance of the guests – guests who have learnt through Instagram that only Keller, Coche-Dury or DRC are “real wines”; even though hardly anyone can afford them. The internet thus undermines the diversity it could actually showcase.
Yet we know better. Wine has always been greater, broader, always more democratic than the bottles and labels that now dominate the social media game. Anyone who is young today does not want a homage to Boomer prestige. Young people drink to experience, not to represent. They want to try natural wines, unknown regions, experiments. For them, encountering a freaky natural wine from the Jura is more exciting than a Montrachet whose image they have already seen a thousand times.
And the dramatic thing is: social media prevents this encounter.
We talk a lotabout social media dying. About it losing its vitality, about algorithms suffocating it. In wine, this dying process is particularly drastic. Instead of opening up new horizons, we narrow them. Instead of inspiring young people, we put them off.
It is a paradox: Never has the wine world been more diverse, more global, more exciting. Never have there been so many small, committed winegrowers willing to try something new. Never so many bars and restaurants experimenting. And never has the digital portrayal been narrower, bleaker, more boring.
We should ask ourselves honestly: Who benefits from this game? The grand châteaux, the prestige winegrowers, the bottles that have long been overpriced and barely accessible anyway. And that is precisely what destroys what wine has always been about: the possibility that every bottle can be an adventure.
Anyone who only counts likes on famous labels is not practising wine culture, but wine narrow-mindedness.
And yes: I consider this dangerous. Not because it is about prestige – but because it is losing an entire generation. Young people who might perhaps be keen to immerse themselves in wine lose that desire when they see how old, how self-satisfied, how boomer-like the scene is.
Wine is not Instagram. Wine is not prestige. Wine is the conversation at the table, the surprise in the glass, the moment when something new happens.
The task now lies with us – with sommeliers, journalists, and everyone who takes wine seriously: We must write, speak and drink against this narrowing. We must show that there is more than Keller, Lafite and Montrachet. That the true wealth of wine lies not in prestige, but in diversity.
Social media is dying – and it is dying because it is bringing about its own demise. Above all through AI. If the wine world clings to it, it will die with it.
And that would be the greatest betrayal of a culture that for 8,000 years has lived on nothing but diversity, curiosity and courage.