(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team)
German winemakers have understood the internet. And that is precisely their problem.
Because social media simply isn’t the internet of the early 2000s. No longer a homepage, newsletter, PDF price list and carefully worded company philosophy. Social media is not a digital trade-fair stand. Not an extended PR office. Not a wine guide in motion. Social media is something much more chaotic, contradictory and emotional. And that is precisely why a surprising number of German wineries are still failing at it.
After all, twenty-five years have now passed since this form of communication crashed into the world like private television once did. And yet a large part of the German wine industry still comes across there like a very good tax adviser at a student party.
It starts with the fundamental question: what is social media, anyway?
Many larger businesses still believe it is a kind of technically optimisable information system. So they hire agencies, brand consultants, reach experts, KPI administrators and content strategists. Then perfectly lit images emerge, with perfectly arranged glasses and perfectly phrased texts about “vision”, “sustainability”, “values” and “authenticity”. The only problem is: nobody is interested.
For some time now, I have been observing a fairly renowned winery on the Moselle, whose name I deliberately do not wish to mention. A great deal of money has apparently been invested there in a modern social-media concept. Target audience: young people somewhere between lifestyle, culinary culture and urbanity—in other words, precisely the generation that is increasingly slipping away from wine. At first glance, everything looks professional. The visual language is right. The colour palette is right. The texts seem well thought out. There are probably even Excel spreadsheets covering posting frequencies and reach corridors.
And then you look at the likes. And realise: the audience is barely responding.
Why? Because social media is not a one-way street. And certainly not a scientific discipline. Social media does not work like brand management in 1998. Social networks do not follow the logic of traditional advertising, but the logic of social dynamics. That sounds banal, but a surprising number of wine businesses still do not understand it.
The central concept is: participation. And this is precisely where the industry often fails spectacularly.
Many winemakers use Instagram or Facebook exclusively for self-broadcasting. Bottle. Cellar. Sunset. Tractor. Vineyard. Trade-fair photo. Full stop. What is almost entirely missing is interaction. And something that is long since taken for granted in the English-speaking world is missing even more: “Sharing is Caring”.
It is really quite simple: make other people visible. Like other winemakers’ posts. Share sommeliers’ content. Mention merchants. Repost guests’ posts. Celebrate other people’s small successes. Show good bottles from other businesses. Create a network. Create an atmosphere. Simulate community—or genuinely live it.
That happens surprisingly rarely in German winegrowing.
Perhaps this is also due to a cultural peculiarity. For decades, German quality winegrowing was organised in a strongly hierarchical way: points, guides, rankings, authorities. People tended to look upwards rather than sideways. A sense of collegial public life hardly developed. Many businesses therefore still understand social media as a digital advertising column: you broadcast. The others are supposed to consume. But social media rewards not control, but energy. Not order, but movement. Not perfection, but the ability to connect.
The most successful wine accounts worldwide have long since demonstrated this. There, people improvise, comment, laugh, argue, cook, open bottles and share. Dogs appear, as do wonky videos, spontaneous tastings, stupid moments, exhaustion after the harvest, little bursts of euphoria and, occasionally, bad moods. In short: personality.
And that is precisely what many German businesses lack. Not because of any lack of intelligence. But because they confuse social media with corporate communications. This is not, incidentally, a purely German problem. But in Germany it seems particularly pronounced, because so many things are immediately professionalised, organised and measured here. Hardly has a new form of communication emerged before someone arrives with statistics, a strategy paper and an efficiency model. That may work brilliantly in industry. Often not on social networks. Because despite all the algorithms, social media remains an astonishingly anarchic space to this day. People do not primarily respond to perfection there, but to resonance. They do not want to enter a sterile brand world. They want to feel that real people stand behind a business.
That is the industry’s misunderstanding: wine is one of the most emotional cultural products of all. Yet its digital communication often ranks among the least emotional, most controlled and most predictable material in the entire food-and-drink industry. Wine would actually be ideal for social networks. Stories, journeys, people, food, mishaps, friendships, vintages, arguments, euphoria, exhaustion, weather, music, architecture, nights—all of that is already contained in the product.
They would simply have to stop treating social media like a PowerPoint presentation.