Answering Wine Complication: Get It Down Their Throats

Posted by Tom Wark on Jul 16, 2007

The Wine Market Council, an industry organization concerned with broadening the appeal of wine has re-launched its WineAnswers.com website.

In the press release that announced the re-launch I found this piece of information fascinating:

"with an estimated 259 million cases consumed last year (in the U.S.), many Americans still feel that wine is too complicated and don’t have the answers about wine service and enjoyment."

Of course that begs the question, how many is "many Americans." The Wine market council provided the answer:

"2006 research from the Wine Market Council…found that 35 percent of Millennials share this concern, as do 2 percent of Generation Xers and 18 percent of Baby Boomers."

I don’t know about you, but it strikes me that if only 18% of Boomers surveyed said they think wine is "too complicated" or that they "don’t have the answers about wine service and enjoyment," then we are doing a damn good job of educating the public. This means that 82% of those surveyed did not think wine too complicated. Seventy-one percent of Gen Xers have a handle on wine and 65% of Millennials aren’t confused by wine.

I’m surprised the number of those millennials who think wine is "too complicated" isn’t much higher than reported.

WineAnswers.com has  goal of being "the ultimate online, interactive guide to all things wine." Wow! Now that’s a goal. Some personal life trainers and self-help types advocate that we create a series of small attainable goals that we can reach with some effort then move on to the next. Wine Answers takes the opposite track by creating a goal that is truly monumental.

If the folks behind WineAnswers.com have the resources to really promote the heck out of the site I see no reason why they couldn’t make an impact. However, it’s really rare to see a non-commercial website put much promotion at all behind their efforts. Frankly, there’s nothing alike a few hundred thousand dollars to get a new web site on people’s radar. But, given the statistics on who thinks wine is too complicated, I’m not sure the effort is really necessary.

I personally think there is  very simple formula for increasing people’s confidence when it comes to wine: Make really good wine that is REALLY well prices. In other words, get the wine down peoples throats. The more, different wine you drink the more confident you become.