Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category

Aug 12, 2020

The Problem of Wine’s Diminishing “Aspiration Gap”

Wine selling venues shuttered due to COVID. Neo-Prohibitionism on the rise. A continuing invasion of new and high-quality imports. Dietary guidelines recommending 1 drink a day instead of 2 for men. Tariffs on EU Wines. New and different drinks like cider and hard seltzer competing for palates. It’s not as though wine doesn’t face enough headwinds. So, of course, I’m here to note one more breeze that wine faces—and has faced for some time, despite it not being discussed much:…

Aug 4, 2020

The Top Ten Important Wine Questions

There are a variety of interesting and even significant questions staring the wine industry in the face right this minutes. They are the kind of questions that have answers that will significantly impact the wine industry and they are the kind of questions I like to ponder and often write about. These are ten of those questions and they are questions I don’t have answers to and in some cases, don’t even know how to evaluate. Do you? ONE Fifteen…

Jul 15, 2020

In Praise of Wine Snobs and Classists

And now let us praise the wealthy, wealthy-adjacent, privileged, conspicuously consuming wine consumers who, with their showy and snooty displays and consumption of expensive, rare, hard-to-find, wines from Old World and New World wine regions with particular emphasis on wines of high ratings, have created the modern wine industry and made way for the diversity of wine now seen across America. Hazzah! Now imagine a world in which California wines named “Burgundy, Barbaresco, and White Chablis” all made from some…

Jul 8, 2020

The Wine Industry, Violence, Words and Emails…Oh My

Almost a week ago I published a post here entitled, “Is the Wine Industry Racists?” It received a good deal of interest, a number of thoughtful comments, and a number of shares, links, etc. Not surprising. There were a number of folks that liked my perspective (“racism” may in fact not be the reason African-Americans are underrepresented in the industry and among the applicant pool for wine industry jobs) and a number who thought I was off-base. As it should…

Jun 30, 2020

Is The Wine Industry Racist?

Is the wine industry in America racist? It’s a pertinent and timely question given not only the current movement for social justice and racial equality but also considering the various articles that have been published over the past few weeks highlighting the experiences of African Americans working in the wine industry here in the United States. INDUSTRY STRUCTURE To begin with, what should be uncontroversial is that the structure of the wine industry is not racist. That is to say,…