An industry insider’s perspective on the future of the wine industry

To meet the future, the wine industry will need to evolve. Photo courtesy of Wines of BC.

We all know the wine industry is in turmoil, but maybe it needed a good boot up the backside to do some serious self-reflection and adapt to the times.

People are drinking less wine, both globally and in Canada. The amount of wine consumed around the world peaked in 2007 and remained relatively steady until 2017. Since then, it has since dropped 11 per cent.

While consumption might be down, prices are not. They have increased due to inflationary spikes in production and distribution costs, and wine has become a bit of a luxury product as a result.

Whether it is the higher prices, or something else that has turned consumers away from enjoying a glass or two, dropping consumption is a worry for the industry.

It seems the wine industry has created itself a vacuum by not bringing new consumers into the category and essentially pricing out the younger generations who already are penny-pinched by today’s inflated living costs. It is very hard to envisage cash-strapped zillennials (those in their 20s and early 30s, born on the cusp between millennials and Gen Z) going out for lavish food-and-wine-paired dinners or buying expensive Cabernet-Merlot blends to cellar for a decade in an apartment where they can barely afford rent.

After years of growth and good profits, the wine biz might just have become a little complacent. Stuck firmly in tradition, wine hasn’t adapted much with the times.

You could argue the natural/low intervention wine movement is speaking to the younger generations, but not much else has changed. As a result, wine has been losing market share to other alcoholic beverages—it’s now under 30 per cent in Canada, its lowest share since 2010/11. Beer, spirits and particularly the volatile but progressive refreshment beverage category have all been nimbler on their feet to speak to young adults.

Although many wine communicators have worked tirelessly and with some success to reduce wine snobbery, the wine world is still intimidating. With its overcomplicated language and obsession with price, prestige, rituals and etiquette, it is often not very welcoming. It’s easier just to order a cocktail.

Somehow, the wine industry needs to find a way to speak to its main market, which still embraces traditional ways, and also capture the minds of the generations to follow. Everything from the way wine is served in restaurants to its packaging and the styles that are made could undergo a makeover.

You must feel for producers, though. Battered by cold, heat, rains, floods, fires, drought, pests and disease, it hasn’t been easy to make wine in recent years, nor has it been cheap. Add in the geopolitical situation of not knowing where the world is heading, and it is very hard to plan out the next 20 to 30 years, which is how wine has to operate due to the long life and cost of establishing a vineyard.

Still, wine has to evolve. It doesn’t have to change completely, though. If wine loosens up a little from its rigidity and becomes a bit more approachable, it has the opportunity to be what future generations are looking for.

Rhys Pender

Rhys Pender is a Master of Wine who combines his time writing, judging, teaching, consulting and dirtying his boots at his four-acre vineyard and winery, Little Farm Winery, in the Similkameen Valley.