{"id":144,"date":"2017-02-17T19:45:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/?p=144"},"modified":"2017-02-17T20:26:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T20:26:27","slug":"and-now-a-look-even-further-ahead-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/2017\/02\/17\/and-now-a-look-even-further-ahead-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"And Now, a Look Even Further Ahead: Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our last piece (Part II)<\/a><\/strong><\/span> ended with a very telling question. It is based on different patterns of the populace and tries to predict the behavior of the generation that grew up with the internet, cell phones, more \u2018less traditional\u2019 households, and, now, the dawn of virtual reality and Wingstop. While we can only predict with limited accuracy (if we were really able to predict that stuff, people would pay us money), there are some reasonable basis for hypothesis.<\/p>\n

One is that \u2018entertainment\u2019 happens more outside the home in casual restaurants, gastro pubs, pizza places, et al. Clubs, cocktails, and craft beers are much more ingrained in the culture. Entertainment options are at historic highs (since now you\u2019ve added virtual reality to plain old reality), as are the dining choices. A generation of immigrants (we do not make presumptions about anyone\u2019s status), mostly not from Europe, have brought their food traditions with them. There\u2019s an amazing array of cuisines from South and Central America, Asia and the Pacific Rim. Mexican cuisine, longtime staples in California, has countless more regional examples.<\/p>\n

In places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, there is a dizzying array of food choices. All kinds of folks are eating all kinds of different foods. The thing is, and we say this in the most objective way possible, the majority of this new, expanded \u2018food scene\u2019 are from places with no ingrained wine culture. We interpret that as a potential problem from the standpoint of the learning curve. Everybody who ultimately gets \u2018serious\u2019 about wine has an experience or two that tickle the imagination, that motivates them to follow the path.<\/p>\n

The typically bustling, high-decibel eating environments of today don\u2019t necessarily support the quiet contemplation of your beverage. Sometimes you can\u2019t even hear the person across from you, let alone talk about the wine. The energy of such a room is part of the experience, but the odds of randomly discovering wine is reduced by the fact there us so much other stimulus. In most Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, or Indian eateries, if there is a wine \u2018program\u2019 at all, it\u2019s usually a small list of ordinary, very commercial bottles selected by a distributor rep without necessarily any regard to the cuisine but rather what they are supposed to sell. Often times the restaurateurs themselves don\u2019t care. Beer is easier (though less so today with the craft explosion).<\/p>\n

A lot more people eat at these types of restaurants as a percentage than three decades ago. Heck the extent and diversity of cultural food options really didn\u2019t exist back then, and the ones that did were an occasional novelty for the typical family. The key point is that the expansive landscape of more ethnic fare will provide fewer opportunities percentage-wise for people who have yet to have that \u2018definitive\u2019 wine experience.<\/p>\n

One would think that there would be more avenues than ever where someone might stumble into wine. But that\u2019s not necessarily the case in today\u2019s world. We old-timers learned by tasting, reading, and finding a few folks to talk to in a wine store. Since all the prices were fixed back in the 70s, a standard wine venue could support itself by carrying \u2018the hits\u2019 and a lot more options that grocery stores did not. When price fixing went away, so did a lot of those types of venues because they couldn\u2019t adjust to the new reality. Fast forward today and buying patterns have changed (at least in California) because of the market shifting to a different group of venues that provided convenience and price advantages.<\/p>\n

People today are a lot more harried. They will shop \u2018specialized\u2019 for big purchases, but most would like to take care of the day-to-day stuff in as few stops as possible. So they are less likely to make the extra trip for wine when they can find something palatable in the now-somewhat-expanded grocery store selection or \u2018big box\u2019 set. Are they interested in trying something new? Maybe, but there is little information on the shelves in such places save for an occasional point score from some publication that they may or may not know. It\u2019s not likely there is anyone that can answer even the simplest of questions, either.<\/p>\n

Big box stores? There\u2019s a modest selection of \u2018the hits\u2019 and no one that knows anything on the floor. So unless you know what you are looking for, you\u2019re flying blind and likely to just buy the same old things. Is just buying the same old thing wrong? Not for a lot of people. But even if you have the desire and motivation to expand your horizons you might need a little help. In such venues, if there even is anyone \u2018working the floor\u2019 (which is rare), it\u2019s usually some supplier rep with an agenda to sell their own stuff.
\nThe wine store of old is generally gone, replaced by more hybridized versions that have passionate buyers and innovative selections. The problem is that most aren\u2019t going to have many of those old familiar favorites for you to fall back on because \u2018big brand\u2019 giveaways by grocers and big box stores have made these brands untenable even to carry for convenience. So basically to make that extra trip, you have to have made the decision that you want to get out of the \u2018rut\u2019 and get into wine. That\u2019s a big commitment for most people.<\/p>\n

What about those alcoholic beverage chain stores that advertise they have \u2018experts\u2019 on the floor to help you? Good luck with that. The term \u2018experts\u2019 is tossed around rather loosely, and most of them are only trained to move you into that high margin \u2018store brand\u2019.<\/p>\n

Restaurant-by-the-glass programs should offer the best opportunity to learn. But there are a host of problems. In a busy, noisy restaurant, the likelihood of being able to talk to someone who actually can spend the time to help you and knows the wine is small (though they are out there). Plus, as we have mentioned in other pieces, you don\u2019t know if the wine you\u2019re tasting is representative of the genre it represents if you don\u2019t already know the genre. Moreover, given the generally marginal condition of most \u2018back bar\u2019 wines, where you have no idea how long that particular bottle has been open, you don\u2019t really know if the juice in your glass is even representative of that wine. Given that, it is fairly remarkable how much energy wineries put into wine-by-the- glass offers since they have little idea what the customer is actually drinking. They could be turning off potential wine drinkers to their brand or wine in general with some half-dead white or decrepit red.<\/p>\n

As for experimenting with wine list at restaurant, where you see them open the bottle, you can learn that way provided it\u2019s an eatery with a more enlightened yet still consumer friendly list. It\u2019s no easy task to find one of those, and the learning curve will be the most expensive of any. This of course also presumes the person running the wine program is actually concerned about the diners themselves and doesn\u2019t have some sort of personal agenda.<\/p>\n

There are suggestions of forming tasting groups where a bunch of people all learn together. They work, but they are at least step B or C. At that point you have already gone to the next level of interest and aren\u2019t a novice any more. The same goes with wine education classes. The passionate will find a way. Our point is that the person who might potentially be interested in learning more will have a much harder time in today\u2019s market stumbling onto that formative \u2018aha\u2019 moment that will give him\/her the fire. More to the issue, those who might have it may never find out they do because, under a wide range of scenarios, the situation may never present itself.<\/p>\n

The \u2018next generation\u2019 of wine drinkers, whoever they might be, will have the most to do with how the next couple of decades play out for the wine industry in general. They are likely to be more open to wine as a beverage choice than any generation to date, but less likely to go far beyond that (other than the occasional tech millionaire who wants to fill the wine cellar in the mansion he just bought). As the prices of better bottles get to be more expensive, and the range of beverage choices competing for the consumer dollar continues to expand, wine geekdom will likely be even more \u2018the road less followed\u2019.<\/p>\n

Pricing, marketing, global warming, is it the \u2018juice\u2019 or the \u2018show\u2019? We\u2019ll take a swing at that stuff in a couple of weeks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our last piece (Part II) ended with a very telling question. It is based on different patterns of the populace and tries to predict the behavior of the generation that grew up with the internet, cell phones, more \u2018less traditional\u2019 households, and, now, the dawn of virtual reality and Wingstop. While we can only predict … Continue reading “And Now, a Look Even Further Ahead: Part III”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}