The Truth About Myths

A piece for Tim Atkin MW on the reality of high release prices and the cost of ageing wine

Hello fine wine lovers,

The Drinks Business reports that Felton Road, one of Central Otago’s top wineries, is stepping away from the fine wine label, rejecting what owner Nigel Greening calls its “over-priced snobbery.”

In my latest piece for Tim Atkin, I argue that we need the opposite.

While I certainly disagree with the notion that fine wine is only for snobs, I believe it’s crucial to preserve what makes wine truly unique—its ability to age.

If I buy an Hermès Birkin, a car, or a watch, its value may rise due to rarity or status, but its quality doesn’t improve. Once it leaves the factory, it can only deteriorate.

Wine is different. Some dismiss it as just alcoholic grape juice, but it has a rare, almost alchemical ability to evolve—becoming more than it was.

So why are we making wines more approachable?

I argue that this shift isn’t driven by younger generations preferring easy-drinking wines—it’s an economic issue. Rising release prices and the cost of ageing have made it financially unviable to store wine, and we are at risk of destroying what makes wine, well, wine.

Read the full article at timatkin.com.

Sara

Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese don’t mix Bordeaux with Coke.

Yet, between November 2017 and September 2018, I lost count of how many times I was told this, along with countless other myths surrounding China. Many of these were drilled into me during those 10 months leading up to my business launch in China, where I eventually opened three online shops.

Everyone, whether they had experience in the Chinese market or not, had an opinion on what the average wine buyer wanted.

And yet, in the six years that followed, not one of those myths turned out to be true. If anything, the average Chinese wine buyer not only doesn’t drink Figeac with Coke but is often more educated on wine than the average European consumer.

But I’m not here to talk about China. I want to talk about another myth—one that has been circulating in the wine industry for years and is changing the way wine is made and consumed.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live, writes Joan Didion. The same applies to business. We turn fragments of truth into a narrative that “fits,” but we don’t want to hear how it ends.

There’s a myth in the wine industry, and it goes like this:

Young people prefer approachable wines. They must prefer approachable wines. They always have. We tell ourselves this story: that younger generations don’t drink, that they don’t appreciate wines that age, that they don’t want to wait. That they are impatient. That they can’t afford a house, let alone a wine cellar. That they have no space, no time, no inclination. And so, naturally, they must prefer drinking young wines—light, fresh, and easy.

And so, winemakers have started making them that way. I keep hearing about how wines are becoming more “approachable,” more drinkable, more immediate.

And that worries me.

Not because I dislike elegant, drinkable wines. Quite the opposite. God knows how much wine was Parkerised to please one man and one country. A reversal from those excessively oaked, overly tannic styles is welcome.

But in making wines more “approachable,” are we eroding the very essence of what makes wine, wine?

Continue reading at timatkin.com