Layne’s Wine Gig Presents
2024 YEAR IN REVIEW
By Layne V. Witherell
How to review a year like 2024? Here are a few words that sum up the state of wine last year:
ANXIETY
CONFUSION
DESPERATION
The industry saw sales decrease 8-12%. For wine, this is unknown territory.
Wineries are struggling to try to find their audience in a year of unprecedented sales decline. The Wine Market Council (a.k.a. the tribal elders of the industry) are clinging desperately to their demographic charts, eagerly praying to find new consumers in that mysterious tangle that masquerades as inclusivity.
The major problem is that in the decades of the 80’s and 90’s we all looked at the Boomers (22.9% of the population) and Gen Xers (19% of the population) and started wine businesses and wineries, planted and expanded vineyards like all holy hell and never realized that there was a tsunami of naysayers in their cribs ready to take over.
The totally unpredictable Millennials and Gen Zers are now 46% of the population. Prohibition? Sure. Life on a phone? Sure. Creating their own personal pronoun fluidity as a culture? Sure. Total unpredictability? Sure. Selfies as a lifestyle? Sure. Self-absorption? Sure. Sober curious? Sure.
“For anyone with even a toe queasily dipped into social medias stench ridden ocean can attest both dry January and sober October are excuses for celebrities and influencers to post smug videos about how much better their skin looks without their usual glass of wine with dinner.”
France is in the process of uprooting 67,000 acres of vines. California will be following with 25,000 acres or so.
BUT THERE IS HOPE: THE RISING YOUNG REBEL
Much as I malign the Gen Z and Millennial members of our world, alongside the strident community of neo prohibitionists, there has just appeared in my mailbox a copy of a book loaded with an abundance of fun, wit, wisdom and outrageous snark, “Corker: A Deeply Unserious Wine Book” by Hannah Crosbie (Penguin U.K., 2024).
Hannah is a 28-year-old from Edinburgh, living in East London, a wine pro, totally informed about the weaknesses and strengths of her generation and has written a keeper of a book. She is unabashed in an era of cautious restraint. Her introduction: “I love wine. I love everything about it. I love pouring it, swirling it, and holding it up to the light to watch it glow. I love thumbing through atlases and wine journals to find the right words for it. I love writing about it. I love scrubbing it out of white cotton shirts, off my purple teeth, off other people’s sofas.” This is bold stuff in today’s overly precious world.
Her wine writing is clearly unpretentious, non-conventional, loaded as it is with F-bombs and relationship double entendre; but this is a book that explores the studied expression of the well-honed Millennial mind at work, aimed more for the novice than the pro with very little esoterica here.
The book stares directly into a world of hyper political incorrectness and simply defies you not to laugh and enjoy yourself.
Where she gets it, and really gets it, is in her brilliant idea of pairing wine with life events – some good, some awful. Breakup wines. First-date wines (some good, some bad). You just quit your job wines. The real Holiday Hannah and the make-believe Holiday Hannah wines, etc. To wine writers and the public this is a startling earth-shaking revelation. To anyone who runs a wine shop this is old stuff. These are questions we get asked every day. Just make a jaunt to your local wine store to try this theory out.
And remember: the attire at the “Just Finalized a Divorce Party” is basic black. The wine is Barbera because it “beckons you into your newfound freedom.” Her classic line, “not to tempt fate, but I think I’d make a brilliant ex-wife. So many of the things that I already love – wearing black, smoking heavily, complaining about exes.” Tell me – where are you going to find this in a wine book? Congrats Hannah, game changer.
YOUR WINE STARTER KIT: BOTA BOX
“America’s favorite premium boxed wine brand.” That is kind of an oxymoron, but we don’t care. It comes packaged in three-liter cartons (four bottles) $17.99, or 500 ml “minis” $4.99. No glasses, tablecloths, no fuss, no muss. The goal here is the wine introduction to accompany those estimated 1.42 billion chicken wings consumed each year during the big game. For the gen Zers new to wine there is always the opportunity to cook up a little tofu or a plant-based burger. Their maker, the Delicato Winery in Manteca, California brings you wine veterans Gnarly Head Zinfandel as well as the limited bottling of the “Grateful Dead” label Zinfandel. You gotta start somewhere.
DESPERATION MARKETING 101
Aptly released on Halloween, 2024 (are you sure it isn’t April Fool’s Day?) “California Wine Brand Teams Up with Colgate.”
“The McBride Sisters Winery has collaborated with one of the world’s best toothpaste brands to prove that drinking red wine doesn’t have to mean permanently stained teeth.”
This limited-edition gift set contains two Colgate whitening pens, a compact mirror, a bottle of McBride Sisters Collection Red Blend, and a tube of Colgate Optic White for a mere $49.99 for a limited time only with the encouragement for, “consumers to unwind, sip and shine.”
Ever had a little toothpaste chaser alongside your glass of red wine? Let’s try it and see. I am calling them out because this is the 2024 Winner of Desperation Marketing in a year filled with desperation marketing.
CRINGY TRENDS in 2024
RTD’S – (Ready to Drink) Tequila disguised as a healthy drink.
Non-alcohol wine – Basically lousy stuff.
Natural Wine – Mousy flavor as a cult.
Clean Wine – Overpriced just like your yoga mat. A nice dose of pseudo health paranoia by celebrities.
Sober curious – Say what?
POT. WHY NOT?
Just count the number of pot stores in your neighborhood and divide by the number of wine stores. Fifty to one? I guess if you are going to get anesthetized instead of experiencing aesthetic pleasure this is a way to go.
It all resembles the Dutch tulip mania in the 17th century where they, “utterly failed to notice as their world shrank to the dimensions of a fevered dream,” (Michael Pollan). Instead of chasing the highest high, or most paranoid health yoga mat adventure, why not just chase a terrific bottle of wine to share?
LET’S HAVE SOME FUN
Grape Abduction Blend, Slovenia, 2023, 1 Liter, $17.99 retail. Here it is, complete with our collection of Halloween Mason jars from Bellflower Brewery in Portland, as a quirky fun ensemble.
The wine is not too dry, not too sweet, just a delicious blend of pinot Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, and Gewurztraminer, lovely and aromatic, paired with some chicken with fire roasted peppers in a curry sauce. A wonderfully edgy aesthetic experience to have at home while watching a Netflix flick.
2024 Year in Review – Ditch the Fads
It’s time that we replace mindlessness and biting negativity with stories and connections instead of frivolous fads. Let’s make wine drinking fun again and enjoy a glass for what it is – the world’s longest revered civilizing beverage. “There must be joy.” -Julia Child.
