A couple of weeks ago, wine writer Julian Park and his wife Judy were visiting us at Lightning Rock.
We were sitting together talking about wine, the industry and how much things are changing when Julian and Judy asked me a deceptively simple question:
How do we get more people interested in wine?
I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.
My first answer was pretty simple.
We could start by making wine less intimidating.
I enjoy wine. I’ve built a winery around it. I work with people who know far more about winemaking than I ever will, and I’m enormously proud of the wines we produce.
But sometimes I think our industry has forgotten why most people open a bottle of wine in the first place.
It’s usually not to conduct a sensory experiment.
It’s because they’re having dinner with friends.
They’re sitting on the patio with someone they love. They’re celebrating a birthday. They’re bringing a bottle to someone’s house. They’re having pizza on a Friday night. They’re sitting around a table at Christmas. Or maybe they’re just opening a bottle after a long day.
Wine is for lovers, friends and family.
Somewhere along the way, we made it more complicated than that.
Walk into some wineries and it can feel as though you’re expected to know the language before you arrive.
What varietals do you normally drink?
What are you tasting?
Do you understand whole-cluster fermentation, lees ageing, clones, disgorgement dates or French versus American oak?
There is absolutely a place for all of that. Wine is fascinating. The more you learn, the more there is to discover.
But you shouldn’t have to know any of it to enjoy a glass of wine.
If somebody comes into Lightning Rock and tells me, “I don’t know anything about wine, but I really like this one,” I think that’s a wonderful answer.
You like it!
That’s enough.
Maybe you’ll want to know why you like it. Maybe you’ll become fascinated by the vineyard it came from or how Sébastien made it. Maybe five years from now you’ll know more about Pinot Noir than I do.
Or maybe you won’t.
Either is perfectly fine.
Our job shouldn’t be to demonstrate how much we know about wine. Our job should be to help you find something you enjoy.
This might get me into trouble with a few people in the wine business.
I think we put far too much emphasis on tasting notes.
Cherry. Cassis. Graphite. Forest floor. Tobacco. Brioche. Wet stone.
There’s nothing wrong with those descriptions. They can be useful, especially for people who want to learn more about wine.
The problem starts when they make someone think they’re drinking the wine incorrectly because they can’t find the graphite.
Two people can drink exactly the same wine and experience it differently.
That’s part of the fun.
Instead of asking someone, “What are you tasting?” maybe we should start with a much easier question:
Do you like it?
If the answer is yes, we’re off to a pretty good start.
We hear constantly that younger generations aren’t interested in wine and that the future of the industry is bleak.
I think that’s too simple.
Young people still go out. They still have dinner together. They go to concerts, ski, camp, travel, date, celebrate birthdays and gather with friends.
But they have far more choices than my generation ever had.
Craft beer figured out how to be approachable.
Cocktails became fun again.
Ready-to-drink beverages are easy to understand.
Meanwhile, wine can still hand someone a 12-page wine list and make them terrified of ordering the wrong bottle.
Then we wonder why they’re choosing something else.
Maybe the problem isn’t the customer.
Maybe we need to do a better job inviting them in.
There’s another change we need to accept.
Many people are choosing to drink less.
I don’t think the wine industry should fight that.
If someone wants one really good glass of wine instead of three mediocre ones, that’s not necessarily bad news for a small premium winery.
Drink less. Drink better.
Have a glass with dinner. Share a bottle among four people. Open something special because your friends came over.
Wine doesn’t have to win every drinking occasion.
It just needs to matter when people choose it.
At Lightning Rock, we work hard to keep wine fun.
Wine can be serious without taking itself so seriously.
We can talk about vineyards and vintages and farming and winemaking because those things matter enormously to us.
But we can also laugh.
We can open sparkling wine on a Tuesday.
We can drink Pinot Noir with pizza.
We can try something unusual.
We can put Lightning Bolts on a wine label.
And if you want to chill a red wine that someone else says shouldn’t be chilled, I’m certainly not going to come to your house and stop you.
Wine should encourage curiosity, not conformity.
We spend a lot of time in this industry talking about bottles.
I’m not sure bottles are really what we’re selling.
We’re selling what happens when the bottle gets opened.
A dinner that runs two hours longer than expected.
Friends you haven’t seen in six months.
Someone cooking while somebody else stands at the counter with a glass of wine.
A first date.
An anniversary.
Christmas dinner.
A summer afternoon in the Okanagan.
Those are the tasting notes people actually remember.
So I’ve kept thinking about the question Julian and Judy asked me.
How do we get more people interested in wine?
Maybe we stop trying so hard to teach people how they’re supposed to enjoy it.
Open a bottle.
Pour a glass.
Sit down with somebody you like.
Talk.
Laugh.
Eat something.
And if you like what’s in your glass, you’ve already figured out the most important thing you need to know about wine.
Wine is for lovers, friends and family.
That’s the wine culture I’d like us to get back to.
Ron Kubek
Owner, Lightning Rock Winery
Summerland, BC