Channeling Your Election Action Into Wine Industry Action
Harness your passion and direct it at a smaller community: Wine
Presidential elections are unusual. They ask individuals to evaluate and take action on issues and ideas that are national and even global in scope. The impact we can have on issues of such scale is minute. What I know instead is that the smaller the target and the smaller the scope and size of the project, the more impact an individual or community can have. This truism affects how we interact with the wine world and the real world.
The disappointment and elation that have resulted from the most recent presidential election seem outsized, given the real impact our individual voices and votes will have on the target of the past election: the world. On the contrary, individuals, groups, and communities that choose smaller targets will always have greater impacts.
Communities of people that focus on changing local school policies or access to local library services or correcting dangers with a particular intersection on a frequently traveled set of streets will have a greater impact on more lives than much larger communities attempting to influence the course of a war in the Ukraine or the Middle East.
To bring this principle even closer to the homes of my readers, the Wine Community, working together, can have significant positive impacts on specific, wine-related issues that is far greater than if this same community of wine trade participants and wine lovers attempts to influence the entire direction of American foreign policy.
I’m here, in this issue of Fermentation, to urge the wine community to recognize the scope of this community they belong to and together take action for positive change—for their industry and the Americans it serves.
The Wine industry is far from the largest community you belong to. But it is larger too than you may think. My wine community consists of restaurant servers, publicists, wholesaler sales representatives, assistant winemakers, brokers, retail store clerks, executives, and owners at wineries, wine stores, distributors, and import houses. The community includes attorneys, regulators, lobbyists, marketers, hospitality professionals, writers, and influencers. These and others together steer the wine industry, influence and decide how it operates, care for one another and make huge impacts on the community’s daily lives and careers
Focused on problems that face them directly and applying their collective efforts to issues they know best can result in changes that will impact their lives and those who come after them in hugely positive ways.
TARIFFS
Soon, as a community, the wine industry will be asked to raise their voices, open their wallets, and take action to stop or minimize the wine tariffs that are surely coming after the election of Donald Trump. Taking collective actions to stave off the harm that tariffs on European wines will bring to our industry is something real that can be accomplished if the individuals in the industry decide to work together by harnessing the same passion they brought to the effort to impact the world through their vote for the President.