Wine is Not The Hat

On the question of "Is Wine Dying," the Hat provides a clue

Sometimes, ubiquitous things and practices disappear. Who knows how often a longtime icon or ubiquity dies? Could the practice of drinking wine and its status as the default dinner libation disappear? Some think it could and perhaps even is as we speak.

This writer thinks it’s happening right now
This fella explains the death while taking a walk.
This reporter thinks we should understand why the wine industry is dying.

The point is that it’s not a far-fetched idea that wine might be living through its final throes as the world moves on to something new. It could happen. Think about The Hat.

For decades, it was obligatory that if a man left the house, he would wear a hat. The man in public without a hat was either eccentric or purposefully transgressive. And he’d get looks as he went on his way down the street.

When was the last time you saw a man out in public with a proper hat? I’ll grant you that the baseball hat is not uncommon. And up here in Oregon, the warm, droopy cap or beanie is pretty common. Not only does a tiny minority of men today wear hats or caps or beanies when they venture out. But not a soul notices when a man isn’t wearing a hat.

What if wine went the way of the hat? What if we are heading toward a future when the average person takes notice of a fellow diner who was served wine with their meal? What if cultural norms changed such that wine was only considered an important and obvious complement to a meal by a very small percentage of people?

Well, it would be nice to know if we really are in the midst of a cultural transition that ends up dissolving the relevance of wine. The only way to know is to examine the evidence of the decline in wine consumption and try to determine which important cultural and social changes are afoot that would have the power to deliver the coup de grace to wine’s long run as an important culinary custom.

On The Fall of the Hat
In a fascinating and concise history of The Hat, Preston Schlueter at Gentlemen’s Gazette gets around to explaining why the hat went away and which cultural and social changes led to the demise of the chapeau. As you would expect, it’s a collection of changes.

1. The Development of Climate Control lessened the utility of the hat.

2. Changing Notions of Social Class resulted in fewer conspicuous displays of things that had been used to signify one’s status—like hats.

3. The Creation of Automobiles and the National Highway System was not just a technological improvement, but also led to an actual physical change in how we resided during the course of our day: sitting in a compartment with a low slung cieling that would not accommodate a hat.

4. The Internet’s Memeification of the Fedora as a negative signal of contempt for someone further reduced the value of the hat by denigrating its most iconic type.

All of the things listed above that Schlueter assigns as the reason for the hat’s decline fall into the category of MACRO changes in culture and society. Big stuff! (The one about the Internet and the memeification of the Fedora isn’t as convincing.) This makes sense to me. Social and cultural ubiquities require pretty significant forces to dislodge them from their, well…ubiquity.

Are any such forces currently pushing against wine?

What Forces Are Arrayed Against Wine?
The most common explanations for the downturn in wine consumption that is significantly impacting the business of wine are:

-The economy and affordability
-Wellness trends
-Anti-alcohol rhetoric
-The rise in popularity of alternative alcohols
-The impact of the use of GPL-1 drugs that diminish the desire to drink alcohol
-The fear that comes with an Internet Culture that never forgets.
-A screen-driven society that leads to isolation, loneliness, and fewer in-person interactions.

Of the above reasons often stated for the decline in alcohol sales, and with them wine, the only two major social changes are the Wellness Trend and new technologies that inhibit the desire to gather together in places where wine has always been an interactive glue or magnet.

The anti-alcohol rhetoric and the use of GPL-1s are both part of the overall wellness trend that has been driven by identifying risk with various activities…such as drinking alcohol. Going back as far as the 1970s, I have lived in a culture that put important emphasis on being well. For quite some time, this mainly revolved around diet and using it to reduce the problems that came with being overweight. Eventually, around the late 1980s and 1990s, working out and exercise became a prominent part of the effort to be “in shape”, but also took on a lifestyle quality. But by the 2010s, the wellness movement became synonymous with identifying risk and recommending that risk be reduced. From here, it was a short step for the always-lurking prohibitionist supporters to take advantage. And they have. This explains the near-universal belief that wine is not good for you and should be avoided.

As for the GPL-1 drugs, this is just an evolution of the dieting trend that never went away.

The Internet and the Internet-induced social and cultural changes look a lot to me like the development of air conditioning that helped lead to the demise of the hat. The development of the Internet has led to the same kind of physical and structural change to our society as did a technology that could actually lead to the opening of entire swaths of geography for human habitation that were once simply too hot or too cold to make any serious economic investment in. The Internet has literally transformed how human beings interact and how that interaction is recorded.

Are The Internet and the Wellness Trend Killers?
What I see is an important question to answer: Together, is the Wellness Trend and the social impact of the Internet enough to force wine off its cultural pedestal and significantly reduce its social and economic significance?

The Wellness Trend is undoubtedly powerful. We are clearly heading toward a moment when “overweightness” becomes largely a fashion statement. Weight loss drugs are quickly coming down in price and insurance is slowly embracing their coverage, which seems like a pretty smart investment to me. But I don’t think it’s such a powerful force that it will do the kind of convincing that leads people to believe moderate wine consumption will kill you. And believing such a thing is the necessary and required impact of the Wellness Trend in order to convince most folks shun wine as a compliment to dinner.

The Internet is something different, however. The isolating effect of the Internet hits at the heart of wine’s kingdom: the human gathering. It’s a fact that as people gather together less in public, the less wine is witnessed and embraced as supporting that kind of gathering. I expect on-premise consumption to continue to fall going forward.

Despite seeing wine in a social gathering less as we go forward, this is not a dig on wine; it’s not a rejection of wine. It’s a redesign of the environment in which wine puts its function on display. Put another way, staying warm or cool as you go about your day didn’t fall out of fashion. The way we stayed warm or cool during the day changed with air conditioning and led to one of the hat’s utilities being devalued. Wine is the “warm” and the “cool”. Air conditioning is the Internet. Over the centuries, wine has demonstrated its remarkable ability to power humanity’s need to interact and mingle and socialize such that the Internet has yet to show any indication it could diminish wine’s social and cultural force.

Wine Is Not Dying Like The Hat
I don’t think wine is dying. At least not like the hat died. We are not in a moment where powerful social and cultural trends are pushing on wine the way they pushed the hat off of men’s heads.

I think wine is adjusting to structural changes in society that have created a much larger, broader, and more diverse physical and cultural environment in which humans interact with one another. These same kinds of changes have been progressing since man learned how to cultivate food and decided to put down stakes and embark on civilization. The difference is that these changes are happening much quicker today than in past centuries.

The changes that led to the demise of the hat were great, but they still took decades to push the hat aside. The social and cultural changes that have been wrought by the Internet have been huge and swift in their impact. In just a decade, for instance, we have been convinced that living long moments of our lives looking down into a small screen is the proper way to conduct ourselves. In just a decade, humanity has embraced the notion that interacting with individuals from across the globe on a daily basis and at no economic cost is a fundamental part of being human. We didn’t even contemplate these things in the year 2000, let alone accept them as ubiquitous as air.

But none of this diminishes the utility of wine. None of this has delivered a better way to support intimacy among groups. This is wine’s superpower and why it would take far greater social and cultural movements to kill it.

Economies rise and fall and this has an impact. New products alter marketplaces, and wine sales are susceptible to this kind of inevitability. But Wine is not The Hat.

This is why they are wrong. This is why wine is not dying. This is why there is a future where wine remains a cultural icon. It and the people who make and sell it merely need to find their way in a society that is facing rapid structural changes. In the end, we are pretty smart about these kinds of things. Wine will find its way.

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By Tom Wark

Tom Wark is the publisher of Fermentation, a source of commentary on the wine business that he has written since 2004. He is also the publisher of THE SPILL, a free, daily newsletter that curates the best wine content on the web.