Last week G3 Enterprises and Diam Bouchage hosted the 12th Annual Wine Conversations. Master Sommelier Evan Goldstein opened the conversation acknowledging the challenges that the wine industry is currently facing, including economic, regulatory and cultural. Specifically a trend toward abstinence with more people observing Dry January and Sober October, and the World Health Organization declaring that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
Despite these challenging circumstances, Goldstein’s talk was upbeat, emphasizing that there are positive wine conversations to be had, and there is a place for wine in a healthy lifestyle with moderate drinkers having lower all-cause mortality than non-drinkers, according to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report. In fact, the reason for that might well be that wine is part of community and conversation.
The health challenge that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy chose to call attention to on his departure was not the danger of alcohol, but the epidemic of loneliness, saying “As I finish my tenure as Surgeon General, this is my parting prescription, my final wish for all of us: choose community.”
Goldstein pointed to the successful Come Over October campaign launched last year, which has since been followed by the Pair and Share Sundays campaign, which both emphasize how wine can be a pillar of community, conversation and well-being.
People often gather around sharing food and wine, but the community and conversation around wine will of course differ from community to community. For the hundred or so wine enthusiasts and professionals gathered on this occasion, Goldstein had selected a dozen wines from around the world, all sealed with Diam corks, for a blind tasting and quiz with questions like, what does this flight of wines have in common, what vintage is this wine, and where is from; a fun activity for this particular community.
After the blind tasting, Mike Osborn, Founder and VP of Wine.com gave a keynote highlighting some of the insights they have gathered from their customer data. One thing he emphasized was how their digital storefront and database allows for a different kind of shopping experience and discovery of new wines than traditional wine retail shopping.
As an example, he showed an actual order including 12 different bottles of a Pinot Gris from different producers and regions, an order that would have been complicated to put together in a traditional retail store. And Osborn suggested that this customer might be hosting a tasting, showcasing yet another example of wine conversations facilitated by access and discovery of wines.
It’s not new that special occasions, celebrations or meals and social settings or opportunities for wine consumption, but wine’s ritual role and importance for these community occasions are worth more conversation.
