You Have to See the Problem Clearly

When the Silicon Valley Bank Wine Report landed last week with that opening line, I thought back to a dinner at @Lucian Books and Wine last year where @Pascaline Lepeltier, MS was speaking.  She spoke passionately that night about supporting winemakers, about the people behind the bottles, about why authentic connections to place and culture matter more than scores or ratings. It reminded me of something she once said that captures it perfectly: "My job on the floor is to support winemakers who put sweat and tears into their work...Wine is a way to link to nature and to culture."

The Data Finally Caught Up:

The 30-45 age cohort represents wine's only real growth opportunity. SVB is clear: they want authenticity of place, respect for the people who grow wine, cultural enrichment over education. They'll engage with wine if "the value proposition aligns with their values." The best wine professionals I know have always sold wine this way. How many times have you watched someone fall in love with a wine not because of the score, but because you told them about the winemaker? SVB documents that top-quartile wineries are succeeding through "experience-driven, high-touch engagement" - connecting consumers directly to people and place. The ones struggling? Still optimizing for scores and ratings.

The Real Challenge:

Supplier-funded trips are down 80%. The traditional pathway for wine professionals to meet winemakers, walk vineyards, and sit in family cellars is disappearing. SVB's recommendation: "DTC tactics need to evolve...to an expanded view of DTC that meets the consumer where they live." That requires infrastructure: sommelier networks that deliver qualified buyers to estates, partnerships that solve three-tier complications, and profitable models where clients pay for access rather than wineries funding marketing trips.

What I'm Seeing:

Wine professionals finding creative ways to maintain these connections. Small importers doubling down on authenticity over volume. Family wineries transforming hospitality from expense to revenue.

What Pascaline was talking about that night wasn't aspirational. It was descriptive of what the best people in wine have always done and those are the people, places and ideas we should embrace and celebrate.