With all the handwringing over the future of fine wine be it the retirement of Boomers, the too often ignored Gen Xers, or the insanely over-hyped Millennials, why isn’t there more marketing talk about simply making wine more approachable? And I’m not talking about just putting it in a box, can, or naming it after a TV show.

It shouldn’t be hard. Here are my ideas I believe would help:

Let the customer actually be front and center with wine!

Let folks drink what they like, how they like, and when they like: I seriously cannot count all the times I have been arrived for a tasting at a winery, informed the staffer I prefer reds, and be told that is ‘wrong’ and being given their non-reds anyway.  Excuse me, but I am paying for this ‘experience’ so why can I not enjoy it the way I like?  I also recall sitting for a tasting one time, saying this, and having the staff remove the whites and rosés and move in all reds.  The result?  A much larger sale for her just because she listened to the customer!

I’ll always recall my brother-in-law’s story of being at a wine dinner featuring Robert Mondavi. In front of a huge crowd, who were hanging on his every word on wine, he took a handful of ice and dropped it into his glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. He smiled and said ‘It’s hot tonight and there’s no reason not to drink the wine you like the way YOU like it.’ Also if one more person tells me ‘it’s summer, you shouldn’t be drinking Cabernet now’ I think I might pour it one them! Sure, it’s fine to focus on selling your Rosé in the springtime, but stop telling everyone that it’s all they’re supposed to drink! Think Starbucks – if you want an ice coffee in the midst of the Polar Vortex they will happily take your money for it and probably even say ‘thank you’!

Allow the food and wine you enjoy to be equally important on the table: No one tells me I can’t drink an espresso with my dessert because it doesn’t ‘pair well’. Likewise no one tells me I have to skip the slice of Coconut Cream pie because it shouldn’t be eaten while I enjoy a quad-Americano either! So why does the industry insist on demanding we only drink certain wines with certain foods? Am I truly supposed to drink a wine I do not prefer just because some expert somewhere tells me I have to? This issue is a lot like religion to me – you have every right to believe what you want to believe, but you have no place telling me what I have to believe!

Talk about wine in useful, recognizable terms: End the secret code when defining wine! Think about it. When was the last time a Millennial stuck their nose in a cigar box?  Have they even seen one to know what it smelled like? Likewise when was the last time they sniffed pencil shavings? How about considering doing away with the ridiculous mentions of all non-edibles when talking about something intended to be consumed? And before using a descriptor ask this: ‘Is it actually appealing to a person about to open their wallet’? Recently I read professional notes intended to sell me wine mentioning ‘acetate’ (I think nail polish remover), the idiotic ‘cat urine’ (I think vile odor), and the ever present ‘forest floor’ (You know what wild bears do in the woods, right?).

Quit talking to yourself: All too often I read about a wine and get the unmistakable impression the writer is focused on either the critics, fellow winemakers, or the industry rags. Certainly not the customer! It’s dangerous when anyone starts to believe their own PR. So write for your customer! A solid example of this is the fact several folks know I enjoy wine. Why is it they often ask me questions about what wine to buy or drink when they have already read about it? I’ve asked them and they have said ‘I don’t understand what those people are saying. I just want someone’s real explanation.’

Cut back, way, way back, on the snobbery: After all just how many of the average winery’s customers are 1%ers who are able to buy multi-hundred dollar bottles of wine, buy their wines to impress their fellow 1%ers, spend thousands per bottle at a wine auction, or not care how much that bottle of restaurant wine costs? Certainly not any of those longed for Millennials!  Most of us actually look at the price of something before we buy anything.  So how about the snobbery stay at the high price point and it disappear as we go down the price ladder?  No amount of snob appeal is going to get a cash-strapped Millennial to pay more for a glass of wine than the price they see for a beer or cocktail.

Part 2 — my final thoughts on making wine more approachable.