NYTimes: Tasty without being costly

[bloviatrix]

There's an article in today's Business section on how wine makers are trying to attract new customers.

A Vintage for Today's Oenophile: Tasty Without Being Costly.

Many Americans feel intimidated when it comes to wine. To the uninitiated, wine connoisseurs may seem to be members of an elitist club, with their own vernacular and rituals like swirling, sniffing and swooshing.

Well, the entrance requirements have been lowered. Faced with fierce competition and an overabundance of supply, attributable to prime weather conditions and improved technology, wine purveyors are working to woo customers with new packaging, pricing and production.

At the same time, a winemaking renaissance of sorts is sweeping the globe, from Morocco to Missouri, bringing unprecedented bargains for both neophytes and connoisseurs. All 50 states, in fact, now produce wine.

[Brad Ballinger]

I'm generally conflicted when reading stories like this one.

One the one hand... It's great that efforts like the ones mentioned in the article will get more people drinking wine (always a good thing IMO). In the U.S. (the audience for whom this piece was written), wine is so much not a part of this culture. And I feel our culture lacks a little because of that. So, on this one hand I'm all for accessibility and demystificantion.

But on the other hand... I'm worried about the purely business-driven implications. If strategies like the ones mentioned in the article prove themselves to be successful over time, I have this fear (irrational or not) that retailers will switch over to this business model, that producers will as well, that other parts of the industry will follow suit. Taken a step further, my irrational fear has me gaining less access to the wines that are a step up in quality from McWine, that they will cost more, that less of it will be made, and that wine will eventually go the way of the restaurant in this franchise/chain age -- more commercial, formulaic, pandering to what's safe, dumbing it down, etc.

If my irrational fears become reality, it will be years away yet. But I'm already seeing signs locally in Minnesota. Wines I used to be able to get as little as five years ago are no longer carried by retailers. If they are, they are not put on sale. Instead, sales (and even regular pricing and selection) are all about turning over inventory. Blessedly, some smaller shops still exist and offer something other than McWine, and even put those items on sale on occasion.

For the person just getting interested in wine, this is a great time and there are many efforts in the works to make your initiation fun, non-intimidating, and effortless. For the person who has been into this sort of thing for a while, I hope the road doesn't get rockier.

Again, I'm probably being irrational, but a guy can have nightmares, right?