Alcohol & How Wine-Educated is the U.S. Market? Wrong Questions!

Q: How Wine-Educated is the U.S. Market?

Q. Alcohol… Is the Pendulum Swinging?

A: Doesn’t really matter

 

Education has been touted as the answer to getting more people to drink more wine. Just educate them and they will buy more.

But, consumers don’t need to be educated to know what they like.

They are fully equipped from birth to know what they like. Genetics has provided every person with a uniquely and personally tailored with a sense of taste and smell.

To paraphrase a line still echoing in Rick’s Place: “All you need to do is put your lips together and sip.” (Forget swirl, sniff and spit.)

No one needs education to know they like Pepsi over Coke or Mountain Dew over Jolt.

And no one needs a big discussion over ABV.

If a person likes the wine, then let them enjoy it without all the arguments.

Same goes for orange wine, red wine with residual sugar, fruit-favored wine in a box:

Discussion, academic wrangling, snob talk and education are all irrelevant.

If someone prefers Cupcake Cab over Lafite, that it their business and no amount of education will change anything other than to make them embarrassed to discuss what they like, or to switch to IPA or Bud Light.

Taste matters and that is individual to every individual: no education needed.

Education increases enjoyment

Where education comes in is for people who are “into” something.

Then education increases the enjoyment of something they already like whether that is coffee, wine, beer, cider, grappa or whateverhaveyou.

Enjoyment leads people to education.

Education will not lead people to like something at odds with their own sense of taste,

A few decades ago, I had hoped that education would lend the ability to find new and enjoyable wines that I had not tried before.

The failure of education to be a reliable guide at retail purchases led me to write this article: THE PROBLEM: The Vino-Casino.

And that led to an entire site about problems in recommendation systems for other products including music, books and movies:  Recommendation Insights.

Education’s sad side effect

Way too many people see education as a step toward snobbish behavior and a way to intimidate others.

This drives people away, and — if pissed off enough by the “only enjoy if educated” crowd — to beer, cocktails or another glass of whateverhaveyou.